We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
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.

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The Bible isn’t a set of moral examples or religious insights. It’s the record of God’s saving work, fulfilled in Christ, delivered now through words spoken and heard.
Ultimately, Scripture does not confront fear with commands. It confronts fear with a promise.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.
What God perceives is not what our eyes see; he is focused on righteousness because his love creates what is righteous.
Christianity doesn’t start with our speculation about God. It starts with God’s self-revelation.
Christ did not merely urge humanity to be kind. He embodied perfect kindness by giving his life for those who neither earned nor expected such a gift.
“The well that washes what it shows” captures the essence of Linebaugh’s project, which aims to give the paradigmatic law-gospel hermeneutic a colloquial and visual language.
If Psalms 1 and 2 reveal the Christ who reigns, Psalms 3 and 4 reveal the Christ who remains.
The testimony of the Word assures us that God isn’t waiting for us at the top of the stairs, with arms folded and brows furrowed.
He has freed you from a selfish fixation on gifts. He has freed you to look to the Giver.
This is the fifth installment in our article series, “An Introduction to the Bondage of the Will,” written to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will.
When a congregation is abused by its pastor, it loses more than a shepherd. It loses its threshold place; that fragile seam between earth and heaven.