American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.
The Passover wasn’t just Israel’s story; it’s ours.
God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.

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To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
“So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
Zephaniah has given us something more visceral to help us understand the love of God: the sound of salvation.
Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Even as he was dying, the heart of God poured itself out for the sake of sinners.
I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
The further up and further into the season of Epiphany we get, the bigger the grace of God in Christ is, the brighter the Light of Christ shines, and the more blessed we are in Jesus' epiphany for us.
This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023). Now available for purchase.
The gospel's message is the scandalous announcement that Yahweh has stooped to our frame, to where we are.
This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023).
Fullness, truth, reality – all this God gives us as his gift in Christ.