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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I am often haunted by my past. I am daily haunted by what I should be doing.
Jesus’ forgiveness will not collapse. Jesus’ forgiveness will take us places our legs can’t take us.
The thing seems incredible, and I would not have believed it myself, nor have understood Paul’s words here, had I not witnessed it with my own eyes and experienced it.
What postmoderns see in modernism is a misuse of power through the control of dominant narratives.
Good communication depends on trust to make such conversation work effectively. The truth springs, first, from God's own promise and the punch put into that promise by the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s take a walk together. And as we do, I’ll tell you a mystery.
She said, “Keep coming back, and you’ll know joy.” He wanted to vomit a rainbow of resentment, bitterness, and loathing all over her faux-leather boots.
For all its stewing, regret ironically does not truly focus on the past. Often it is more concerned with the present and the future and how they would be if only we had done something differently.
On a summer day in 2008, Thomas and Romayne McGinnis were presented with the highest honor that can be received in any branch of the United States military, that is, the Medal of Honor.
In Christ, God’s Son, yesterday, today, and tomorrow all collapse into one. He holds in himself everything from the beginning to the end of the world.
Many scholars believe that what Jesus says in verses 18-20 are the key to Matthew's Gospel. Actually, it may be the key to the entire Bible, for in these three verses we see the full scope of the history of redemption brought to bear in one history-altering, cosmic event: Baptizing in God's name.
We are saved by grace, and strictly speaking, not by an offer.