Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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God and love are synonymous. Any talk about love that is not talk about Jesus is, at most, a half-truth.
What the law is powerless to do, Jesus accomplishes for us. Jesus delivers what the law demands.
Neither the disciples nor Paul expected a resurrected Messiah, so something has to account for their dramatic transition from faithless to fearless in the days/years following Jesus’ crucifixion.
Paul says Christian faith means confessing Jesus is Lord, beginning at the Cross, and owning the historical fact that God raised Him from the dead.
The Church becomes anti-church when the new world order Christ inaugurated by eliminating demographic division through the commonality of Baptism is exploded by allegiance to cults of personality.
One name repeatedly emerges from the heart and mind of Paul: Jesus. Jesus is Messiah, Jesus is Savior, Jesus is the world’s rightful and reigning King.
Every verse rings with the Gospel, declaring the giving of God the Father consisting of the Son and the Spirit and we, contrary to what we deserve for our sins, the recipients of His “lavish” love and grace.
The lavish nature of God’s love is indicated by the fact that He, as Father, is the author of our being adopted as sons and daughters through Holy Baptism.
We expect the world to shoot its wounded. But not even the world expects Christians to shoot their wounded.
Are people so different today? Is justification really irrelevant now? Is the preacher’s only point of contact with the life-giving Gospel a by-product of Microsoft’s word processor? I do not think so.
Far too many Christians read the Bible as if a dam has been built between the waters of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Jesus and the New Testament—good. Yahweh and the Old Testament—not really so good. So goes the popular, but largely whispered, dichotomy.