The temptation for many believers is either despair or outrage: despair that Christendom is fading, or outrage at the civilization replacing it.
Through baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper, Christ meets you with his radical forgiveness which changes everything, even the self!
Do not disregard Luther’s early disputations, but appreciate their specificity and recognize their pastoral and theological continuity with his later works.

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May you believe, in this thin-line world, that this Jesus is for you, not against you.
Christ's words of exclusive salvation are not just a warning but a sure promise for you.
In the sacrament, we receive an earnest of that future promise here and now in the body and blood of Jesus given and shed for us.
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.
Jesus makes David’s words his own, because David’s words were Christ’s to begin with.
Although Jesus bodily ascended and is hidden from our earthly eyes, he is not far off.
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).
The story of salvation is the true story of God doing his unexpected work of salvation for us.
Paul is writing as a man who has already lived a life of law-keeping while denying the resurrection.
Paul thinks the consequences of Christ not being raised are worse for those who believe than those who never did if it were to be true Christ was not raised.
If it’s all a fiction spun by disappointed disciples, if it’s a mere symbol for the idea of an inner awakening, if it’s not a fact that Christ has been raised, then our grief and loss have no end, and we have no hope.