The Reformers did not return to the sources because they believed the old was better than the new, nor because antiquity possesses authority simply by virtue of its age. They returned to the sources to recover the language and words that were actually written and spoken, especially those by great teachers and, most importantly, God Himself.
The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive.

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You are a child of God. You’re blameless, holy, perfect, and righteous. Don’t feel that way? Too bad. God is greater than your heart.
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
We look forward to the return of Christ, which fills us with hope that there really is an end to this marathon called life.
As the church year ends, we are not give a vision of Jesus on His throne, ruling over a new creation. Instead, we see Jesus ruling from the cross. His grace comes in the midst of suffering and pain.
That is the task of preaching in these last weeks of the Church Year, to enable the people given to our care, to praise God from the perspective of the end when our Lord will return in glory bringing us into His Kingdom of glory.
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
Preachers and church workers must also hear the gospel preached to them.
The mind-blowing part of this entire story, though, isn’t that only one leper came back to “give thanks,” but that the Lord Jesus healed all ten knowing full well that only one would come back.
The Gospel outpaces all would-be and eventually fleeting identity-makers and brings in the truth of a renewed-in-Christ humanity.
When God does not give you a life free from suffering, He calls you to look for Him in the midst of suffering. There you find Him doing His work, giving you words to speak and promises to hold onto.
Only by faith can we believe the mystery that salvation in all it various forms comes through Jesus, the Son of Righteousness.
We don’t start with behavior and work toward Christ. We start with Christ and everything works out from there.