If you have a small view of your sin, God's grace will be small to you.

How you experience your present is completely shaped by what you believe your ultimate future to be.

Jesus is the author of faith, the provider of faith, and the object of faith.

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.

Prayer-though it is often draining, even an agony-is in the long term the greatest source of power that is possible.

Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God.

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.