Loading...
Loading...
132 illustrations
Grace (*charis*) represents God's unmerited favor toward the elect through Christ alone (Romans 3:24), while peace encompasses multiple dimensions of restored harmony.
The mechanism of faith operates through three agents: First, the minister commissioned by Adonai speaks God's mercy and humanity's duty.
First, that his word should not issue in conversions.
After eighteen centuries of Christian witness, the prophet's lament remains painfully relevant.
First, adoption grants believers the *huiothesia* (legal status of sons), while regeneration grants the nature of children—we possess both through faith.
Our sufferings are not the same as Christ's, yet we suffer.
This reversal of suffering's apparent meaninglessness constitutes the heart of 2 Corinthians 1:6-11.
First, it may occur suddenly—a vivid impression of Divine grace received in conversion that never fades.
Before we can be struck down, Elohim must be wounded and overpowered.
Exell identifies a devastating spiritual reality: the helplessness of idols abandoned by their worshippers.
When we announce doom without tears, we harden rather than convict.
Yet the ocean addresses us in manifold languages, calling upon us through both eye and ear.
If we would pray well, we must pray early.
"Ye know not what ye ask," Christ replied—not to rebuke their boldness, but to illuminate their blindness.
First, Christians are objects of *special Divine regard*.
This vision encompasses three profound movements of the soul.
We must never wrench Bible passages from their context and treat them as infallible Scripture when they are merely the words of men.
His custom reveals a pattern that all who would serve Adonai must learn: the rhythmic alternation between public labor and private prayer.
This indictment reveals a profound spiritual blindness: Israel refused to recognize that Elohim's judgment itself was an expression of mercy.
The prophet had learned to recognize God's messengers in natural phenomena—as he wrote, the winds themselves are messengers of Elohim (Psalm 104:4).
Yet Matthew's notation carries profound weight: this was no ordinary liturgical moment.
It is a blessed loss that makes us find our Elohim!
Within this exercise, humility and hope unite with patience and perseverance, producing an agreeable serenity of mind that opposes turbulence of spirit and uneasy emotions.
Yet even this secure fastening remains subject to removal by the Lord of hosts who placed it there.