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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In the Lord’s Thanksgiving Supper, we are not served turkey, green bean casserole, and cornbread. We are served Christ.
That's how true faith talks. It doesn't talk about itself. It says "Thank you!" to the one who gives healing and salvation.
Forgiveness of sins does not come in bits and pieces. There are no levels of forgiveness.
What I like about Giertz’s approach is the devotional nature of these commentaries. He’s a pastor concerned with what these texts have to say to us today.
Look the judge in the eye and pin your sin on Jesus, the divine judge’s son. Jesus knows you can’t do it, so he trades places with you and pits himself against God’s righteous demands.
The church is the only place God promises to lift us out of ourselves not in order to become more like God but so that we may finally be freed from our obsession with becoming little gods.
The Reformation was yet another era of history when God’s people were faced with the question that Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”
We won’t use the right words, but the Holy Spirit is interceding with and for us, as we pray.
This is an excerpt from “The New Testament Devotional Commentary: Volume 1: Matthew, Mark, Luke” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2021).
Without the sacraments, God’s grace is simply an artifact behind a glass-case in a museum. We might be able to describe and even admire it, but we never get firsthand access to it.
A Sermon on Psalm 130:3–6.
Our experience with good fathers – even when they are not our own – can point us to God the Father.