Because he loves and welcomes us as he does, we are transformed in our relationships with others. Because we have been loved as a child or a bride is loved, we are now free to love and welcome others generously, warmly, and joyously. His love for us is to have a powerful effect on our love for others, and it is the only thing that will motivate us to love as we have been called to.

When we fail to respond in Christlikeness to the disappointments of life, it’s usually because we’ve forgotten all he has accomplished for us.

Every faithful parent must give their children guidance, direction, rules, and commands. What we are saying is that these things are not to be the primary theme of our teaching. The primary theme is to be Jesus Christ and the work he’s already done.

At the deepest level of what we do as parents, we should hear the heartbeat of a loving, grace-giving Father who freely adopts rebels and transforms them into loving sons and daughters.

Justification is a word that simply means that our record is both “just as if we had never sinned” and also “just as if we had always obeyed.

The gospel is not good news to those who pride themselves on their hard work. It is infuriating news.

Perhaps one of the reasons why God chooses to leave us in this terribly broken world with its various disappointments is to create in our souls a certain dissatisfaction, an insatiable hunger for home.

Love is the first cause of all the graces we desire; it “warms the heart, and sweetly and powerfully influences our affections to delight in, and to walk in love with such an exceedingly gracious and merciful God.

We need assurance that there is a God who is sovereignly ruling over our journeys and will one day put everything right.

We’re women and men who are so sinful and flawed that we deserve hell, but we’ve been so loved and welcomed that every spiritual blessing, adoption, tender fellowship with our Father and each other, forgiveness, reconciliation, and eternal life is ours. Christ’s accomplishments and perfections are ours now. Everything about us is different.