It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures.

To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God's love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralyzing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship.

So, because in no other person but Jesus of Nazareth did God first become human (in his birth), then bear our sins (in his death), then conquer death (in his resurrection) and then enter his people (by his Spirit), he is uniquely able to save sinners. Nobody else has his qualifications.

Circumcision stands for a religion of human achievement, of what man can do by his own good works; Christ stands for a religion of divine achievement, of what God has done through the finished work of Christ.

In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?

Faith is a reasoning trust, a trust which reckons thoughtfully and confidently upon the trustworthiness of God.

The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.