As a new Christian, I thought of salvation as taking things off of me: that my sins were taken off. But at the very same moment, there’s another part of that legal transaction: something is put on me. I’m adopted as God’s own son. Galatians tells us...
The gospel insists on putting two things together that no other religion tries to put together, that all other human categories of thought insist is impossible. How is it possible to have both law and grace in your life? It’s a striking apparent cont...
I don’t think there’s any competition on this: the cross is the single most visible and recognizable symbol in human history. It’s everywhere. But what does it mean? Before Christ came, the cross was a gallows, a firing squad, a guillotine. All the c...
Whenever we listen or read about marriage we bring our own filters. We have filters based on our experiences and cultures. So before we pick at this passage in Ephesians 5, let’s stand back and consider that the passage presents a view of marriage th...
When we think of temptation, we tend to almost immediately think of physical kinds of sins. But there are a lot of other temptations. There’s temptation to pride, to despair, to dishonesty. Anything, whether it’s good or not, can become addicting—it...
When Jesus Christ came into the life of the demon-possessed man in Mark 5, it says the man sat at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind. That’s the result of Jesus’ resurrection power: self-control. All of us who look fairly polished on the outs...
We all have a problem with self-control, right? You can probably think of some emotion or some habit you have trouble controlling. And if you can’t think of anything that’s out of control, your pride is out of control. The fruit of the Spirit is a si...
Goodness and faithfulness are greatly interrelated. They both have to do with integrity, with living honestly. The word integrity is related to integer—a whole number as opposed to a fraction. A person of integrity lives in a unified, not a fractured...
The Bible says one of the marks of a real Christian is that your love finds expression in deeds of kindness—especially toward those with material, physical, and economic problems. Kindness is loving deeds, doing something for someone out of love. And...
When the Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is patience, it’s saying a Christian is somebody who at last knows how to deal with anger. You know, anger is a scary thing. Almost all murders and wars start with anger. It’s a tremendously dangerous emoti...
When we talk about the fruit of the Spirit, love and joy seem like they’re in a higher league than patience. We think, “everybody gets impatient!” But in James 5, it says impatience and grumbling is worthy of judgment. You may say, “Why?” But what d...
A lot of Christians are cast down, losing their peace and joy because they don’t expect attacks on their peace and joy. We’re sad that we’re sad. We’re upset that we’re upset. We say, “it’s not supposed to be like this!” because we don’t have the pro...
When the Bible says joy comes in the morning, it doesn’t mean you’ll wake up every morning with a smile on your face. It means there’s a joy of such intensity in the Christian life that nothing can put it out. A Christian will receive a joy of such...
They say if you’ve been married long enough you start to look like each other. Whether or not that’s true in marriage, I know that’s true about God and you. We’re being transformed into the image of his Son. Every fruit of the Spirit, every aspect o...
In a single acorn is not only the entire tree, but all the acorns on that tree and all the acorns on that tree and so on and so forth. It’s all already in that one acorn. In the same way, a Christian already has the divine nature in them. When we ta...
