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.
When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.

All Articles

Even now we sing as we live in His gifts, and await His second Advent—His second-coming.
God graciously bursts our foolish plots by coming our way, into our very flesh, and being God with us.
Jesus loves His church. He cleans her up. He takes her as His own. And He leads her.
If this opening verse offers to us both door and doorkeeper, then the doorkeeper stands with the door held securely shut.
Every age gives cause for both hopefulness and despair.
Those clinging to God in Christ can be assured that it’s all clean.
Beware the lament, dear readers, that is not soothed with the good-goods of Jesus.
The creation is one of God’s good gifts and being cut off from nature and wild places, as we often are in the modern world, is probably not so good for us.
I’m still laughing now as hard as I laughed back then. And the salve that he gave me in that moment still works some strange magic on me to this day.