What's Your Context?

We've been focusing on Jesus' seven letters to the church in Asia Minor in this sermon series. I've found it interesting how the Spirit has led me to approach each letter and each sermon differently. I had originally thought I would apply the same structural considerations to each letter and use the structure to make it easier to understand the point of each letter, and the point of all the letters together. But that is not how it has worked out.

Yesterday, for example, we looked at Revelation 3:1-6, the letter to the church at Sardis. I had already entitled the message, "The Church That REVIVES From Sleep." Yet, in the message itself, I did little to describe either the condition of the church at Sardis or its application to the church of our day. I found myself simply assuming the application and building the sermon around a response to Christ's letter by a sleeping church willing to be roused by the warning of a loving Savior. Sleeping people, after all, don't need to know they're asleep. They need an alarm to wake them up.

I sat down at the coffee shop a little while ago to read over the next letter, the letter to the church at Philadelphia. It wasn't peaceful and quiet there this morning, and I did wind up in a very providential and beneficial discussion with another community leader, but before my attention turned elsewhere the Spirit raised a question with me. In each of the letters Jesus reveals something personal about his nature as God that both gives him the right to demand something of the church to whom he is writing and to provide a basis for an appropriate response from them. The One who "walks among the seven golden lampstands" tells the church at Ephesus to return to their first love or face having their lampstand permanently removed. This same One is the One "who died and came to life" and encourages the Christians at Thyatira to remain faithful even though their faithfulness may cost them their lives.

Each letter begins with a revelation of Jesus and that revelation provides the context for what Jesus asks of the church. The churches response to their individual environments and to Christ himself is set in the context of who Jesus is himself. They are to determine their values and responses in this world based not on their personal preferences or experiences, but upon the Person of Jesus Christ, his experiences and his sovereign preferences.

So that led me to ask, "What other contextual clues do we use to determine our values and responses when Christ is not our context?" I believe it is a fair and necessary question because Jesus is writing to churches who in one form or another have either abandoned him as their context for life or are in danger of doing so. And I believe that churches today, and Christians today, face either the same spiritual ailment or the same danger.

So, what other contextual clues do we use to determine our values and responses in life when Christ is not our context for living? I thought of five and would be very interested in knowing what others you can think of. My five are:

1. cultural "norms" - these are values and responses broadly acceptable to the society in which we live and function; 
2. peer pressure - these are values and responses made specifically in reference to the people whom we feel most responsible to please;
3. selfish inclinations - these are the values and responses that we are most likely to resort to for self-preservation and self-advancement; 
4. personal experiences / history - we naturally allow the results of previous choices to influence future choices, sometimes to our detriment; 
5. church traditions - these are values and responses that might seem more positive and beneficial than the previous list, but can nonetheless stifle an authentic, personal response to the word of God.

 Jesus makes it clear that He alone is to be the context for developing and evaluating our values and life responses. He reveals himself to be the only adequate Source and Model for the life God rightly requires of faithful people. So, in the Spirit of these seven letters I find myself wondering, what other sources do we engage for determining spiritual values and life responses? And why would we entrust our lives and eternal destinies to anything less adequate than the Son of God himself? And what do people today need to do to establish our hearts in Him?

What do you think?

Of Midnight Rain and "Soil"ed Hearts

The rain awakened me just a bit past midnight this morning. I think it was the rain. It could have been my wife as she finally crept into the bedroom using her little keychain LCD flashlight. Or it could have been the Holy Spirit using the prevailing conditions to make a point. I woke up thinking of one particular friend and the current state of his spiritual circumstances. I checked the clock, prayed a bit, closed my eyes, put in the ear plugs since the wind had loosened one of the vinyl panels at the top of the wall outside our bedroom (and it beats a funky but irritating rhythm in a storm.) I opened my eyes, turned over, closed my eyes, prayed a little more, listened to the rain, sang the refrain of "Revelation Song" in perfect pitch in my mind, listened to the rain some more, started thinking about that song that says, "Listen to the sound of the falling rain / telling me what a fool I've been," and then decided it was time to get up.

I made my way through the dark house and used a flashlight through the dining room doors to make sure the vinyl siding on the bedroom was not more damaged than it sounded, then descended the stairs to the office in the basement. The sleeve on my bathrobe caught on the steeple of the stained glass church on the little stand by the book shelves, but I was moving slow enough that catastrophe was avoided. I spent an hour or two at my desk studying the passage I've selected as for Sunday's sermon. I thought I might be ready to sleep after that so I settled into the overstuffed, green recliner. I closed my eyes. I started thinking about my friend and listening to the rain. That song came back, the falling rain one. I made the effort to pray for my friend, both because he needs me to pray for him and because I didn't want that song sloshing around in my brain all day.

I still couldn't sleep so I returned to the desk, picked up pen and put it to paper. Something was circumnavigating the cerebral hemispheres and I hoped by writing to identify it, connect with it, and resolve it so I could get some sleep. The first sentence I wrote was, "People don't want to make commitments, they just want to feel better." What I wrote next clarifies the sadness of that sentence.

"Once the crisis is past, people today rarely seem to follow through on the plans, strategies, or commitments that guided them through the critical moments. A desperate man claims he wants God in his life, but once the threat is passed begins to fill his life with other relationships and other activities that slowly displace God from his life once again. A troubled couple seeks counseling and gathers a few helpful tips from their first session but does not return nor follow through on the call to commit to a local fellowship for the health of their marriage and family and for their spiritual well-being.

"These are consumers looking for the immediate effects of spiritual Tylenol but unwilling to become true disciples of Jesus, those who leave all to follow him. Many, it seems, are called, but few are chosen.

"Jesus taught his disciples with a parable that describes this spiritual phenomenon. He spoke of a sower, a farmer, who went out to sow his seed. As the man cast the seed it fell on several types of soil. The seed fell on the hard packed soil of the well-trodden path where it never had a chance to germinate before the birds swooped in and scarfed it up. The quality and potential of the seed never stood a chance against the reluctance of the soil and the thieving avian hunger.

"Other seed fell on rocky ground. The seed, good and full of life as it was, rooted and sprang up, but the soil was shallow. It held neither water nor nutrient and when the sun rose to its midday height and began to beat down on the tender shoot, the inadequate root system failed and the young plant withered.

"Some seed fell on ground that was already very productive . . . producing weeds! Non-productive species extricated all the water and nutrients and crowded the space stealing more than their share of sunlight. The seed sprang up in this soil. It even grew, but it could not flourish, mature, reproduce because it was soon choked out by the competition. The seedling remained weak and puny, barely alive.

"At last some seed fell upon well prepared, fertile soil. The soil received the seed, nurtured the seed, sustained the seed, and assisted the seed to grow, flourish, mature and eventually, together, they offered a harvest as much as one hundred times multiplied.

"Each of these soils, Jesus taught, describes the spiritual condition of a human heart in relation to God's gospel, the Good News about Jesus Christ. Some hearts are hard and even though the seed is good it cannot penetrate the resistance before outside influences steal away any impact the gospel might have had.

"Some hearts are shallow. They receive the word gladly. They recognize it has value for them and desire its benefit, but they lack the commitment, the surrender, the deep and abiding love for God and his word that yields a full spiritual harvest from the gospel. They are self-centered, self-absorbed, self-satisfied people who cannot last when the joy fades and the hard work of endurance commences.

"Some hearts seem fertile, but they are full of worldly concern. Culturally derived philosophies and worldviews choke out the counter-cultural message of God's love in Jesus Christ. Other things, other activities, other relationships quickly move in to move the gospel out. There are bills to pay, people to see, things to do. Prayer and personal worship fail first. Bible study gets abandoned, attendance at worship set aside. Soon there is nothing left but a fruitless stalk encumbered by the surpassing growth of useless things.

"Some hearts, though, are fertile. Some receive the gospel and fall in love. They take up their cross. They make the commitment. They follow Jesus as both their first and foremost priority. Their love for him fosters his love in them for others and the gospel is multiplied in many more lives."

The most pressing question of midnight rain and soiled hearts is this: which is my heart? God demonstrates his love for me in this, while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me. Do I reject this good news? Do I received but do little to cultivate it? Do I receive it, but then leave my heart open to other things that will one day crowd this glory out of my life? Or do I love this good news, receive it, live with it, grow it, commit my life to its joys, bring forth its full potential in my life?


I, you, we are one of these. Each of us. It is the same good seed that comes to us all. God, please, prepare us to be good soil. Amen.

Treasures of a Single Word

The plan for fishing today got rained out, so I made a cup of Bohemian chocolate coffee and sat down by the picture window to read. I’ve been giving some attention to First Corinthians lately, so I picked up my Bible from the coffee table and turned to page 1266. The problem with reading the Bible, for me, is that often I don’t get past a word or two. It’s not that I’ve gotten so old I fall asleep or so jaded I get bored. I get caught up in the possibilities of words.

Today, for instance, I actually got to verse eight of the first chapter. I have to confess I barely made it past verse four, where Paul thanks God for the Corinthian Christians not because of how wonderful or obedient or faithful or generous they were, or for anything about them at all. Paul thanks God for these Christians because God has given them his grace in Christ Jesus. Paul always starts and ends with God and sees in God the reason to give God thanks for anything of worth or value in the Christian experience. For Paul, the life of faith and all its benefits and manifestations in Christians is about God and who he is and what he does in Christ. That a human being gets to experience the outworking of God’s will is a testimony to God’s greatest, not their’s.

I could have spent a few more hours just giving thought to the preeminence of Jesus Christ in the life of a Christian and the will of God, but decided to press on. Then I got to verse eight. And I stopped. In fact, I stopped in the New International Version of 1 Corinthians 1:8 at the third word: “keep.” The entire verse reads, “He [God] will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God will keep you strong. God who gives us grace in Christ Jesus— the grace that saves us, the grace that reconciles us to himself, the grace that forgives our sins and justifies us before God, the grace that transforms our hearts and lives—the God who gives that grace “keeps” the ones he graced strong until the end.

He “keeps” us. What does that mean, that he “keeps” us? It’s so easy to simply accept the fact and move on, but I had to stop and think, to toss around the question in my heart for a while. What does it mean from God’s perspective that he “keeps” us?

First, God keeps us by an act of his choice. He chooses us. Whether you believe that God elects people to faith and makes his choice before they choose him or after they choose him is not the issue here. The issue is that God chooses to save you and me from our sins and the death sentence those sins impose upon the soul. He keeps us strong and blameless in preparation for Jesus’ return by choosing us. Jesus said, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” God chooses, and his “keeping” begins in his choosing.

But there has to be more than just his choosing. There is a sliver tone Chevy truck with the Z71 off road package sitting in the lot at Grand Marais Motors. It’s not the four door one. It’s the two door extended cab parked next to it, under the sign in the left hand corner of the lot as you face the front door of the dealership. That’s the truck I’ve chosen. The red one is nice, and newer, and has fewer miles. The four door four by four is more powerful and practically oozes testosterone. But, as we were driving by the other day, I said to my wife, “See that one. That’s the one I choose.”

She just rolled her eyes because she knows there’s no way we can afford to replace the truck we lost in an accident several years ago. She knows that my choice of that truck, or any truck, is meaningless because there is no transaction forthcoming that will make the truck mine.

God, when he chose us, extended his choice by an act of will. He paid the price to complete the transaction to make us his. God sent Jesus to die on the cross as the perfectly adequate sacrifice to pay the penalty for human sin. The death of Christ is infinitely as effective for forgiveness as sin is infinitely deadly and deserving punishment. God keeps us not only by choosing us, but by acting to make us his.

But that is not enough to describe how God keeps us. I’ve chosen my replacement truck. It is conceivable that someday God could provide a way for me to own the truck of my choosing. But choosing it and owning it without working to allow it to meet its full potential would be meaningless for me. I need to get in it and drive it and work it and maintain it in prime working condition.

God keeps us by choosing us. God keeps us by making us his own. God keeps us by filling us with his Spirit who empowers our potential to fully experience his joy and fulfill his will. God gets in us and maintains us by his Spirit present within us. He strengthens us by his might. He directs us by his will. He guides us by his wisdom. He enables us by his power. He transforms us by his mercy. He keeps us by his will.

God does all this and we are the happy recipients of his keeping. And the result of his keeping is a blameless life in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God chooses us, makes us his own, maintains us. He keeps us strong and blameless so that we can enjoy the eternal glory of Jesus Christ at his coming.

Now you know how I get hijacked by words. You know why I can spend a week reading 1 Corinthians and not have gotten past the third word of the eighth verse of the first chapter. May you discover the infinite depth of God’s word for you today!

God and the GPS

When Linda and I want to have a really crazy vacation, we take a road trip without maps. We drive to the nearest intersection and decide then, at that moment, which direction we're going to take. Then we drive to the next intersection, and decide then, at that moment, what direction we're going to take. At every stop we make the decision for the next step, never really knowing where we're going, where we'll wind up, but finding adventure in the uncertainty of our decision making process.

This last vacation to Alabama to visit Linda's parents was a road trip, but it wasn't crazy. We didn't use maps this time, but I did use a GPS. We call our GPS, "Kia." That's short for "know it all." Kia identifies our starting position, then, when I type in our destination, she calculates the route. "In 1.1 miles," she says, "keep left, then turn right." "Continue 197 miles," she says. "Turn right," she says. And when I fail to turn right? "Recalculating! Go .4 miles then turn left and make an immediate U-turn."

Kia is very nice about her job, but she's also very demanding. You see, she works on the assumption that I don't know where I'm going. Her programming assumes that she knows the big picture in regards to the available routes to get to the desired destination, and that I would not be using her if I already knew where I was going. So, I tell her I want to drive from Arab, AL to Lino Lakes, MN. At one point along the way, we turn off a perfectly reasonable interstate onto a two lane county road. The interstate is going the direction I think I want to go. Still, she demands the turn, so we make the exit.

It is a quiet little, beautifully shaded road in Missouri that follows along a river and has the most delightful little rises along the way that give that roller coaster effect when you speed up over them. It is not a very long drive, just a few miles, but it shaves nearly fifteen miles off the trip because it is more direct than the interstate would have been.

That experience happened a lot as I trusted Kia with the course of our journey. We took roads I would never have taken only to discover that there was less traffic, less aggravation, and less overall miles. She knew where we had come from, knew where we were going, and had the big picture of our journey in mind. She did not always make the choices I would have made. She never asked my opinion of her choices. She simply offered what she knew to be best and directed me to turn around and adjust my direction when I failed to follow her advice.

If this is not a great picture of what it means to trust Jesus Christ by faith then I don't know what is! If you want to spend eternity with God then you've got to trust your life to him and to the directions he provides. You have to trust his knowledge of the big picture. You have to trust that he knows the most direct, beneficial route from where you are to where he is, and you have to trust his leading along the way. Sometimes, he will lead you to make choices and follow him in ways you might not otherwise have chosen, but God has an advantage that "Kia" doesn't have. God actually knows it all AND is personally committed to doing what is best for you. "Kia" serves you, but God loves you! Those two facts, his knowledge and his love, make him
immeasurably, perfectly trustworthy for your life journey. God's ultimate trustworthiness makes him the perfect GPS ("Godly Positioning System") for your soul.

That's the Good News.

The Last Newspaper Column for This Year: Fog

Cook County Star    THE GOOD NEWS for 5-29-2010

Who knew there were so many different kinds of fog? Fog can form in a number of ways, depending on how the cooling that caused the condensation occurred. There is radiation fog caused by the cooling of land after sunset. The cool ground produces condensation in the nearby air by heat conduction. There can be ground fog which is “fog that obscures less than 60% of the sky and does not extend to the base of any overhead clouds.”

Advection fog seems to fit the North Shore fog of May. This fog occurs when moist (warmer) air passes over a cool surface (Lake Superior) causing the moisture in the air to condense around particulates in the air. Other types of fog include evaporation fog, precipitation fog, upslope fog (or hill fog), valley fog, freezing fog, frozen fog, and of course, artificial fog. We should not neglect to mention Garua fog, which occurs along the coast of Chile and Peru, hail fog, and the very rare pogonip, which can occur at temperatures below -40 degrees F.

Fog is produced by condensation of water molecules around airborne dirt or salt particles. The resulting tiny droplets remains airborne and can create a wall that significantly reduces visibility. So here’s a question: If I can see through a glass of water, why can’t I see through a wall of water droplets? Why isn’t fog transparent?

I think refraction must be part of the answer. Light traveling through a drop of water can be “bent” in much the same way that light passing through a glass lense can be “bent” to reveal the color spectrum we see reflected on the wall when we hold up a prism to the sunlight. Now take a bazillion little prisms of water, each bending the sunlight and the end result is opaque fog. That means a wall of water you can’t see through.

By now you must be asking yourselves, “McIntire, where are you going with all this?” A couple days ago as I was driving through the fog near the mine at Silver Bay I suddenly realized that I knew the mine was there, covering ground on both sides of the road. I knew the towers were there putting out steam. I knew the yard was there full of taconite pellets. I knew the mechanical building was uphill. But I couldn’t see what was there. The fog didn’t define the mine structures or in any way reflect the truth of the reality sitting just yards to the side of the road upon which I was driving. The fog simply refracted the light and hid the truth; it didn’t change the truth.

There’s another kind of fog that rises in the world. It is a fog that clouds the mind and heart. It is a fog that refracts the Light of truth and blinds the observer to reality. The fog does not define reality, it merely covers or distorts it. Sin is such a fog in the human experience. Arrogance and pride are truth hiding, truth denying fogs. Error and lies form a fog that can prevent the casual observer from regarding the truth. Selfishness, ignorance, and indifference can coalesce in the human heart to produce a thick spiritual fog that results in spiritual darkness and spiritual blindness.

Every human being lives in a spiritual fog until God in his mercy lifts the veil and reveals himself to them. For some that revelation comes through God’s word, the Bible. For others it may come through an encounter with God as he reveals himself in the natural world. But that fog will not clear entirely until there is an encounter with Jesus Christ, the Son of God himself, who is the full and perfect revelation of God to us foggy hearted human beings.

I know what it is like to be lost in a spiritual fog and bear the burden of guilt and of shame, addicted to false joys and earthbound pleasures. I also know what it means to meet the Savior and set aside the guilt and shame forever, and find eternal joy in a life full of meaning and purpose, being, by God’s grace, what he created me to be.

And “a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.”

That’s the Good News.

What Happens When the Trappings of Love are Lost?

Cook County News Herald  THE GOOD NEWS for 5/21/2010

Le Ponts des Arts. The name sort of rolls from the tongue. It shouts, "Paris! Paris!," in quiet tones that whisper of love and romance and starlit moments when lovers caress one another with longing eyes and unspoken words.

At least, it used to. The Ponts des Arts is a seven arch iron bridge that spans the river Seine in the heart of Paris, France. The original bridge, the first metal bridge in Paris, was constructed between 1802 and 1804. It links the Institut de France with the central court of the Louvre. For years however, it was the scene of far more personal, and perhaps more beautiful connections.

Until last Wednesday, the Ponts des Arts was a favorite place for lovers to proclaim their lasting devotion to one another. Couples would come and stroll the famous pedestrian bridge and bring along a padlock and keys. That's right, a padlock. Some were very handsome locks. Others, not so much. Some were inscribed with names and dates and proclamations. Others bore decorations and symbols. Still others, small and silver or brass, glowed in their simplicity.

These love-struck couples would stroll by the iron mesh of the guardrails and fasten their padlocks to the rails, then toss their keys into the river to symbolize their eternal love. Yeah. I know. That's really sweet. Very romantic. So French. So Paris.

But apparently, not everyone in Paris thinks so. Sometime before morning last Wednesday, they all disappeared. All the locks are gone. All the trappings of undying love have vanished. Poof! Gone. According to the town hall in Paris, in an effort to preserve the 19th century bridge, pragmatism displaced romance.

What happens when the trappings of love disappear? What happens when the warm fuzzy fades, when the moonlit glow gives way to the full reality of the daytime sun? What happens when the whispers of love give way to the cries of infants, the demands of careers, the wail of alarm clocks, and the general cacophony of life? Does love die when a relationship no longer bears the original decorations?

Love never dies, but is has been known to succumb to less noble choices. More than it is anything else, love is a choice. The padlocks represented choices. The keys represented choices. The inscriptions represented choices. The choice of love is the choice to put the interest of another ahead of one's own interests, no matter what. The padlocks and keys, the trappings of love, expressed love, but they were not love. Their disappearance is sad, but it does not signal the end of love for those who maintain their commitments. You can lose the decorations and still maintain the choice. The trappings of love can vanish but love remains. How can this be? Because love is a choice.

God chooses to love us. He chooses to seek our best interest no matter what. He chooses to forgive and restore us even when it costs him the life of his dearly beloved Son. Jesus chooses to die for us. He chooses to lay down his life on our behalf. And what is that choice, the choice of our benefit at even the most precious price? Love!

The padlocks are gone, but the love is not. Sometimes we think blessings are love, and when the blessing turns to sorrow, we think love has left. It has not. Sometime we think joy and peace and ease and wealth and luxury are love, and when we are in turmoil and sad and troubled and barely getting by, we think we are abandoned by love. We are not. Sometimes we think that when our life experience is good and pleasant God loves us, but when life is painful and uncomfortable God hates us (or has lost interest in us altogether.) Not true.

God made a choice. It is a choice he continues to make, to love, to seek the very best interest of those he created. He continues to apply the justifying blood of his Son to the soul of all who believe in him. That is the "no matter what" love that you can experience through faith in Jesus Christ.

That's the Good News.

Pure Religion

Cook County News-Herald        THE GOOD NEWS for 5/15/2010

People have opinions, in case you hadn’t noticed. I read an article this week about current Supreme Court justice nominee Elena Kagan. The AP article by Tom Breen noted that if Kagan is confirmed there will be no Protestants on the Court and that would mean “none of the justices would be rooted in the Protestant Reformation traditions that shaped the country from its earliest stages.”

While that has intriguing implications which Breen’s article explored, what I found more intriguing were the blunt comments that followed the article on the Yahoo! page. Most of the remarks were fired like flaming arrows at “religion.” One amateur commentator defined religion as one of the world’s great problems. He cited his reasons for his opinion: “genocide, child molestation, 911, stoning of women, etc.” These atrocities comprise “religion” to that person. Those atrocities define “religion” for a lot people.

And frankly, if those acts of indecency, immorality, and injustice were in fact a full and adequate description of “religion,” I’d be hard pressed to have much faith in religion either. Fortunately (or “providentially”), though sin and human moral failure do cloud both the expressions and experiences of “religion” they do not encompass the real, true religion which God by His own testimony affirms and accepts.

Did you know God has an opinion about “religion”? Did you know that He actually sets out in writing what tenets of “religion” He finds acceptable and pleasing to Him? The New Testament letter of James provides a stark, bold faced definition of “religion”: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world (James 1:27, ESV).

Religion, according to God, should accurately reflect two essential characteristics of God Himself: active compassion towards the culturally, physically, socially, economically vulnerable in their need, and persistent, personal, practical godliness. True religion is not one or the other, according to the Bible, but both together. Perhaps the general public’s view of religion has been twisted because those who practice “religion” have been tilted toward one or the other to the exclusion of one or the other.

Some have understood “religion” strictly in terms of one’s personal relationship with God without concern for compassionate interaction in the lives of those around them. Others have understood “religion” solely on the basis of social intervention without considering any personal relationship with or accountability to God. Both situations are inadequate expressions of true religion, from this New Testament standpoint.

When a man came to Jesus and asked him what was the greatest commandment, a question not unlike “what’s your opinion of the best religion,” Jesus answered, “The greatest commandment is this: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength.” But he did not stop his answer there. He continued, without being asked, “And the second is like to it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” True religion, pure and undefiled before God, the Father, loves God and loves others. There is not one or the other. There is both or there is not true religion. Jesus would not let us get away with thinking otherwise.

True religion, then, excludes genocide. It leaves no room for molesting children or destroying buildings and lives with airplanes, or ignoring the poor, or ignoring the condition of one’s own heart. True religion, though still subject to being rejected by the selfish or uninformed, lives to love. Just like Jesus. There is love for God and there is love for people, and that love is neither theoretical or hidden, but active, open, public and powerful.

I suspect there is a great deal of opinion about “religion” based not on truth but on failure, the failure of some, even many, to live a “true religion.” It is never wise, however poor the prevailing example might be, to “throw out the baby with the bath water.” Don’t settle for the regurgitated disgust of some disheartened complaint. Come and see for yourself. Come and see the love God offers in Jesus Christ.

Jesus exemplifies true religion and offers to live the life of love in and through those who put their faith in him.

That’s the Good News.