How Religion Works: If I obey, then God will love and accept me. The Gospel: I'm loved and accepted, therefore I wish to obey.

The issue on which everything hangs is not whether you like His teaching but if He ‪rose from the dead.

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

Jesus does not divide the world into the moral "good guys" and the immoral "bad guys". He shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We are just going about it in different ways. Even though both sons are wrong, however, the father cares for them and invites them both back into his love and feast.

God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.

Prayer is continuing a conversation that God has started through his Word and his grace, which eventually becomes a full encounter with him.

Work is taking the raw material of creation and developing it for the sake of others.