No matter how many times we hear this good news, it never stops being good news.
Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
Just as trick-or-treaters arrive at doorsteps as beggars, we come to the Lord’s table with nothing to offer but our sin and need for forgiveness.

All Articles

Life is certainly unfair. But in Christ, at least in part, we rejoice at such a notion. Grace, that great descriptor of God’s devotion, is a word that only finds its purpose, only exists at all, because it exists as a response to guilt.
You may have seen the uproar from a recent blog post suggesting that virgins who forego college, learn to cook big meals and abstain from tattoos make more desirable wives.
Our complaints about God's grace always sound the same: "It was good to see him in church with his son this morning.
To be sure, the devil has an incredible arsenal of assaults with which he can waylay believers into ineptitude and ineffectiveness.
Why confess sin? Is it so we can get rewarded by God? A little extra grace or material good for our troubles, maybe.
The commonly accepted wisdom is that we feel guilt over what we’ve done and we experience shame over who we are. If guilt is the blemish on our face then shame is the cancer in our heart. It’s deeper, harder to dig out.
The author, Flannery O'Connor, said, "All I can say about my love of God is, Lord help me in my lack of it."
Led by God’s Word we can grasp why this gap exists, grows, and threatens us. Simply put, we don’t take sin seriously. We don’t take the effects of our sinful rebellion on all of creation seriously.
It's easy to become habituated to sin. It comes naturally, after all. The power and pressure of sin on us, from conception to the grave, is immense.
My Grandmother recently lost a long battle with cancer. Her name was Joy, and a name has never been more fitting.
We need a God who can heal us of true guilt and false guilt. We need a Christ who not only removes the shame we feel for what we’ve done, but who washes away the shame that others have smeared upon us.
In the United States Marine Corps, part of my training involved Enemy Prisoner of War (EPW) handling. The 6 rules of EPW handling are: