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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Last year, a friend I follow tweeted, “Calling yourself a sinner is spitting on all the work that Jesus did to make you a saint.”
Among the things that perturb me about modern Christianity is our residual clinging to a sort of “Christian-karma.”
God coming to us at Christmas encapsulates the essence of Christian faith: we don't make ourselves strong and then work our way up to a strong God.
If the devil took over a church, I suspect it would be bursting at the seams every Sunday, with smiling faces, clean noses, straight morals, conservative voting, institutional fidelity
Recently I’ve met many people that have suffered tragedies in their families. I know this sounds a little selfish, but the ones that stick out the most to me are the ones that affected my own family.
It’s time to call bull on a theology the dominates Christianity.
When we explain away God’s Word, we jettison the reality of our ominous diagnosis in the “Thou shall/shall nots” of the law, and with it the sweet cure in the, “This is My body/blood” of the Gospel.
We treat the Scriptures as if they’re our literary property to toy with as we please.
Either one of those verses alone is scary; but both of them together are terrifying!
At our churches must remain focused on the deep kick, the real deal, the thing itself. I’m not the first on this site to remind us that this is Christ himself.
To the Pastors and Preachers whose only word for me and others seem to be, "make sure you’re right with God!"
This story is all-too-common, and illustrates a key dynamic driving the youth out of church.