Religion operates on the principle 'I obey-therefore I am accepted by God.' But the operating principle of the gospel is 'I am accepted by God through what Christ has done-therefore I obey.'

No one is so good that they don’t need the grace of the gospel, nor so bad that they can’t receive the grace of the gospel.

Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake. This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It 's a shocking message: Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God .

Repentance out of mere fear is really sorrow for the consequences of sin, sorrow over the danger of sin — it bends the will away from sin, but the heart still clings. But repentance out of conviction over mercy is really sorrow over sin, sorrow over the grievousness of sin — it melts the heart away from sin. It makes the sin itself disgusting to us, so it loses its attractive power over us. We say, ‘this disgusting thing is an affront to the one who died for me. I’m continuing to stab him with it!’

There seems to be a human instinct for prayer. Swiss theologian Karl Barth calls it our 'incurable God-sickness.'

If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.

Jesus asks for far more than you ever thought, but offers more than you ever dreamed.