If the church is going to speak to people weary of religion, it will not be by offering better techniques or louder certainty, but by daring to say what Paul so plainly said: Christ is enough.
Surveying Scripture, it is an immense comfort to know we’re not alone in our sinfulness.
Christian faith is never a solitary possession. When the congregation confesses, the old speak for the young, the strong for the weak, and the clear-voiced for the trembling.

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This pericope is not merely for the anxious, the persecuted, and the humbled. It is also for the self-reliant, confident and accomplished because at one time or another, they too will be anxious, persecuted, and humbled.
A wonderful intimacy, eternal and beyond our understanding, lies beneath the surface of these words. What is even more wonderful is how this intimacy is also ours. Through the saving work of Jesus, this intimacy is extended unto us.
Far from being a Savior, the god of Unchristianity is a coach who whips us into moral shape, inspires us to be better people, serves as our example. The unspoken goal is to be so virtuous and free of sin that we don’t need Jesus anymore. The transaction is complete. Jesus is unemployed.
As we stand before our Lord dead in our transgressions and guilt, Jesus pronounces His judgment upon us. He absolves us.
As we judge and demand payment from one another, we fashion a world not only skeptical of forgiveness, grace, and mercy... but downright opposed to it.
Jesus is not celebrating diversity or difference. He is promising sameness. Redundancy. A repeat of what has happened before.
Jesus suffered for our sins. He died for us. This is the supreme example of the principle our text has been unfolding. It is all about meeting wrong with right, rendering good for evil, and answering malice with love.
Our LORD is identified as the One who provides for our needs, serves us to the point of obedience unto death on a tree so that we who can do nothing are rescued and redeemed by His actions on our behalf.
The Word was preached into your ears, the Holy Spirit worked through that word, and wormed His way from the sinful preacher's mouth to your wicked ears and onto your sinful heart.
While faith forms the relationship with God and love the relationship with the neighbor, hope forms the Christian’s relationship with the future.
Jesus’s followers aren’t ostriches who bury their heads in the sand. That’s not helpful or hopeful for anyone. Resting from life’s trials and troubles comes in the remembrance of the One who is with you in the middle of all of them.
How we feel is so often conditioned upon what we are experiencing. Faith grabs hold of something outside our experience, something objective and true that is not changed by circumstance.