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.

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I pray my children see God’s faithfulness not in the riches of this world, but in the riches of grace through Christ Jesus.
There are important historical reasons for making a distinction between ministry and vocation.
No one is harder to convert than a religious expert.
Through baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper, Christ meets you with his radical forgiveness which changes everything, even the self!
This is an excerpt from the Chapter 7 of Being Family by Scott Keith (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 72-74.
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of Being Family by Scott Keith (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-6.
Christ’s saving work is finished, but his love is not locked away in the past.
For many years, I held piety as my god.
A rightly-oriented heart and a rightly-oriented love will consistently do what is best for God and best for our neighbor, which is why St. Augustine speaks of sin as a disordered love.
While we often talk about our growth, our progress, and what we are doing for the kingdom of God, the reality is that any goodness in a Christian does not originate in us.
When we despair of ourselves, we repent of these self-justifying schemes and allow ourselves to be shaped by God, covered in Christ’s righteousness, and reborn with a new heart.
Christians can pursue projects of justice free of the burden of being the justifier of the world; that office belongs to Christ and Christ alone.