We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
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.

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The church is the only place God promises to lift us out of ourselves not in order to become more like God but so that we may finally be freed from our obsession with becoming little gods.
This is an excerpt from “The New Testament Devotional Commentary: Volume 1: Matthew, Mark, Luke” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2021).
Without the sacraments, God’s grace is simply an artifact behind a glass-case in a museum. We might be able to describe and even admire it, but we never get firsthand access to it.
Everywhere we look, there is suffering. But Jesus is not calling us to look. He is calling us to listen.
This book is for people who want to get serious about the church. It’s for pastors who are sick and tired of surfing the latest wave or jumping from one program to the other.
In his death, Jesus has done the ultimate act of charity. He has given his life for all.
One could reason that God might, at least, give the church a little worldly power.
While the insights in each chapter are uniquely personal to the individual writers, the overarching theme is one of the sufficiency of Christ.
Grace is God’s caring disposition toward His human creatures. And it is shown fully and purely in the work of Jesus for us.
When we — sinful, reprehensible we — become the enforcers of justice, we never bring about true justice. We either go too far or not far enough.
Today, Jesus' road to Jerusalem turns into your congregation. He calls you and your hearers to follow Him all the way home.
Christ has taken our failures and defeats and exchanges that yoke for his own.