“The fear of the Lord” is our heart’s awakening to and recognition of God’s outrageous goodness.
The women at the tomb were surprised by Easter. Amazed and filled with wonder at Jesus' Easter eucatastrophe. And so are we.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.

All Articles

No one twisted Jesus’s arm to make him enter Mary’s womb. No one tricked him into being born into a world strung out on the meth of sin. He came in with his eyes wide open.
God graciously bursts our foolish plots by coming our way, into our very flesh, and being God with us.
In Christ, the Word become flesh, this is a concrete, real fact. It is the bedrock foundation of the Gospel.
For since it was not enough that the Lord of heaven and earth hung on our every word, the Word came down from heaven and hung upon the cross.
How strange and yet how comforting: God prays to God for us, the Spirit to the Father. He sees through the fog of our emotions to what we truly need.
This emphasis in Luther also applied to his understanding of the sacraments, and particularly comes out in his writings on the Lord’s Supper in his Large Catechism.
If this opening verse offers to us both door and doorkeeper, then the doorkeeper stands with the door held securely shut.
If God is God, He doesn’t need anyone to defend Him. Nor does He need anyone to march for Him.
When our sense of alienation from God is underscored and exaggerated by daily life we behave like tropical fish when their tank is cleaned.
There’s some wild and untamed prayers in the psalms. But they’re fenced in by order, symmetry, predictability. They organize chaos. And they bring order and hope and stability to our chaotic lives.
Yes, how good it is for you to have enemies, for without them, when would you ever have the opportunity to fulfill, joyfully and willingly, the law of Christian love?
by Fredrik Sidenvall, translated by Bror Erickson