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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Christianity does not ultimately rest on the assertion that God delivered a perfectly dictated text whose divine origin can be demonstrated by claims of flawless transmission.
The same words of hope and peace that were entrusted to Israel are available to all, to “everyone who believes” (Acts 10:43).
No one is harder to convert than a religious expert.
The temptation for many believers is either despair or outrage: despair that Christendom is fading, or outrage at the civilization replacing it.
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 third chapter of By Water and the Word: God’s Gift of Baptism for You by Brian Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 52-60.
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of Being Family by Scott Keith (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-6.
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of A Reasoned Defense of the Faith by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-3.
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.
People everywhere, every day, feel God’s wrath—and not as merely an afterlife threat but as a present reality.
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.