Title: Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers Author: Dane Ortlund Publisher: Crossway Publishing Date: April 7, 2020 Pages: 224 (Hardcover) ISBN: 978-1433566134 When our consciences are truly pricked, we are repulsed by our sins. When we are in anguish, we often feel disconnected from others, including our God, and we naturally join the Psalmist, …
There is a move among many Christians to embrace the mercy and grace reflected in restorative justice while rejecting or minimizing the importance of punishment and retributive notions of justice.
Christians typically assume that the best way to avoid this temptation of engaging in sexual impurity is to avoid anything even resembling friendship with someone of the opposite sex. Byrd, however, argues that avoidance is not purity; it is simply avoidance.
Vulnerability dares to let the mask down a bit, revealing a fuller story of oneself. And few of us in ministry dared this kind of deeply personal exposure back then.
God has written you a letter, child. It says that your sins are forgiven and that you are never alone, that you have a people
Should Christians call out sin? Firstly, we have to be very careful before we do. We need to make sure we’ve checked in with ourselves, our own sin, our motivation, and our desired outcome.
The grace of Jesus doesn’t give us license to go on sinning and being stubborn, but it does mean that when we cry out to God for forgiveness, we can be made right before God through the sacrifice of Jesus; in this righteousness, we are made more holy through the power of the Spirit.
When we find ourselves caught up in the world’s measuring sticks, stressed out and feeling inadequate because of our sinful hearts’ tendency to go along with relatively meaningless comparisons, let’s remember that one sinful human measured against other sinful humans is still just a sinful human.
Like many of you, I felt sick on August 12 after scrolling through line after line about the protests that were happening in Charlottesville. And if I felt sick on Saturday, I can’t imagine what my fellow beach compatriots must have felt.
Paul says that there is a war, and that it’s raging. It isn’t a war between Jews and Gentiles. It isn’t between us and them, or between right and wrong, or left and right. It is between law and grace. It is an internal war between I-can-do-it-on-my-own (independence) and come-to-me all-who-are-weary (dependence). It is between you-get-what-you-deserve and find-rest for-your-souls.
The funny thing about stealing is that the result is never how you imagine. The euphoria attached to the act of taking and owning something taboo quickly plummets to despair and shame.
We are like David! No matter how much we love the Lord, we cannot save ourselves (or our world) from the evil within.
We can never understand grace unless we first come to know the depth of our sin. That is one of the primary truths of the Bible, and it also happens to be one of the convicting truths that we do not like to hear, one which many modern churches tend to shy away from preaching.
Part of the reason we yearn to die well is our desire to create comfort for ourselves even in death. Our mistake is in believing we can muster up this comfort in our own strength and works, as if we were the ones who conquered death.
My reasons for academic study are many, but to see my academic study in light of and in response to God’s grace in my life has been the most freeing.
What if the problem of racism is not primarily a problem between different groups of people? What if it isn’t primarily about white people and black people? What if racism is not about one group versus another, but rather about all people versus the effects of sin?
What does the Bible mean when Paul writes about the frustrated and decaying creation? What should scientists expect to see in their investigations of creation given that the creation is frustrated and decaying? How does sin adversely affect the most basic laws by which the creation operates?
I know I have a sinful nature and will continue to keep sinning. This sinful nature makes it difficult for me to continually think about the surmountable gift God has given me, and to bask in God’s glory.
As creatures made in God’s image, we have been tasked to represent the Lord in His creation.