There is indeed a responsibility for the church to share the gospel in the world, but never at the expense of the church’s charity and mercy for those neighbors who are nearby.
The only hope for idol-addicted sinners who are utterly incapable of decluttering their souls is Jesus, the one at the heart of the gospel, and the only one who stands before the Father with an undivided heart.
More than a friend, Amsdorf was also an important figure in the work of religious reform, providing counsel to Luther on key occasions, shepherding the churches, and defending the faith until his death.

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The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah written by Steve Kruschel is available for preorder through 1517 Publishing. The following is an excerpt.
They who are but dust and ashes, full of ten thousand sins, ungrateful, and have at all times offended Him. These are the ones God loved.
The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah, written by Steve Kruschel, is available now for preorder and will be released by 1517 Publishing one week from today, on May 11. The following is an excerpt.
Elisabeth Cruciger is the first female Lutheran hymn writer. In fact, her hymn was included in the very first evangelical hymnal, published in 1524. With her life and her hymn, she becomes a witness, an example, and a proclaimer of the gospel to us almost 500 years later.
What fundamentally and truly matters about me is not what I do, but what has been done for me. Discipleship isn’t a virtue or habit that is honed through practice. Instead, the emphasis is placed on the one who has made it his mission to forgive sinners, raise the dead, comfort the troubled, and exorcise the demons that haunt us.
The following is an excerpt from “The Sinner/Saint Lenten Devotional” written by Kyle G. Jones and Kathy (Strauch) Morales (1517 Publishing, 2019).
In this final article in the series, “The Lord’s Prayer During Lent,” Philip Bartelt talks about the 7th Petition (“Deliver us from evil”) and the Conclusion (“For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”)
The gospel promise is that God in Christ knows exactly what your temptations are and still bids you find protection from them in him.
This petition is proof that the Christian life is not a practice in perfectionism. Rather, it is a life of dying and rising, lived under the cross of Christ, in the continual forgiveness of our sins.
The book, Paul and the Resurrection: Testing the Apostolic Testimony, by Josh Pagán, has just been released by 1517 Publishing. In this innovative, interdisciplinary study, Pagán combines the analytic tools of history and philosophy to explore and evaluate competing explanations of Paul's belief in the Resurrection of Jesus. In this article, he introduces us to his book, which is available now on Amazon (see link at close of article).
Despite the grave threat of martyrdom during his roughly thirty years of ministry, St. Patrick persevered and experienced enormous success.
The newest book from 1517 Publishing, Paul and the Resurrection: Testing the Apostolic Testimony, was released this week. In this article, we asked the book's author, Joshua Pagán, to answer a series of questions about the book, so we could better understand his approach, his arguments, and how his book helps us better understand the resurrection of Jesus as the foundational confession of the church.