To the degree you experience God's love towards you - seeing you as beautiful and radiant - to that degree sex won't ruin your life.

You are more sinful than you could dare imagine and you are more loved and accepted than you could ever dare hope.

But resurrection is not just consolation — it is restoration. We get it all back — the love, the loved ones, the goods, the beauties of this life — but in new, unimaginable degrees of glory and joy and strength.

We do not have to make ourselves suffer in order to merit forgiveness. We simply receive the forgiveness earned by Christ. 1 John 1:9 says that God forgives us because He is ‘just.’ That is a remarkable statement. It would be unjust of God to ever deny us forgiveness, because Jesus earned our acceptance! In religion we earn our forgiveness with our repentance, but in the gospel we just receive it.

The gospel has two parts. It has the part that says you're a sinner, and it has the part that says you're loved and accepted.

Jesus' claims are particularly unnerving, because if they are true there is no alternative but to bow the knee to him.

Prayer turns theology into experience.