Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
The student of Scripture should always have a map open next to their Bible as they read. If possible, they should also travel to Israel, not to make a pilgrimage, but to see the context of the land in which these stories took place. These are not fairy tales made up about fictional fantasy lands; these are stories about real people in real places interacting with a real God.

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The life we are trying to manage, improve, and secure is not something to be mastered. It is something to be surrendered. And this is where everything changes. Because in Christ, the approval we are seeking has already been spoken.
Your God is not artificially intelligent, but the source of all intelligence (including yours).
No one is harder to convert than a religious expert.
Jeremiah’s prophetic call isn’t a one-off moment. Unique though it was, it wasn’t wholly exclusive.
Through baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper, Christ meets you with his radical forgiveness which changes everything, even the self!
Do not disregard Luther’s early disputations, but appreciate their specificity and recognize their pastoral and theological continuity with his later works.
This is an excerpt from the Chapter 7 of Being Family by Scott Keith (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 72-74.
May we, as preachers, rise and proclaim that Jesus Christ is sufficient for all our spiritual hunger.
God has told us everything necessary for faith. However he has not told us everything there is to know.
Spy Wednesday asks us to look inward. It's the day the liturgical calendar acknowledges what we already know: we are not the best version of ourselves.
Pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.
The Supper doesn’t depend on the faithfulness of the Church. It depends on the faithfulness of Christ.