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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The veil was not torn to let us in but to let God out.
When we focus on God's self-giving Word, when we turn our attention to Golgotha, we are shown a wholly different way of viewing the Commandments.
What did Christians do, both when they encountered a Rome in its glory, as when Christ was born, and in it decline, as when Constantine tried to pull stuff back together?
As a woman who has suffered years of abuse, there have been times in my new life when I have found myself living out Psalm 6:6.
Jesus, Who is truly God, became a regular Joe (or Joshua as the case may be) for us.
Our gods expect us to be perfect, pure, and in constant control of our feelings and thoughts.
There is just something about the idea of not being ‘under Law’ that sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of many Christians.
Whenever preachers get up to speak about the topic of love, they very often go to passages like 1 Corinthians 13, and they are very apt to do so — for there, under the Spirit’s design and influence, the apostle Paul gives, perhaps, the most complete view of love we’ve ever been given.
Because of Jesus, we don’t have to pretty up anything ugly thing in life.
I hate driving. I am more of a “pew-pew” guy than a “vroom-vroom” guy. I battle my own heart every day in Atlanta traffic.
“Standing firm in the confession we share should not exclude us from inviting others into it.”
Come to the feast where evil and good, wise and foolish, shameful and shaming are welcomed as citizens of the kingdom.