David finally found the truth that it was not his seed of kingship but the promise made to Abraham that made him holy. From that, David refused to be moved and wrote this Psalm by the necessity of the Spirit as the assurance of faith. The law never made a man holy, not even one as robust as David; yet faith did this great thing without lifting a finger.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.

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Past, present, and future are tied together in Christ.
The needs of the people remain the same, but now the people are you and me. We still sin, and that sin causes so many challenges in our lives.
This is an excerpt from the introduction of “Common Places in Christian Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly,” edited by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2023).
Human history, our history, is the story of two Adams with two very different encounters with the devil.
What we discover in O’Connor’s stories and Martin Luther’s theology is that God’s grace is elusive because the human heart is resistant to it.
This is the message of Lent. We are not called to sacrifice for Jesus in order to earn our salvation. Rather, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.
Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
Ash Wednesday's purpose is not to motivate our resolve to redouble our efforts to do better.
Jesus stands before the disciples as the bridge between heaven and earth, and between Old Testament and New Testament.
This week we will take a closer look at God's love in Scripture.
Isaiah says in summary “liturgical ritual without works is dead” because we render the meaningful worship of God meaningless and even sinful when we do not love our neighbor.