One of Satan’s cons is to trick us into trivializing sin. Sin is like too much sunshine. It can be fun now; thirty years later one can pay a dear price.

Self-satisfaction is the sworn enemy of spiritual growth and a dear friend of deadly presumption. Self-examination, combined with the searchlight of the Scriptures, is God’s most powerful stimulus to godliness.

No one is now, ever has been, or ever will be justified before God on the basis of personal good conduct. Forget it. Thee biblical rule is and always has been that one is saved (for all people are natively lost) by God’s grace through faith alone. But get this! The faith through which one is saved is not alone. Saving faith is a serious faith, i.e. one that follows Christ, honoring the law of God. Otherwise, it is just a bag of gas in skinny jeans idly taking up holy space in church pews.

The gospel is more than simply Christ’s payment for my sins – my redemption, but also results in my reconciliation with God, culminating in absolute restoration in eternity, the world as it was intended, and more.

The good news: Had Jesus not died for us, our sins could not have been pardoned; had He not risen from the dead, we would have no expectation of a resurrection. But because He did die for us and rose physically from the dead on the third day, those of us who have appropriated His redemptive work for our salvation, enjoy through faith by the amazing grace of God, life everlasting and abundant life in Christ here and now. The bad news: those who refuse Him and His atoning sacrifice for our sins will at last discover in total terror that God the Father refuses all those who thought it a light thing to trample in the blood of His beloved Son.

Christ did not call us to be religious lites in the

world, but the spiritual lights of the world. The former just deepen darkness; the latter dispel it.

In describing our societal role, Jesus came close to sounding like Sherlock Holmes to his associate: “Very elementary, my dear Watson, you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world! Don’t blow it.”

No one can at the same time be a disciple of Jesus Christ and a darling of the world. Pick a lane!

Find a person who likes and promotes conflict

and you have either found a character with the veritable DNA of the Devil himself, or who is the unwitting pawn of the same. God’s people, if they truly are His people, love and promote peace as far as circumstances permit.

Thee mercies of God summon us to active effort, but this active effort, if it is based on the indicative of God’s grace should never be confused with legalism. The energy of God’s grace summons human beings not to passivity but to exertion. But it is an exertion rooted in faith and energized by the power of the Holy Spirit." Thomas Schreiner