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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No one twisted Jesus’s arm to make him enter Mary’s womb. No one tricked him into being born into a world strung out on the meth of sin. He came in with his eyes wide open.
What is it to be an heir of the Reformation? It is to look outward to Christ bleeding and dying on the cross as Great Rescuer of sinners—of me.
Where Jesus speaks to us, takes ahold of us, and gives Himself to us.
God’s justification of us does not happen secretly in our spirits. God justifies you and me in His absolving Word
In Christ we are freed to be for our neighbor without fear of sin and damnation falling upon us.
Death is never natural. Death is abnormal. Death is not human. Death is the enemy.
This is why a Christian must keep learning to forget himself so long as he lives.
If this opening verse offers to us both door and doorkeeper, then the doorkeeper stands with the door held securely shut.
God's doing for us that gets done is Word and Sacrament stuff. Everything else flows from His speaking to us, baptizing us, bodying and bloodying us. Jesus sees our need.
Heaven is not our ultimate hope. Our promise is not to live forever riding on rainbows and soaring in the clouds.
What if I just hadn’t repented enough? Or prayed enough? Or really, really given my whole heart to Jesus? What if I just wasn’t ready?
Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands, I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son.