God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.
Jesus offers something infinitely better. He tells us to put down our gavel—not because sin isn't real, but because the only Judge who has the right to condemn is the very One who was condemned for us.

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The crisis is not merely that people are leaving. The crisis is that we have relinquished what is uniquely Lutheran and deeply needed.
The story of your life stretches beyond the dash on the tombstone.
Below is a list of our favorite theological books - across all categories - from 2025. A special thanks to our contributors who submitted titles, wrote summaries and full reviews for these books and more throughout the year.
Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
The unity of God’s people is grounded not in lineage nor land but in the promise of the coming Christ.
While Thoreau’s Walden is seen as a central text of that most American of virtues—self-reliance—quiet ambition as envisioned by Tinetti is exactly the opposite: dependence on God.
For the Christian, the iron gate of death was opened by the blood of Christ and the empty tomb.
On this, the birthday of Martin Luther, I will pause to thank God for his birth.
The Reformation isn’t just a chapter in church history. It’s a reminder that the gospel remains forever good news.
Curiosity, while it might kill the cat, just might be one of the most needed virtues of our time.
On October 19, 1512, Martin Luther formally graduated with his doctorate in theology.
This is the sixth 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.