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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The Church’s unity is not uniformity in every matter of her well-being. It is faithfulness in what constitutes her being.
The reasoning was always the same. The gods were angry. The gods were hungry. The gods required payment.
Although the outcome has been decided by Jesus victory, the devil won’t give up without a fight.
A rightly-oriented heart and a rightly-oriented love will consistently do what is best for God and best for our neighbor, which is why St. Augustine speaks of sin as a disordered love.
Living by faith has never been about what we bring to the table. It has always been, and always will be, about what God does for us when we can’t do anything for ourselves.
When Dostoevsky died on February 9, 1881, he left behind novels that refuse to flatter the reader or simplify the human condition.
Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Christmas is not only about a cradle in Bethlehem, it’s also about a cross outside Jerusalem where salvation was won for us.
The story of your life stretches beyond the dash on the tombstone.
To know the cure is not to become immune to sorrow.
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.