God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.
Jesus offers something infinitely better. He tells us to put down our gavel—not because sin isn't real, but because the only Judge who has the right to condemn is the very One who was condemned for us.

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“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.
This week we will take a closer look at God's love in Scripture.
This sermon was originally given at Luther Seminary chapel on May 20, 1986.
We too are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
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.
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 law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
The usual acclamation when one becomes King is: “Long live the King!” But this King of kings, this son of David, has come to die.
The nefarious thing about idolatry is that just about anything can become your idol: career, family, fame, wealth, status, spouse, you name it, any good thing can become a ‘god-thing” with ease.