Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.

At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.

C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

Whatever else we may say about it, the atonement fulfills the Jewish principle that only one who has been hurt can forgive. At Calvary, God chose to be hurt.

No one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument.

If God doesn't want something for me, then I shouldn't want it either.

The problem of pain meets its match in the scandal of grace.