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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The fact is no one dies with dignity.
Have you ever wondered, of all the adjectives we could use to describe this day why in the world we chose the word “good?” Yeah, me too.
If I'm honest, when I survey my life I don't exude much contentment.
Forgiveness of sin, righteousness, and eternal life aren't handed out by God because we deserve it.
I grew up with a great deal of guilt. It still keeps me up at night. For one reason or another, I was convinced I hadn’t done enough to be loved by God.
You don’t have to wait any long stretch of time for me to find my way back to guilty. Though I am absolved of my sins–and I cling to, and believe that with all my heart–there’s something inside of me that thirsts for the darkness.
Have you ever grown despondent from trying so hard to stop behaving in certain destructive ways, but always failing?
The devil is effective with this attack because it calls out all the things a Christian sinner experiences as simultaneous sinner and saint.
There was another criminal next to Christ the day he died. He was aware of who Jesus was, and why he was there.
We can leave all the stuff of life behind, because our great treasure God flaunts before the world on Calvary.
Why was Jesus crucified? Not to save victims, but to save sinners.
We spend the first nine months of our lives in utter darkness. There are no tiny fluorescent bulbs beaming from the ceiling of the womb, no fetal flashlights, not even a pinprick of illumination.