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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Take away the water, words, bread and wine. Can you be a Christian without water, words, bread and wine?
We're of little faith. Or rather, we have big faith, but it’s in something else. Our faith is in our ability to control situations, manipulate them to our advantage.
Can God forgive friends who abandoned Him in His hour of greatest need?
I'm in the middle of a series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
Faith does not require that we always Hoorah what the Lord does. God wants children, not brown-nosers.
At our churches must remain focused on the deep kick, the real deal, the thing itself. I’m not the first on this site to remind us that this is Christ himself.
You cannot fudge Glory in this life. You get there only on the Better Day that is coming and not one day before.
The reason that anyone would choose a heaven without Jesus, or happiness without Jesus, or healing without Jesus, is because he doesn’t mean that much to them to begin with.
Over the next few months, I invite you to join me in looking at what the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions have to say about the subject of worship through the lens of language.
“As if” Christians aren’t allowed to reflect; that they’re not kind, generous, brave, or loyal. They’re not living up to the example of biblical saints.
I started writing this article about a friend, her struggles through cancer, and the pain of an unfortunate and severe fall that landed her in a hospital, requiring months of rehabilitation.
This story is all-too-common, and illustrates a key dynamic driving the youth out of church.