...I don't know how anybody who pretends to know anything about history can be so naive as to suppose that after all these centuries of corrupt and imperfect social systems, there is eventually to evolve something perfect and pure out of them - the good out of the evil, the unchanging and stable and eternal out of the variable and mutable, the just out of the unjust...

One of the most telling things about contemporary human beings is that they cannot find a reason for not committing adultery... We now keep hammering the sex button in the hope that a little intimacy might finally dribble out. In vain...

Nothing makes the gospel according to Paul more necessary than the Gospel according to Matthew. For if Matthew's Jesus is telling the truth, then we badly need a Savior and his forgiveness that reaches down beneath our will, underneath our sinful acts, and covers our sinful nature, our subterranean drives, our original sin, our depths. If Matthew's Jesus is true, then Paul's Jesus is necessary. Matthew was given a charisma for showing the need for the gospel, for teaching that bad news about ourselves which is absolutely essential if we are to seek the good news of God at all. Without Matthew's going before Paul in the canon, Paul could seem superfluous. Matthew's way of bringing us to the grace of Christ is different from Paul's, but it is a route equally calculated to reach the goal. Let us listen to what this Gospel is saying to us and seek to do it. In no other way will we experience the grace and power of Jesus Christ in this Gospel.- Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary