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.

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Christ did not merely urge humanity to be kind. He embodied perfect kindness by giving his life for those who neither earned nor expected such a gift.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
Was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is…yes.
It is death that deserves derision, not the disciple who reaches through sorrow for his Lord.
“The well that washes what it shows” captures the essence of Linebaugh’s project, which aims to give the paradigmatic law-gospel hermeneutic a colloquial and visual language.
When faith seeks understanding—when belief is grounded in revelation and open to the light of reason—truth can travel.
This is the second installment in our article series, “An Introduction to the Bondage of the Will,” written to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will.
Fideistic Christianity may look bold, but it is fragile.
Why did the church dedicate a day to St. Michael anyway? Who is he, and what does he do?
Election is not a riddle to solve. It’s a pillow to rest your head on at night.
Even if the Shroud were proven a medieval forgery, it would only highlight the skill of its maker. The case for Christ’s resurrection rests on eyewitness testimony.
The following entries are excerpts from Chad Bird’s upcoming book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of the Psalms (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 191-192.