By definition, the big difference between mercy and justice is that mercy is never ever obligatory.

The cross was a glorious outworking of the grace of God, by which the Father commissioned the Son to make full satisfaction so that sinners might be saved with no sacrifice of God’s justice.

Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him... To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.

I had actually gone to a church-related college, but I went on a football scholarship, not because of any interest in the church.

Your task, O preacher, is to make sure that you are faithful to the text, that you are faithful to the proclamation of that gospel, that you are faithful to set forth the whole counsel of God, and then step back and let it happen.

Unbelief is judged by Jesus not as an intellectual error but as a hostile act of prejudice against God himself.

We take comfort, however, that mystery is not a synonym for contradiction.