Don't get me wrong - what we do is important. But it is infinitely less important than what Jesus has done for us.

People who haven't experienced major setbacks sometimes feel that their hurts are somehow less legitimate or real.

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. Which means that the Bible is not first a recipe for Christian living but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our un-Christian living.

Christianity is in no way a stoic faith. It fundamentally rejects the "stiff upper lip" school of thought.

My job as a pastor and theologian is to tease out the nature and the necessity of the gospel in meticulous ways, in everything I say, in everything I like. I want desperately for the church in America to rediscover the power and the beauty and the nature and the necessity of the gospel.

Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.