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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Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
Fullness, truth, reality – all this God gives us as his gift in Christ.
The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."
Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
Toy Story is indeed a Christmas story.
Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of him who works.
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
From the beginning to the end of his letter, John really wants one thing: for us to be in Jesus.
We don’t start with behavior and work toward Christ. We start with Christ and everything works out from there.
This is an excerpt from the Sinner/Saint Advent Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2022), written by Kathy Morales and Kyle G. Jones.