We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
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.

All Articles

The following is an excerpt from "Finding Christ in the Straw" written by Robert M. Hiller (1517 Publishing, 2020).
We confuse salvation and vocation in our quest to determine who is in control of our salvation.
Sometimes believers vigorously debate God, sometimes they nod a silent Amen. Together, their narratives paint a picture of a life of faith characterized by complexity and tension.
What then does this sequence of stories teach us? It teaches us a pertinent lesson about the Christian life.
When we talk about bettering ourselves, we need to realize that a theology of the cross does not militate against this endeavor but that it places it squarely in the horizontal realm.
We think that if we are good enough, brave enough, or at least if we try hard enough, we will be someone who can be both fully known and fully loved.
It seems too good to be true, and yet it is the truest of all truths. This is our God. This God sees and chooses to trample our sins under his feet.
We long for the Great Thanksgiving that hasn’t happened yet.
To pray that God’s name is hallowed among us is to pray for the continual proclamation of the gospel in truth and purity that we would hear the word about Christ crucified for sinners.
“I forgive you,” must be said and it must be said often in a marriage.
We love those who enable us to see our love for ourselves reflected back at us.
David and Job both know that prayer puts a cigarette lighter to all prim and proper books of religious etiquette. It is honest. Heated. Emotional. Raw. And the psalms are packed with it.