We know we're going to die—it's as inevitable as buttered toast landing face-down—but Romans 6:5 asks whether that death has to mean the same thing it did before Christ.
When the old broken software finally gives way to something that works, the last thing you'd do is press every button just to break the new one on purpose. Yet that same impulse faces us in the Christian life, and Paul confronts it head-on in Romans 6:14-15: since we are not under law but under grace, shall we sin?
We crave freedom, but Bob Dylan was right when he sang, “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” No matter how strong that craving, we’ll find ourselves serving either righteousness or unrighteousness.
We’ve all stepped into a conflict hoping to bring peace and walked out having made things worse—turns out we didn’t understand the system as well as we thought. Jesus calls the peacemakers blessed in Matthew 5:9, promising they shall be called sons of God, so the question worth sitting with is: what kind of peace does He actually have in mind?
We keep reaching for more—a better version of the Christian life, a deeper secret, some upgrade that will finally make everything click—when Ephesians 1 says God has already lavished wisdom and insight on us and made known the mystery of His will. What does it look like to actually live in that, rather than keep reaching past it?
You can confess Jesus as Lord, cast out demons, do mighty works—and still hear him say, “I never knew you.” Matthew 7:21–23 cuts past everything we think proves we’re his followers, asking instead the question that actually matters: Does he know you?
We’ve all sensed it—a choice that seemed perfect in the moment, but leaves us listing further down the road. Matthew 7:24–27 presents two builders, two houses, nearly identical except for what lies beneath, and asks which foundation will hold when the rains come.
We see lots of details but miss the main point when we come to Jesus mainly to eliminate problems here and now. In Matthew 9:18–26, two people reach out to Jesus with needs very much like the ones we have and must wrestle with the deeper point of Jesus’s ministry — just like we do.
Blessed are the merciful—it sounds really good when we are the ones receiving mercy. That call suddenly sounds a lot worse when we’re the ones called to _show_ mercy. Jesus calls us to that mercy, against our natural inclination for payback.
