There is indeed a responsibility for the church to share the gospel in the world, but never at the expense of the church’s charity and mercy for those neighbors who are nearby.
The only hope for idol-addicted sinners who are utterly incapable of decluttering their souls is Jesus, the one at the heart of the gospel, and the only one who stands before the Father with an undivided heart.
More than a friend, Amsdorf was also an important figure in the work of religious reform, providing counsel to Luther on key occasions, shepherding the churches, and defending the faith until his death.

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This is an excerpt from the sixth chapter of Fear Not: How the Gospel Disrupts Our Deepest Anxieties by Luke Kjolhaug (1517 Publishing, 2026).
When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.
This is what Christian catechesis does; it turns the knobs of the Scriptures and throws the doors of God’s word wide open to tell us the story of salvation.
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!
The heavens are neither geocentric, nor even heliocentric, but Christocentric. It is the cross and the crucified and risen Jesus who has the whole world, and each of us, in his nail scarred hands.
Christ’s saving work is finished, but his love is not locked away in the past.
The testimony of the apostles is not an escapist message in which Christians are redeemed by leaving bodily life behind.
What Israel’s story makes painfully obvious is that following the Lord is a lifelong lesson in “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
The resurrection means your ultimate problem is no longer ahead of you. The grave is not waiting for you. It is behind you.
Job needs a savior, and he knows it. And in Jesus, he gets one.
On Maundy Thursday, Christ explicitly gave his disciples the new command from which the day takes its name, for the Latin words novum mandatum are the Vulgate’s translation of “new command.”