We cannot have justification urged upon us too often or too much. Even if we learn it and understand it well, none of us grasps it perfectly or believes it with his whole heart. Our flesh is so frail and is often disobedient to the Spirit.

These two words, grace and peace, include all that belong to Christianity. Grace releases sin, and peace makes the conscience quiet. The

But grace has changed my nature for the better, to keep me from joining them and shedding innocent blood.

Our righteousness is in Him, and our hope depends, not upon the exercise of grace in us, but upon the fullness of grace and love in Him, and upon His obedience unto death

Being saved' doesn't just mean, as it does for many today, 'going to heaven when they die'. It means 'knowing God's rescuing power, the power revealed in Jesus, which anticipates, in the present, God's final great act of deliverance'.

The cross stands at the heart of John's kingdom theology, which in this stunning passage is revealed as the heart of John's redemption theology, the vision of the love of God revealed in saving action in the death of his Son, the Lamb, the Messiah.

God's ultimate intention was to 'save' only disembodied 'souls', that wouldn't be rescue from death. It would simply allow the death of the body to have the last word. 'Salvation' regularly refers constantly, not least in Luke and Acts, to specific acts of 'rescue' within the present life: being 'saved' from this potential disaster, here and now.

If God's ultimate intention was to 'save' only disembodied 'souls', that wouldn't be rescue from death. It would simply allow the death of the body to have the last word. 'Salvation' regularly refers constantly, not least in Luke and Acts, to specific acts of 'rescue' within the present life: being 'saved' from this potential disaster, here and now.

Hence too the promise that those who receive the abundance of divine grace will "reign in life" (v. 17). Here again is the goal of salvation, the restoration of the truly human destiny, of the covenant of vocation in which humans are called as the royal priesthood. The passage is dense, but when we take it slowly it all makes sense—within this framework. The Adam project, for humans to share in God's rule over creation, is back on track.

the word the early Christians used for "faith" can also mean "loyalty" or "allegiance.

To imagine a world without the gospel of Jesus is to imagine a pretty bleak place

What Paul is saying is that the gospel, through which people receive the divine gift, reconstitutes them as genuine humans, as those who share the "reign" of the Messiah.