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.

All Articles

Children are not meant to carry crowns. They are not meant to rule. The burden crushes them in slow, invisible ways.
We need redemption, and we receive it in our church community through God’s Word.
Paradoxes hold everything together, not just in Inception’s plot, but in your life and mine.
Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
This is the second installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”
So Christ is risen, but what now?
In Christ, you are bound. Bound to mercy. Bound to grace. Bound to a God who won’t let you go. And because of that, you are free—gloriously, joyfully free.
Forgiveness from Jesus is always surprising to us.
The Fourth in the fire is Jesus.
News of Kilmer's death hit me like a freight train because his Doc Holliday stirred something in me about friendship—both the earthly kind and the divine.
Devoid of the gospel of Jesus’s death and resurrection, sufferers are left to frantically run the halls of self-salvation, turning this way and that but never getting anywhere.