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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I told him that God does not have two types of sheep. God does not have a fold of black, and another white. God only has a fold made up entirely of black sheep because He knows the truth about us.
Writer’s Block, however, entertains no such fantasies. It goes straight for my ego’s jugular and pounds home the fact that I’m not good enough.
Today’s world has replaced Anfechtung with an entirely new sort of despair.
We should take great care in observing how the psalmist relates to God. Our eyes and hearts should be open to seeing what the psalmist appeals to and how he addresses God.
Without the “simul” distinction, theology lapses into moralism.
Our crucified Lord makes it clear that the widow’s worthless giving was far greater than a million dollars because she gave all she had.
If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
Some lie and tell us that to sin is to be ourselves. But it is not. Sin is not natural to humanity.
The little psychologist within us is often hard at work to pinpoint the origin of life’s problems.
Whenever I read the Genesis account of Abraham, I’m more impressed that he’s often a clumsy, mess of a man than that it’s “faith that’s accounted to him as righteousness.”
No matter how great our efforts or how righteous our intent, we will go from troubled to scared, and scared to terrified, unless we are sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb.
God goes to work on us through His Word like a woodcarver chisels a block of wood.