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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What God perceives is not what our eyes see; he is focused on righteousness because his love creates what is righteous.
Christianity doesn’t start with our speculation about God. It starts with God’s self-revelation.
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.
Was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is…yes.
This is an excerpt from this year’s 1517 Advent Devotional.
If Psalms 1 and 2 reveal the Christ who reigns, Psalms 3 and 4 reveal the Christ who remains.
When we fail, our first impulse is the same as that of our spiritual ancestors: to sprint headlong into the bushes.
Resurrection does not start in sunlight. It begins in the dark.
The acrostic psalms do not hold because of their perfect structure. Nor do our lives.
Grace isn’t fair. It’s reckless and lavish and handed out freely to those who don’t deserve a thing.
He has freed you from a selfish fixation on gifts. He has freed you to look to the Giver.
This is the third 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.