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.
The life we are trying to manage, improve, and secure is not something to be mastered. It is something to be surrendered. And this is where everything changes. Because in Christ, the approval we are seeking has already been spoken.

All Articles

This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023). Now available for purchase.
Jesus not only healed her daughter, but he also gave himself to her. Wherever she went from then on, he was with her.
Morons though we all have been, there is nothing we need that Christ hasn’t given us.
We assert, we herald, the truth about God becoming King of the world in and through Jesus of Nazareth alone. It is our public announcement.
Though it may feel to us like the darkness is winning, God’s Word reveals the darkness is waning. The Light of the world has come.
The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
When all the people had been baptized, when all the people had washed the filth of their sins into the water, Jesus went into the water to draw their sins unto Himself.
The usual acclamation when one becomes King is: “Long live the King!” But this King of kings, this son of David, has come to die.
Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
Because we could never intuitively figure it out, God reveals Christ to us.
For almost three years, I have produced a weekly video in the series “Reading the Gospels through Hebrew Eyes.” Here is an index of all the Gospel readings covered so far, with links to their YouTube videos.