The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive.

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Erasmus and the Unintended Reformation
It is Jesus himself who is the ladder by which sinners get to God, not by them climbing up but by God climbing down.
This is an excerpt from chapter 2 of The Resurrection Fact: Responding to Modern Critics, edited by John Bombaro and Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing 2016).
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
It is your privilege—we may even say “right”—to call upon this Father and to call him Father.
Strasbourg’s hymnals are especially relevant to American Lutherans because much of what we experience in our churches comes to us from Strasbourg.
Lutherans have a unique heritage that makes teaching predestination doubly difficult.
We can do nothing to warrant entry into the kingdom of God nor are we getting in if we think a seat at God’s table is something to which we are entitled.
Now that the Lord of Sabaoth has involved himself, something ends, something is born.
I have to believe that grace - God’s grace - will be waiting on the other side.
The Battle of Frankenhausen stands as a warning for what can happen when we abandon the Word God has given us and chase after some vision of our own imaginations.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.