God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.
Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.

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If sin is only a matter of “doing,” then “undoing” and/or “redoing” would serve as the equivalent savior necessary to find redemption.
Ultimately, there is only one Lord of the Universe, and he does not share power. If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.
Being able to tell the difference between truth and lies is at the core of repentance.
The petition not to be led into temptation is found in just the right place within the seven petitions.
If Jesus is better than Moses, then everything changes. If Jesus is better than Moses, then the ultimate becomes the penultimate.
Jesus lives to intercede. So we needn’t bring him our feigned righteousness or our faux rehabilitation.
Repentance means being cut down by the law’s declaration of judgment. It’s not an activity we do to prepare for grace, but a point of despair worked by God himself.
If we want to see evidence of our Father’s answer to the fifth petition, we need only to look at the cross and the empty tomb.
There is joy in Lent, but it is the kind of joy that comes in being made whole.
It’s not the disciples’ faith that invented the resurrection but the resurrection that gave birth to the disciples’ faith.
Because of my Advocate, there is no judgment or condemnation by God in my suffering.
This is an excerpt from In Defense of Christian Ritual written by David Andersen (1517 Publishing, 2021). Available for purchase this Tuesday!