There’s a subplot in the book Jonah: it’s Jonah’s impact on the sailors and their impact on him. Do you see the exquisite irony here? Jonah runs away because he hates the dirty pagan Ninevites. He doesn’t think they can change and he doesn’t care eno...
Until you admit that you run from God, you can’t know him or find him. You’re not just a troubled person. You’re not just a hurting person. You’re not a self-sufficient person. Primarily, you’re running. Every one of us has unique, habitual ways of...
We all run away from God. It’s in our nature. And the book of Jonah is all about Jonah running and God pursuing. Most of us are familiar with the words sin and grace, but what they mean is another thing. And here it is: essentially sin is running awa...
The point of Galatians is that Christians need the gospel, continually. So let’s bring the gospel to a subject that’s very relevant for us: self-image and self-esteem. Christianity brings you a way of understanding yourself that is so different than...
Our relationships are such hard work. People are always getting hurt. People are always getting disappointed. Relationships are a nightmare, but we can’t get along without them. As soon as we try to pull back from relationships, we lose our humanity....
Through faith in Christ, through the gospel, through the Holy Spirit, you can experience lasting, deep, radical, permanent change. If you’re going to make such changes, you need to understand the nature of Christian change. You have to understand the...
When you become a Christian, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead comes into you spiritually, internally. You have the power to change. You have an unsurpassed power to change. So we have to ask ourselves right away, “Are we settling for to...
Freedom is the greatest value in the modern Western world. The secular model of freedom is basically freedom from something. It says, “I am only free when there’s nothing in my way.” When people come to Christianity, they would like inspiration and h...
How could the idea that you’re saved by grace alone be any incentive to live a good life? Paul says the gospel of salvation through free grace, not works, is actually a greater incentive to a life of honesty, sacrifice, and love than anything else. H...
Most people think the job of religion is to call people into a life of morality. But Paul says that’s not what Christianity is at all. Gospel transformation is completely different than moral reformation. In Galatians 5, Paul says there are two diffe...
What’s the purpose of writing a letter to somebody? The purpose is to get something across. So when we read the Bible, we need to have the intellectual integrity to treat it the way we’d want our own communications treated. Galatians 4 is a text that...
The difference between a sword and a scalpel at first sight doesn’t seem that great. But you can either cut in order to defeat or in order to heal. The book of Galatians is counseling, and for Paul, truth is a scalpel. He’s not using truth to bludgeo...
If you want to be an agent of reconciliation and change and healing in the lives of others, Paul says something that applies to us all. Paul says the essence of his ministry was this: “become like me, for I became like you.” There are two sides to th...
This is a startling passage. The context is that the Galatians, who became Christians out of pagan backgrounds, are now falling under the influence of teachers who say, “It’s not enough just to believe in Jesus Christ. You also have to obey everythin...
On Today's episode of Gospel in Life, we're previewing the first episode of our new standalone limited podcast series: Cultivating a Healthy Marriage with Tim Keller. Cultivating a Healthy Marriage with Tim Keller is a short podcast series featuring...
