Freedom is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us.

Most people want Jesus as a consultant rather than a King, and He does not come that way.

If God is treated as God during suffering, then suffering can reveal and present him in all his greatness.

No matter what precautions we take, no matter how well we have put together a good life, no matter how hard we have worked to be healthy, wealthy, comfortable with friends and family, and successful with our career — something will inevitably ruin it.

Suffering can refine us rather than destroy us because God himself walks with us in the fire.

The Cross is not simply a lovely example of sacrificial love. Throwing your life away needlessly is not admirable — it is wrong. Jesus’ death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was. Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid — God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born — God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering.

It is because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamations of grace and love are so astounding.