Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life.

If a person has grasped the meaning of God's grace in his heart, he will do justice. If he doesn't live justly, then he may say with his lips that he is grateful for God's grace, but in his heart he is far from him. If he doesn't care about the poor, it reveals that at best he doesn't understand the grace he has experienced, and at worst he has not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make you just.

You cannot have Jesus' rescue without accepting His rule.

The targets of this story are not wayward sinners but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. H wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.

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

God's salvation does not come in response to a changed life. A changed life comes in response to the salvation, offered as a free gift.

Occasionally God rips aside the veil, and you begin to see this very fact: All things happen for you. All things. Everything is knit together.