David finally found the truth that it was not his seed of kingship but the promise made to Abraham that made him holy. From that, David refused to be moved and wrote this Psalm by the necessity of the Spirit as the assurance of faith. The law never made a man holy, not even one as robust as David; yet faith did this great thing without lifting a finger.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.

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God can never really be said to be ignoring us, even if our experience with God at any given moment is that he is.
If your faith is rooted in the gospel of Zion, in the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection on your behalf, you are already a member of the “heavenly Jerusalem”
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
If you are a Christian, you already have what you need to give a reason for the hope within you. That reason, though, is not you.
Now that the Lord of Sabaoth has involved himself, something ends, something is born.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.
God chose Russell Brand, chose to defy his fast-escaping life and drink up all his swift-running sin in the River Thames.
The profound significance of Christ’s resurrection comes from the threefold justification it provides: it justifies the sinner, the sinner’s hope, and God himself.
The Good Shepherd doesn’t leave the sheep to fend for themselves.
The notion that your goodness is “good enough” to make you right with God is a lie straight from the father of lies himself.
Bathed in the waters of baptism, you are placed in God's path of totality, a path he won for each and every one of us.