You can't find a YouTube clip to become a craftsman, friend, parent - or disciple of Christ. It's all of grace. And to grow in that grace, you need two things: time and community.

As we are brought into God's extraordinary kingdom through ordinary means, we are remade, no longer fashioned as competitors for commodities in a world of scarce resources, but as co-sharers with Christ in the circulation of gifts that flows outward from its source without running out.

If we think the main mission of the church is to improve life in Adam and add a little moral strength to this fading evil age, we have not yet understood the radical condition for which Christ is such a radical solution.

To preach the Bible as 'the handbook for life,' or as the answer to every question, rather than as the revelation of Christ, is to turn the Bible into an entirely different book. This is how the Pharisees approached Scripture, as we can see clearly from the questions they asked Jesus. For the Pharisees, the Scriptures were a source of trivia for life's dilemmas.

As Paul argues, it is the righteousness of God that is revealed in the law, and this condemns us all (Ro 1:18 - 3:20), while the gospel reveals the righteousness from God, namely, that we "are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Ro 3:24).

Eternal joy can never be taken from God's people. Therefore ambition, restlessness, and avarice can be put away for the first time as we rest more and more in the work of the Son of God.

Faith in Christ is able to endure doubts-it's able to endure temptations-bec ause it faces them, not because it pretends they're not there.