This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 74-77.
“The Church exists to tell anyone and everyone who knocks on her door wondering what’s inside: Come and see” (pg. 58). Such reminders make The Church a worthwhile read.
The way of the cross is the actual way of victory. Jesus absorbs the worst of what humanity and even the devil can do to him, and he spurns the shame of it all.

All Articles

Put to death by God's Word of Law, we are then raised to new life by God's Word of Gospel.
Jesus is many things. He’s an example. He’s a teacher. He’s a great thinker and philosopher. But He’s also so much more, and He’s one thing above all else: He is Jesus, Savior.
He reminds them how his love is truly marvelous and unconditional, but then, he looks them in the eyes, and says they ought to do better because of his love.
Apart from bare, naked faith in Jesus' atoning work for us, no sinner is, or ever can be, holy.
Who was this Jesus, who could do such things?
If you don’t believe Jesus Christ—that is, God in the man born of the Virgin Mary—died for the sins of the world, then you can’t evangelize.
I’m still laughing now as hard as I laughed back then. And the salve that he gave me in that moment still works some strange magic on me to this day.
Though they have never left the church, they have been lost all the while.
When I first began to hear that the Bible’s good news was a whole lot less about me and a whole lot more about Christ, I just didn’t get it.
With the proclamation that grace and peace come through the bloody suffering and death of Jesus, we're awoken to the fact that God's grace covers all our sin and His peace calms our busy heart and mind.
In the twinkling of that eye the perishable will become imperishable, and our bodies will be changed and become more glorious than we ever could have imagined.
One of the common things I see my congregants struggle with is the concept of forgiveness. Contrary to what I had assumed would be the case, I find congregants don’t struggle so much with giving forgiveness as they do living with forgiveness.