Sublime

The justified pastor—the man justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to God’s glory alone, who happens to be a pastor—when taken on his good day or bad day, ministry high or ministry low, will be received with gladness and welcome. Clothed in the righteousness of him in whom you trust, how can you be turned away? You will not

Do we love God and others enough to drop the pretense and just be ourselves? Only the gospel simultaneously provides the humility and the confidence the pastor needs to be his real self. The pastorate is no place for image-managing, for worrying about our own PR. In any event, if everybody likes you, something’s wrong, and if everybody hates you,

Abe calls God “the LORD who provides.”

God is the hero of the story.

The man I came to know well, over burgers and coffee and old photos and worn bible pages, was a man childlike and growing to the end, proof that the “good news” he always preached could be lived for a lifetime and remain good. His faith and life’s accomplishments did not produce a dour moralism. It did not produce a Graceland-sized ego. For all his

God is often referred to as “the God of the womb and the God of the tomb”—He’s the giver and taker of life.