romans on Paradise

Kindness flows from you, Lord, pure and continual. You had cast us off, as was only just, but mercifully you forgave us; you hated us and you were reconciled to us, you cursed us and you blessed us; y...

In a way, the Reformation began in one monk's overwhelming guilt. Martin Luther was riddled with guilt and filled with anxiety because he could see that he could not live up to God's standard ...

A Great (and Weighty) Work of Literature That Will Delight Like Moby Dick and War and Peace , Les Misérables is a hefty novel. Affectionately known as the ‘Brick’ for its formidable length, it c...

A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world-and might be even more difficult...

Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you.

Your grace, O God, has appeared for the salvation of all, calling us to renounce false gods and irresponsible love. In the midst of our sin, Christ has appeared as a sign of our hope, redeeming us and...

I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe, more loved and welcomed than I ever dared hope.

Ask people what they must do to get to heaven and most reply, “Be good.” Jesus’ stories contradict that answer. All we must do is cry, “Help!”

If we are saved by grace alone, this salvation is a constant source of amazed delight. Nothing is mundane or matter-of-fact about our lives. It is a miracle we are Christians, and the Gospel, which cr...

The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a far larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sin...

Being saved always involves being both saved from something and saved for something. We are saved for shalom—a flourishing life with God. What are we saved from? Salvation as described in the Bible is...

Pious souls can derive great confidence and delight from this sacrament, as being a testimony that they form one body with Christ, so that everything which is his they may call their own. Hence it fol...

The vision that Jesus gives us is this: That I am unconditionally loved, that I belong to God, and that I am a person who can really trust that. When I meet another person who also is rooted in the he...

Now I could see in my dream that the High-way Christian was to travel on was protection on either side by a Wall, and the Wall was called Salvation. Burdened Christian began to run up the High-way, bu...

On the one side there is God in His glory as Creator and Lord. . . . And on the other side there is man, not merely the creature, but the sinner, the one who exists in the flesh and who in the flesh i...

Gracious God, you are quick to show us your love. yet we soon forget. We live as if we have to earn your love, perform in order to receive your approval, and succeed in order to receive a smile. These...

Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple describing original sin I am the centre of the world I see; where the horizon is depends on where I stand…Education may make my self-centeredness less ...

The harlot, the liar, the murderer, are short of it [sc. God’s glory]; but so are you. Perhaps they stand at the bottom of a mine, and you on the crest of an Alp; but you are as little able to touch t...

Repentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue.

By the word of our Lord the heavens were made. By the spirit of our Lord was life begun. By the wisdom of our Lord his laws were laid. By the love of our Lord was born his Son. By the grace of our Lor...

Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic...

We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.

Preaching Commentary Paul’s Prize Fight Paul pulls no punches in this letter to the church of Ephesus. It is an onslaught of theological intensity from the first ring of the bell. Like a prize figh...

O Lord God, You have commanded us to believe in Jesus; and I would flee to no other refuge,  wash in no other fountain,  build on no other foundation,  receive from no other fullness,  res...

The beautiful is the experimental proof that the incarnation is possible.

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel reflects on the Biblical doctrine...

Context Layers The responsible interpretation of any biblical text requires one to consider multiple levels of context, but these contextual strata are especially important to define and explore in ...

Heavenly One, Your reach extends to every person, every nation, offering grace, forgiveness, and hope. A saving embrace drawing us to you and each other. Make us your children: grateful for a place at...

In 2010, an oil rig named “Deepwater Horizon” suffered a catastrophic failure. Due to improper installation of the cement seal, a malfunctioning blowout preventer, and cost-cutting decisions by corpor...