When the gospel comes first in our message, obedience flows from it. When obedience comes first in our message, the gospel becomes a side dish rather than the entire meal.

Paul’s Judaism led him to persecute the church of God. What Paul was doing was an attack on the people he thought he was protecting: God’s elect. His desire for the purity of God’s word drove him to approve the killing of God’s people because he believed they were redefining the boundaries of Israel by following Jesus. He had no idea that Jesus had redefined the boundaries for them. It wasn’t their message. It was God’s. Paul just hadn’t heard it yet. When Paul did hear the gospel, he experienced a complete life change.

As J.B. Lightfoot says, “The gospel is a rescue, and emancipation from a state of bondage.”

Foregoing judgment on non-primary issues is serving Christ because in doing so you are serving his people. We all have so many stumbling blocks in coming to the gospel. We trip over our own feet as we approach the altar. The more hindrances others place in front of us along the way, the harder it will be to get to Jesus.

Christians are marked by how they live. They don’t live like people on their way to death; they live like people on their way to life.

The greatest treasures in the world stacked on top of one another and handed to us with a golden certificate of authentication would not be worth one ounce of grace dripping from the throne room of God.

We have the ability now to love God because of the great love with which he loved us.

One of the great wonders of the Christian life is reconciling who you are now in Christ with who you once were without him. We are like one who marvels as he sees his empty bank account become one with an infinite sum. Life will never be the same. For the Christian, however, our lives have not simply been enhanced as the rich man but resurrected as the dry bones of the valley (Ezekiel 37). We have passed from death into life.

Adam, as the first man, represented all humanity to follow. The result of his life is, therefore, universal and inescapable. In Adam, all die. But in Christ, all live.