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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Because of Jesus, we don’t have to pretty up anything ugly thing in life.
So, on this Good Friday, our sinful self and all our sins rest with Jesus here in His tomb. Our transgressions are fully atoned.
At Golgotha, Jesus saves us from sin by becoming sin for us. Jesus takes all our messes, all our shame, all our guilt, all our fears and insecurities and He allows them to kill Him instead of us.
Jesus’ death was a direct fulfillment of the will of His Father as promised in the Scriptures.
Jesus was praying a Psalm. Psalm 22 to be precise, and both the Gospels of Matthew and Mark relay the story to us of Jesus praying that Psalm on the cross at the hour of His death.
Through this promise, God does not let us escape death because in and through Jesus He overcame death.
This Savior’s love for His church is no small thing. He gives up His own life so that she will live.
This is the first of seven words of Christ from the cross.
Whenever I read the Genesis account of Abraham, I’m more impressed that he’s often a clumsy, mess of a man than that it’s “faith that’s accounted to him as righteousness.”
No matter how great our efforts or how righteous our intent, we will go from troubled to scared, and scared to terrified, unless we are sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb.
We attempt to put God to death as we seek to set ourselves in His place. God loves men, but he will not stand to compete with little gods.
God goes to work on us through His Word like a woodcarver chisels a block of wood.