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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The heart of your sermon is the promise that God, in Jesus, has sought and found each of us. He receives us sinners and invites us to eat with Him at His table.
This is why Paul is still an “example” for us. If this is what God in Christ can do with “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence," imagine what God in Christ can do with you and me.
The smallest amount of Holy Spirit-created faith defeats every antichrist belief we hold.
This is an excerpt from “All Charges Dropped! Devotional Narratives from Earthly Courtrooms to the Throne of Grace,” written by Haroldo Camacho (1517 Publishing, 2022).
The power of the Word of God is the power of God himself, for he is always faithful to his Word.
A group of unassuming apostles was given a graphic illustration of how the Lord would use them to turn the world right-side-up through the upside-down logic of grace.
Being the baptized just may be the last, great resistance.
These words direct the people of God how to live in their identity as God’s children. We would say, this is the reality of our baptismal identity!
Love bids us to choose life, always life, because the love of Jesus has already set us free for a life beyond our wildest imagination.
The reason nothing can come before Jesus is because nothing endures beyond the grave except for Jesus.
As the Spirit does His work, He produces new ways of living for individuals, households (like Philemon’s) and communities, that is, the Church.
Preaching which eschews the harping harangues of legalistic schoolmarms in favor of the Savior’s undeserved favor reflects the holy hilarity of the Gospel.