The gospel is not just the A-B-C's but the A-Z of Christianity. The gospel is not just the minimum required doctrine necessary to enter the kingdom, but the way we make all progress in the kingdom.

All I know is, if I don't care about the poor, if my church doesn't care about the poor, that's evil.

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.

We tend to see God as a means through which we get things to make us happy. For most of us, He has not become our happiness.

The determining factor in our relationship with God is not our past but Christ's past.

How could a good, all-powerful God allow suffering?

When Jesus got the big questions, he didn't present arguments. He presented himself.