God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.
Jesus offers something infinitely better. He tells us to put down our gavel—not because sin isn't real, but because the only Judge who has the right to condemn is the very One who was condemned for us.

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They were incapable of covering their shame. They knew what they'd done was evil, but since they were only "like" God, there was no way for them to go back and replace evil with good.
Many Christians (including preachers) have succumbed to the idea that good preaching must be about practical living, and so most sermons are geared to scratch this pragmatic itch.
I once heard an old, retired Lutheran professor give in interview on a podcast. He was asked by the interviewer why people should bother going to church if they could just be saved through a personal relationship with Jesus?
We who fall within the Protestant camp of Christianity have longstanding issues with ritual. I get that. Ritual is often abused. Idolatrized. It can easily devolve into a hollow act of religious farce.
The side of God he has made known to us is Jesus. He is the one and only revelation of the Father, the one and only revelation we need.
We need pastors who carry that same concealed weapon in their mouths, who are outfitted with the same word the angels have: the word steeped in divine blood, shed for you. That is all we need, for the word does it all.
You became, for a time, ritually unclean. Not sinful. Not immoral. To be unclean meant you bore in your own body the effects of a creation in bondage to decay.
All our little laws reveal that we are, by nature, trying to justify ourselves before others, and before God, based on what we do and who we are.
Imagine if Zacchaeus posted on Jerusalem's Facebook a selfie with Jesus. The top dog among the tax-gougers with Christ at his dinner table. Oh, the outrage! The puritanical zealots would have been tweeting and blogging about it for months.
We find such a temptation when the devil causes us to question God’s election or predestination of us in “eternity as a past event” (i.e. “eternity-past”).
Real theologians can’t shut up about who Jesus is and what he’s done on your behalf. So-called theologians with little interest in Jesus may be book smart but they're Gospel stupid.
So, what do we do when someone doesn't believe God's promise of forgiveness, life, and eternal salvation is for him?