Effectiveness in teaching the Bible is purchased at the price of much study, some of it lonely, all of it tiring.

Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax - in the cross.

Christians have learned that when there seems to be no other evidence of God's love, they cannot escape the cross.

Sin corrupts even our good deeds. We injure our shoulder trying to pat ourselves on the back.

The person who loves his life will lose it: it could not be otherwise, for to love one's life is a fundamental denial of God's sovereignty, of God's rights, and a brazen elevation of self to the apogee of one's perception, and therefore an idolatrous focus on self, which is the heart of all sin

... the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.

For the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.