We endure under abusive authority by looking to Jesus' example, not responding in kind, and entrusting ourselves to the perfect justice of God, who will right every wrong in His timing and purpose.

In reminding the Ephesians that they were saved by grace, Paul makes sure, when it comes to our works, that his readers know they were rescued for them, not by them.

When we are saved by grace, we rest in the reality that we are always and only accepted by God, not on the basis of our inadequate and inconsistent works, but on the basis of Jesus’ perfect work on the cross.

To be saved by grace through faith is to freely get the opposite of what we deserve so that God gets all the glory.

When God calls us to a 'life underneath', that is a life of submission to structures of authority, he calls us to do so as those submitted first and foremost to Him as God.

Because we are now, through Jesus, spiritual aliens in this world system, God calls us to be separate, but still shining the light of Christ's love.

As they suffered under slander and intimidation, Peter reminds his readers that they are, because of Christ, the people of God's eternal purposes.

The Holy Spirit has been given to empower the follower Christ for the most miraculous of feats: to allow Jesus Christ to live His life of love out through ours.

If they are to grow in God's salvation, Peter's audience must put away the rotten milk of sin and self, and long for the pure milk of Christ's goodness that they have already tasted in grace.

The Apostle Paul established his call to humility and sacrificial love by pointing us to a vision of Christ's own humility that took him from a throne to the cross.