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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Viewing the Bible as literature is an essential and natural way of engaging the text. But there are also ways in which this practice can get lost.
The wisdom of God became man, lived, died, and was raised for the justification of sinners, great and small.
The scope of catechesis from the Reformation was broad and included not only instruction at church but in the home and in schools.
Christians have the rare faculty, above all other people on earth, of knowing where to place their care, while others vex and torture themselves and at length must despair.
Our forefathers dedicated Holy Cross Day to jolt the Church into remembrance that Christianity is not principally about ethics.
The gospel fires up within us the gratitude, joy, and love to pull off what the law never could get us to do.
What greater friend could we have than Jesus?
No good will come to the cause of the Gospel by followers of Jesus being regarded as crazy dissidents who will not cooperate with the most basic social mechanisms.
Our Lord's love for us is so great that He not only sent His Son to redeem us from sin, death, and hell, but He sends His holy angels to protect us no matter which direction our lives go.
In both Psalms, we hear the Messiah becoming sin for us, and thus he pleads on our behalf before the Father
Prayer dares to call the impossible into reality. It trusts the One who can do all things to do impossible things. It rests its hope on God’s power and not man’s agency.
We’ve become experts at making deals with God.