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).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
Jesus loved us and gave himself up to save us. He would not abandon you to your hurt or cast you away because of the hurt you caused others.
Dr. Montgomery taught me the Christian faith is both a true story and a delightful story—in fact, it is the greatest story ever told.
Jacob is given the gospel afresh right when he needed it and it is because of this gospel that his faith is stirred up anew.
Jesus has instituted his living-breathing disciples, his shepherds in his church, to declare the full forgiveness of sins.
To obtain this righteousness, you have to admit you don’t have it and could never produce it on your own because you are unrighteous.
When joined with a good Reformation theology of vocation and the freedom of a Christian, Fujimura’s vision for culture care is something all Christians can embrace, regardless of whether they are artists in the formal sense.
The connection between music and the created order is a long lasting one.
The point of Revelation is to reveal consolation in Jesus, not to revel in chaos and confusion.
The good news for Jacob is that God humbled himself so that he could lose a wrestling match to a man with a dislocated hip so that he could give him a new name.
In Christ, this world’s never-children are his always-children, because he isn’t a God of death, after all.
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).