Purity before God is far more than just being clean. To Jesus, being pure in heart, described in the Beatitudes, touches on the very holiness of God.

Repentance is a condition for baptism, and ultimately of conversion and salvation. It is also a lifelong process—one never stops needing to repent.

Blessedness and mourning seem contradictory, but obviously Jesus saw spiritual benefits to sorrow. True, godly mourning gets high marks from God.

Since the beginning, God's purpose has been to bring all things into harmony with Him, giving mankind a respite from the heaviness of a sin-laden world.

We may feel sorry or even guilty when we sin, but have we actually repented? The Scriptures show that true repentance produces these seven, distinct fruits.

The scattering of the church was an act of love by God to wake us from our lethargic, faithless condition. The feeding of the flock is the priority now.

The Parable of the Cloth and the Wineskins concludes a much longer narrative. The context and reveals deeper meanings and applications of the parable.

Our only antidote to the barrage of lies is to stay close to God's Word, trusting in His providence and His promises to protect us as we obey Him.

We must guard against the fuzzy, emotional spirituality without a Deity, based upon a worldly syncretism of Eastern and Western philosophical thought.

Even though we may not recognize changes in ourselves, when we do the work of God with the right heart, we begin displaying the spiritual family traits.

Jesus taught that fasting is an internal, spiritual good work, done in the inner self. Any other kind of fasting has little or no spiritual value.

The brazen altar symbolized total sacrifice. We have to be willing to give up everything, bearing our own individual cross, forsaking all to follow Him.

Like the marriage covenant, counting the cost is the most serious part of the baptismal agreement, not something to be taken lightly.

Ephesians 2 says Christians were spiritually dead. Thankfully, God resurrected us from the grave through the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ.