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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I don't remember a time not knowing I was a sinner. Seriously, I've always understood that Christ died for me.
The following is an excerpt from “Let the Bird Fly” written by Wade Johnston (1517 Publishing, 2019).
The gelded Gospel is shiny and attractive and compelling, and we can perform the procedure in any number of ways.
Where American freedom shouts for individual rights and liberties, freedom in Christ binds neighbors together because our blessings are for each other.
In this religious Sodom, we had a Jesus with the heart of Moses whose gospel was a new and improved law.
As important as the training of your children is, much more important is handing them over to God—from the very beginning, from infancy, and beyond.
We can’t all afford to travel the world, but the more we read from outside our own context, the bigger we see the world.
I’d like to offer a short reflection on the theme of “worldliness” as it appears in his later work and how that’s connected to an item of his Lutheran heritage: the theology of the cross.
They cannot know that I am already a father, but, this side of eternity, I won’t ever meet my child because of a miscarriage.
We tell the little story of the Gospel because our great stories ultimately reflect Christ.
The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace: Collected Sermons of Advent through Pentecost” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
We might assume that all ways are equal to raising a child in wisdom, but they are not.