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

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.

On the cross Jesus was treated as an outcast so that we could be brought into God's family freely by grace.

To preach the gospel is to show people their need for salvation against a backdrop of God's nature and the character of sin, and then present Jesus as the only remedy for what ails them and the world. In my weekly preaching in the worship services I always call people to believe in Christ.

The product of a true, growing, gospel-centered nature is often gentleness.

The gospel humbles us into the dust and at the very same time exalts us to the heavens.

There's nothing that makes you more miserable (or less interesting) than self-absorption .