Do you realize that it is only in the gospel of Jesus Christ that you get the verdict before the performance?

Only with time do we really learn who the other person is and come to love the person for him- or herself and not just for the feelings and experiences they give us.

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

Jesus took the tree of death so you could have the tree of life.

We are regularly in danger of having too light a view of our sin and also too light a grasp of what Jesus has done to free us from our sin.

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.

Christianity is not just for the strong; it's for everyone.