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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It’s not our eloquence or persuasive rhetoric that changes hearts, but the Word of God that pierces through the hardened shells of unbelief and breathes life into the dead bones of sinners.
God's faithfulness is constant and consistent. It knows no season. His love for us doesn't fade with the summer sun.
Tim wanted everyone to know to the deepest part of their being that they were justified by Christ alone.
Jesus cries on the cross for us. He suffers and cries and dies in our place. He is forsaken by his father so we don’t have to be.
The drama of Scripture is about God renaming us by bringing us into his image-bearing family once again. And it would take “a name above all names” to accomplish it.
This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
This is the prelude of Easter. Is a dead Jesus still resting in the tomb? No!
We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
“So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).