How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?
As soon as people understand what crucifixion means, the cross becomes offensive.
This is the third installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”

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The baptized do not celebrate sin—they grieve it.
The ascension is not about Jesus going away. It's about Jesus taking his rightful place so that he might fill the world with his presence and power.
God chooses to clothe himself in promises and hides himself in his word.
This is an excerpt from Ditching the Checklist: Assurance of Salvation for Evangelicals (and Other Sinners) by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 5-7.
The name of Jesus holds us fast.
More certain than death or taxes and more certain than “anything else in all creation” is the fact that God loves you.
Below is the Thinking Fellows Essential Reading List with contributions from each of the Thinking Fellows hosts.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
Lutherans have a unique heritage that makes teaching predestination doubly difficult.
Paul knew that, without the resurrection, the Christian life was a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
He declared you what you might not always feel you are, but what you were from the moment he knew you, before you were you, when he foreknew you.