Luther felt the reform of the church could not simply remain a matter of aesthetics and practice. Something much deeper needed to be rooted out.
While God can, and often does, appear to people face to face, he also often employs the use of several types of messengers.
The “further up and further in” we go, the table keeps getting bigger, the guest list keeps getting longer, and the grace keeps on flowing.

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When the old Adam hears a command, he hears a prescription. Like a coach drawing up a play so you can win the game.
The gospel does not proclaim the results of our practical reasoning about things we experience, but the horror of God crucified for our sins and at our hands.
Christ isn’t preached in his glory but in his ignominy, his utter shame, degradation, and desolation.
Christ is joy and sweetness to a broken heart. Christ is a lover of poor sinners, and such a lover that He gave Himself for us.
Justice and love are united in God, and we see this most clearly in Jesus on the cross. There, both God's hatred toward sin and compassion for the world come together.
The Lamb is where we are, opposite God, in our place as sinners. He bears our punishment of sin, the forsakenness of God. Anyone bearing his or her own sin is finally lost, but not Jesus.
The biggest point Luther makes about the descent is not that Jesus triumphed over hell idle and unaffected, but that Jesus defeated hell by suffering hell away.
Dangerous Bible stories show us a God who has no problem whatsoever using the muck and mire of our worst days to make his progress toward his good goal happen.
Cliché preaching may be symptomatic of shallow, consumerist culture, perpetuating a problem rather than the solution.
The point is that the whole lot was wicked. And so were the Galatian Christians. And so are we.
Jesus has conquered; he who has an ear let him hear. There is nothing to run from, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to fear because the Lamb of God has done it all.
Bonhoeffer’s simple little book makes clear how privileged many of us are to enjoy the Communion of the Saints here on earth.