We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
The confessors at Augsburg remind us that every generation of Christians is called to bear witness to the gospel amid the challenges and pressures of its own age. As they confessed Christ before emperors and kingdoms, so the Church continues to confess Him before the world today.

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There’s a delicious freedom to wrongdoing. It taps a primal desire within us for rebellion. We feel liberated, unshackled by demands to be this way, do this, avoid that. We become masters of our own destiny.
This misunderstood story is not a moralistic tale about bald prophets and child-eating bears, designed to teach youths to honor their elders and preachers. Rather, it's a brief glimpse into the age-old war that began in a garden and ended at an empty tomb.
He is no sweet and sappy, romanticized and Disneyfied, cartoonish Christ. He is ferocious, free, untamed, and heaven-bent on not leaving the battlefield until the war is won and he makes his enemies a footstool for his feet.
Virtue, like all good things, can easily be weaponized. And not only can, but constantly is. Indeed, I would argue that, for churchgoing, rule-following, tradition-honoring, morality-applauding people, virtue often becomes the cancer that we deem a badge of honor.
Whoever you are, your Father loves you differently than he loves other people. You are more than a grain of sand in the vast desert called humanity.
The Spirit did not plant preachers in the pulpit to be pontificating moralists or political hacks or spiritualizing psychologists or motivational speakers.
Sometimes believers vigorously debate God, sometimes they nod a silent Amen. Together, their narratives paint a picture of a life of faith characterized by complexity and tension.
Jonathan saw in David a reflection of who he himself was. This recognition pulled him outside himself and bound him to another.
Throughout the Old Testament, the seas and fish were symbols of the Gentiles. When Jesus ate fish, and called fishermen, he showed us that the mission to the Gentiles was about to begin in earnest.
Matthew’s account of Jesus's baptism is only 5 verses and about 100 Greek words long, but multiple Hebrew stories are swimming right below the surface.
Is there ever a time when someone needs to be re-baptized? Not if we believe that God is the one who does the baptizing.
Rather than making resolutions about how we’re going to accomplish great things in 2020, let's do something different: resolve how to do well at failure.