How the Resurrection Should Transform My Behavior
Because of our alliance with Christ & his resurrection, we can, with his empowerment, experience a foretaste of our sinless & victorious resurrected lives now.
Romans
Rethinking Christ's Death & My Temptations
Because of our spiritual alliance and association with Christ’s work on the cross, we should be eager to be holy and repulsed by sin.
Reveling in Our New Alliance with Christ
The finished and imputed work of Christ to us should dispel any fear or doubt, and should embolden us to joyfully anticipate the consummation of God’s good plan.
Understanding Our New Break with Adam
As Christians we cannot rightly understand the imputation and effects of Christ’s righteousness until we understand the imputation and effects of Adam’s sin.
Getting Excited About Our New Destiny
The finished work of the cross and the ongoing defense of Christ as our mediator should instill us with a profound joy regarding our future eternal blessings.
Celebrating God's New Disposition Toward Us
We should carry a confident assurance about our future salvation because of God’s historic demonstration of his extravagant love for those who don’t deserve it.
Taking Hold of a New Perspective on Our Problems
Christians can maintain a positive perspective amid painful circumstances because God deeply loves them and is working to make them more like Christ.
Appreciating Our New Status Before God
We must purpose to understand and choose to confidently celebrate the radical change in our status before God that the justifying work of Christ secures for us.
Experiencing the Hope of Faith
Our faith in God?s promises and Christ’s work should produce in us a bold and confident hope that bolsters our sense of security and significance before God.
Seeing Salvation as an Inheritance
We can learn to appreciate and value our salvation by seeing it through the biblical metaphor of inheritance
Rethinking Outward Signs & Inward Realities
We should be careful not to misunderstand the role of the ceremonial signs (both in the Old and New Covenants) which God has chosen to represent his justifying work.
Celebrating Unearned Forgiveness
We must learn to respect, admire and fully embrace the total forgiveness that is immediately granted to us by faith through the atonement of Christ.
Making Sense of Abraham's Faith & Works
If even the best people you know are wicked before God and must trust God to be gifted salvation, then we should never think we can earn God’s forgiveness!
Its Eternal Provision
The incomparable love of God affords us permanent peace and enduring security through the past, present and future work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
Reading Scripture in Light of Redemption
There is no room for prideful feelings that we in some way achieved our salvation because God’s salvation is freely and sovereignly bestowed through faith not works.
The Word's Ultimate Solution
God’s perfect justice was settled on behalf of sinners who trust in Christ by the substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross resulting in a complete atonement.
Scripture's Overarching Theme of Grace
An acute awareness of sin should drive us to embrace (then celebrate) the imputed righteousness of Christ that is freely granted through faith to all variety of sinners.
The Goal of Scripture's Many Rules
The rules & the assessments of the Bible are directed strongly and specifically toward each of us so that we might own our many sins and cry out for grace without excuse.
The Word's Clarity About Our Sin
We must vigilantly avoid relative definitions of sin & righteousness and humbly accept God’s scriptural declarations about our deficiency before a holy God.
Making Sense of the Bad in "The Good Book"
Sin is a terribly bad even though God uses it for good – that’s why we should work to run from temptation without any rationalization or excuses.
The Unfailing Promises of God’s Word
God is a faithful God who by nature always keeps his promises (for our good and for our correction) in spite of our unfaithfulness and disobedience.
The Centrality of Scripture
The Bible claims to be the inscripturated record of God’s words to us, and if so, it demands our attention and a willingness to accept what it says to us and about us.
No Hiding Behind Religious Trappings
Grace (acquired through faith) transforms a heart which responds in obedience; but partial adherence to the law (ceremonial or moral) cannot and does not save you.
Learning to Hate Hypocrisy
The hypocrisy of thinking we are “better than others” when in fact we all break God’s laws is terrible because it keeps us from seeing our need for Christ and gives onlookers cause for disdaining God’s people.
No Excuses About the Man in the Jungle
God is perfectly just to judge all people for their sins because he has provided a moral standard in human conscience which makes everyone culpable before God.
Paying Close Attention to Your Deeds
While eternal life cannot be earned (and is granted to the repentant who trust Christ), God’s retribution of both the redeemed and the lost will be based on what they do.
Making Sure You're Repentant
We must not misconstrue God’s current passivity and kindness toward sinners as approval of sin or a portend of the future; his patience should prompt us to repent.
Being Totally Honest About the Problem
Our ability to readily discern sin in others must be utilized in honestly appraising and admitting our own sinfulness as God’s unmerited forgiveness requires.
Sin & Unrighteous Behavior
We would do well to identify the sins that so easily entangle us, wage war against them and never applaud those who practice them.
Sin & Unholy Thinking
The problem of sin is a problem with our thinking that needs to be remedied by new birth in Christ and constant maintenance and daily discipline.