The gospel is not mere forgiveness or grace, empty of content, but always refers to Jesus. So the gospel is good news about a human person who is God in our history, our world and who came to accomplish something in his life death and resurrection.

The great heroes of other ancient cultures were strong and clever and virtuous, but the great Jewish heroes copulated with slaves (Abraham), showed they were willing to allow others to have sex with their wives (also Abraham), cheated their brothers, seduced their in-laws, murdered, started civil wars through terrible family decisions, yet somehow-through a mixture of humility, near-insanity, and good fortune-served as conduits of God's action in the world.

Christianity now is in crisis, and a large part because people have marketed it as a religion of good people getting better, when in fact it is religion a bad people coping with their failure to be good.

Not how it is meant. Law is defined by its effect rather than its intention, and its chief affect his accusation, the intimation of less-than.

Whether or not an utterance can be called law depends on how it is heard, not on how it is meant. Law is defined by its effect rather than its intention, and its chief effect is accusation the intimation of a less-than.