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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Sehnsucht can echo the truth, but only Scripture reveals the God who experiences it.
I told him that God does not have two types of sheep. God does not have a fold of black, and another white. God only has a fold made up entirely of black sheep because He knows the truth about us.
Our meditation listens to the King of Kings when He says; it is finished.
No matter how loving we are, we don’t get bonus points with the Almighty for imitating Jesus. We love each other because we recognize that “this is one for whom Jesus died.
We should take great care in observing how the psalmist relates to God. Our eyes and hearts should be open to seeing what the psalmist appeals to and how he addresses God.
Without the “simul” distinction, theology lapses into moralism.
Out of His mind indeed, as He took our place between murderers and received the insults and torture of humanity.
If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
There in that moment, the waters of baptism reached down deep into the forsaken path of the grave with a man whose body and mind could no longer hold onto any reality otherwise.
The little psychologist within us is often hard at work to pinpoint the origin of life’s problems.
In Martin Luther's Small Catechism he borrows a line from St. Augustine about what defines a "god."
There is just something about the idea of not being ‘under Law’ that sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of many Christians.