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

The Protestant milieu was pervaded with the announcement that God and God alone is the active agent in the salvation of sinners.
This is the fifth 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.
When a congregation is abused by its pastor, it loses more than a shepherd. It loses its threshold place; that fragile seam between earth and heaven.
We can lay down our sledgehammers of moralistic performance, which aren’t effective anyway, and we can trust that we are his and his life is ours.
When your child asks about what we believe, and why we believe it…answer.
The Word seems like it is so little, like five barley loaves and two small fish, but it is all that God used to create the heavens and the earth.
Bitterness took root when he began approaching the Word merely as a burden he was called to carry rather than a balm that his soul needed, too.
For those with faith in Christ, there is always a happy ending.
Tetzel peddled righteousness for gold, but God gives it freely through faith in his promised Word, the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Chapter 3 of Habakkuk, which is often referred to as “the Psalm of Habakkuk,” is a song of catharsis, relief, faith, and profound emotion.
Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
This is the third installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”