We don’t flinch at sin. We speak Christ into it.
One might say that the first statement of the Reformation was that a saint never stops repenting.
Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.

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The biblical witness is clear: all the so-called gods and lords and idols who are the object of people’s devotion, to whom they offer their sacrifices, to whom they pray, whom they call God and Lord, are sadly nothing but a front for the father of lies.
We are like the spoiled children of kings who spit in the face of paupers on the street. We have been given so much, yet we treasure so little.
Have you ever read scripture and been caught by a crippling wave of guilt, shame and fear? Have you sat with your Bible open in front of you and thought, “Well, if this is the case, I might as well pack it in right now, because there’s no hope for me!”
I love stories with happy endings! My husband makes fun of me, but he has been known to graciously sit through a variety of schmaltzy chick flicks because he knows how I feel.
As Luther’s efforts at reform began to build, so did the vacancies in monasteries and convents across Europe as monks and nuns motivated by evangelical teaching left their orders for other vocations and opportunities, including marriage.
(This article first appeared in Modern Reformation and is posted here with permission.)
Just how should we think about our good works in the Christian life of faith as we live that life before others... and before God?
Nonetheless, if we wish to treat apologetics as a practical endeavor for concrete engagement with people who ask about Christianity, it seems best to start with the questions young people are actually asking.
The more law-centered a church becomes, the more it and the world become kissing cousins.
What is most amazing to me is not that Jesus welcomed public transgressors into his company. What astounds me is that they came to him with the full expectation of not being turned away.
Instead of answering this question theoretically, perhaps it will be easier to illustrate the problem of understanding God through our human speculation by considering the legend of St. George and the Dragon.
The 21st century is simply not compatible with a reformational mindset. Daniel Dennett argues in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) that conservative Christians better serve their secular neighbors as specimens in a cultural zoo, relics of a bygone world.