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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How can we be sure that we are getting a “solid spiritual diet” and not a “milky” one?
This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
What if sin was truly removed and what if the one who took it from us had the power to conquer it’s curse and spit in the face of death?
Dear hearers of the word of God, you are finished. You cannot be the same now. All that is ended, over.
If the season of Lent is a journey, Holy Week is the destination.
Today I would like to share The Legend of the Dogwood, inspired by the words of Stoney Cooper.
This is an excerpt from the prologue of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
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.
It’s scary to share my struggle and to show that I have cracks because once I’ve shown my cards, I open myself up for judgment.
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).
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.
We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.