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Christianity is not self-improvement with Jesus sprinkled on top. It is death and resurrection. The old man doesn’t get better — he gets buried. Something entirely new rises in his place. We keep selling the improvement version. No wonder it isn’t working.

If God’s blessings were dependent on our performance, they would be meager indeed. Even our best works are shot through with sin — with varying degrees of impure motives and lots of imperfect performance.

The Bible alone gives a true and faithful account of man. It does not flatter him as novels and romances do; it does not conceal his faults and exaggerate his goodness; it paints him just as he is. It describes him as a fallen creature, of his own nature inclined to evil, – a…

“None of us would have any hope of arriving at glory if it depended upon us. I mean this. Even those who are regenerate, even those of us who are born again, even those of us who have the gift of faith, if it were left to us, we should all fail and falter.”―Dr.…

We’ve reduced worship to a feeling you have during the music. The biblical vision is far larger: a covenant people gathered around the living God, meeting him in Word and sacrament, sent back into the world as witnesses. The feeling, if it comes, is a byproduct — not the point.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. — 1 Peter 1:3

A judge may pardon a criminal but then no one imagines he is anything other than a pardoned criminal. The Bible teaches that God as judge treats us in Christ like we are righteous and were never criminals.

Trials are not a sign of God’s absence. They’re the furnace he uses to refine Christians more into the image of Jesus. Lean on him.

Romans 8:14-17I. Led by The Spirit (8:14)There are five truths that we can draw from this one verse.