We have to be careful not to elevate our preferences to moral standards and judge others by them. We only do so to feel superior.

The purpose of Jesus's coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it.

Accepted in Christ, we now run the race 'for the joy that is set before us' rather than 'for fear that comes behind us'.

Suffering is actually at the heart of the Christian story.

It takes more than a great church to reach a city, it takes a great movement of churches.

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 .

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.