Status Updates From The Ragamuffin Gospel

Were you grieved by the divine command to Abraham that be slay his only begotten Isaac on Mount Moriah? Were you relieved when the angel intervened, Abraham's hand was stayed, and the sacrifice was not carried out? Have you forgotten that on Good Friday no angel intervened? That sacrifice was carried out, and it was My heart that was broken.

Peter had built his whole relationship with Jesus Christ on his assumed capacity to be adequate.

No effort is too great, no venture too daring, no sacrifice too painful for the sake of the kingcom.

No, it is not yours to open buds into blossoms.
Shake the bud, strike it; it is beyond your power to make it blossom.
Your touch soils it, you tear its petals to pieces and strew them in the dust.

The fallacy in Peter's mind was this: He believed his relationship was dependent on his consistency in producing the qualities he thought had earned him the Lord's approval.

It is not unrealistic to presume that later, Peter praised God for the servant girl in Caiaphas's courtyard who turned him into a sniveling coward. In this context, small wonder that Augustine would paraphrase the words of Paul: "That for those who love God everything works unto good, even sin."

When we give anything more priority than we give to God, we commit idolatry.

“Something is radically wrong when the local church rejects a person accepted by Jesus…Jesus comes to the ungodly, even on Sunday morning. His coming ends ungodliness and makes us worthy. Otherwise, we are establishing at the heart of Christianity an utterly ungodly and unworthy preoccupation with works.”