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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God wasn’t finished with Israel just yet. The wilderness wasn’t their home.
The Supper doesn’t depend on the faithfulness of the Church. It depends on the faithfulness of Christ.
Christian faith is never a solitary possession. When the congregation confesses, the old speak for the young, the strong for the weak, and the clear-voiced for the trembling.
The entire history of Protestantism is downstream of a goldsmith in Mainz figuring out how to cast identical pieces of lead type in less than a minute.
We can’t remove our crosses or the reality of our deaths. Only Jesus can.
Baptism does not promise us chocolates or flowers, but something far greater: life in Christ.
The Bible isn’t a set of moral examples or religious insights. It’s the record of God’s saving work, fulfilled in Christ, delivered now through words spoken and heard.
American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.
Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.
His provision always flows downward, furnishing and filling us with his grace and truth right where we are.
The crisis is not merely that people are leaving. The crisis is that we have relinquished what is uniquely Lutheran and deeply needed.