Podcast: Gospel in Life

Our relationships are such hard work. People are always getting hurt. People are always getting disappointed. Relationships are a nightmare, but we can’t get along without them. As soon as we try to pull back from relationships, we lose our humanity. Because we’re made in the image of God. And the triune God—Father, Son, and…

Through faith in Christ, through the gospel, through the Holy Spirit, you can experience lasting, deep, radical, permanent change. If you’re going to make such changes, you need to understand the nature of Christian change. You have to understand the nature of it, the pattern of it, and the process of it. Galatians 5 shows…

When you become a Christian, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead comes into you spiritually, internally. You have the power to change. You have an unsurpassed power to change. So we have to ask ourselves right away, “Are we settling for too little?” I mean, how much have you changed so far?…

Freedom is the greatest value in the modern Western world. The secular model of freedom is basically freedom from something. It says, “I am only free when there’s nothing in my way.” When people come to Christianity, they would like inspiration and help, but they don’t want to give up their freedom. Very often, Christians…

How could the idea that you’re saved by grace alone be any incentive to live a good life? Paul says the gospel of salvation through free grace, not works, is actually a greater incentive to a life of honesty, sacrifice, and love than anything else. He’s talking about how we change the human heart, and…

Most people think the job of religion is to call people into a life of morality. But Paul says that’s not what Christianity is at all. Gospel transformation is completely different than moral reformation. In Galatians 5, Paul says there are two different reasons you could obey God—and the reason for your obedience makes all…

What’s the purpose of writing a letter to somebody? The purpose is to get something across. So when we read the Bible, we need to have the intellectual integrity to treat it the way we’d want our own communications treated. Galatians 4 is a text that many find difficult to read and interpret. What is…

The difference between a sword and a scalpel at first sight doesn’t seem that great. But you can either cut in order to defeat or in order to heal. The book of Galatians is counseling, and for Paul, truth is a scalpel. He’s not using truth to bludgeon, but to do surgery. And the reason…

If you want to be an agent of reconciliation and change and healing in the lives of others, Paul says something that applies to us all. Paul says the essence of his ministry was this: “become like me, for I became like you.” There are two sides to that sentence. Only by the power of…

This is a startling passage. The context is that the Galatians, who became Christians out of pagan backgrounds, are now falling under the influence of teachers who say, “It’s not enough just to believe in Jesus Christ. You also have to obey everything in the Bible.” Paul says something here which is astounding. He says…