Forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness. To not retaliate is to absorb the cost.

The irreligious don't repent at all and the religious only repent of sins. But Christians repent of their wrongfully placed righteousness.

People are messy; therefore, relationships will be messy. Don't be surprised by messiness.

It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied. It is because he died that we can be born again. And he did it gladly. Seeing what he did and why he did it will turn our hearts away from the things that enslave us and toward him in worship. That is the gospel, and it is the same for skeptics, believers, insiders, outcasts, and everyone in between.

True citizens of the heavenly city are the best residents of the earthly city.

At the root of all our disobedience are particular ways in which we continue to seek control of our lives through systems of works-righteousness. The way to progress as a Christian is to continually repent and uproot these systems the same way we become Christians, namely by the vivid depiction (and re-depiction) of Christ’s saving work for us, and the abandoning of self-trusting efforts to complete ourselves. We must go back again and again to the gospel of Christ-crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what he did and who we are in him.

The church does not simply have a missions department; it should wholly exist to be a mission.