life on Condemnation

With a graciousness and an understanding of human weakness that only God can exhibit, Jesus liberates us from alienation and self-condemnation and offers each of us a new possibility. He is the Savior...

Confrontation Most pastors don’t care for confrontation. Maybe, that could be said for most people. There are the rare few of us who thrive on the tension and drama that comes with a direct standoff,...

Preaching Commentary Confrontation Most pastors don’t care for confrontation. Maybe, that could be said for most people. There are the rare few of us who thrive on the tension and drama that comes ...

Out of the depths of darkness and despair we have cried out for your mercy, O God. Instead of marking our iniquities with the just weight of our condemnation, you have forgiven us, breathed new life i...

The book of Proverbs is, in ways, a treatise on talk. I would summarize it this way: words give life; words bring death—you choose . What does this mean? It means you have never spoken a neutral ...

My thought it is a wanton ranger,  It skips away;  I fear 'twill bring my soul in danger  On Judgment Day...

Exposed to public view like slabs of meat hung from a market stall, troublesome slaves were nailed to crosses…past. No death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion. To be hung nake...

At a recent gathering of seminary professors, one teacher reported that at his school the most damaging charge one student can lodge against another is that the person is being “judgmental.” He found ...

Deconstruction isn’t a  trendy  thing to do, but it is a  trend  that is happening at scale in our country and passing from person to person. Anecdotally, when I look up various hashtags on TikTok, th...

All His is mine and all mine—my sins, my death, my damnation—is His.

Any religious movement which adopts a purely critical and negative attitude to culture is therefore a force of destruction and disintegration which mobilizes against it the healthiest and most constru...

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders are not going to...

A person's life is his most precious possession. Consequently, to rob him of it is the greatest sin we can commit against him, while to give one's own life on his behalf is the greatest possib...

Persecution is one of the natural consequences of living the Christian life. It is to the Christian what “growing pains” are to the growing child. No pain, no development. No suffering, no glory. No s...

Pastor: God of all mercy and consolation, come to the aid of Your people, turning us from our sin to live for You alone.  Give us the power of Your Holy Spirit that, attentive to Your Word, we may c...

The character Quentin from Henry Miller’s Play, After the Fall explains a life without God: For many years I looked at life like a case at law. It was a series of proofs. When you’re young you prove ...

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 ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge...

The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the divine wonder of living is the root of sin.

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men: We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have comm...

Any parent who has children of speaking age has likely heard the expression, “That’s not fair.” Those words come in all shapes and sizes—quickly shouted, drawn out almost with extra syllables, or said...

In the early fifth century, even as Rome had officially embraced Christianity, the brutal spectacle of gladiatorial combat continued in the Colosseum, drawing massive crowds. One day, a Christian herm...

The Christian life that is joyless is a discredit to God and a disgrace to itself.

Nothing is more precious than teeming, overabundant resource-destroying human life. (For humor/contrast)

Living a spiritual life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation. But it...

A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth is most like God. This is man’s greatest tragedy and God’s heaviest grief.

One particularly crafty, if not insidious way a “good works” righteousness can seep into our theology is by positioning faith as the pre-eminent work. We must never forget that faith itself is a...

In his Rule for monasteries, St. Benedict considered grumbling a serious offense against community life. He wrote, “If a disciple grumbles, not only aloud but in his heart … his action will not ...

Uncontrolled temper is soon dissipated on others. Resentment, bitterness, and self-pity build up inside our hearts and eat away at our spiritual lives like a slowly spreading cancer.