God's kingdom is launched through Jesus and particularly through his death and resurrection; but, by the Spirit, this kingdom is not an escape from the present world but rather its transformation, already in the present (starting with Jesus' resurrection) and in the ultimate future (the new heaven and earth including our own resurrection).

I'm a people person. I like being with people. So I like being a teacher, and so on.

The very metaphor Paul chooses for this decisive moment in his argument shows that what he has in mind is not the unmaking of creation or simply its steady development, but the drastic and dramatic birth of new creation from the womb of the old.

If you're a Christian you're just a shadow of your future self.

If you don't have properly constituted civic authorities you will encourage vigilantism and solo efforts at retributive justice - which is anarchy, and God doesn't want his world to be anarchic.

Far too many people, especially within evangelicalism, think that the individual is all that matters, and that the corporate dimension is a distraction or diversion. Of course Christianity is deeply personal for every single Christian; nobody gets lost in the kingdom of God. But you can't play that off against the corporate dimension.

The phrase "spiritual journey" is one that I've only become familiar with comparatively recently. We wouldn't have put it like that when I was a kid.