One great thing about our post-denominational age is that it has opened up opportunities to make common cause with other Lutherans who, despite their differences and eccentricities, can agree on some of the most important things.
Pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.
We can willingly admit the fact that we're just like tax collectors and thieves.

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The Law gets a bad rap. There is certainly a negative component to the Law. The work of the Law is very different than the work of the Gospel.
The reason the U.S. is blessed by God is that we are essentially a “good” nation. And this is the root of Bob’s problem (and that of all civil religion).
At times, evangelical Christianity can be a paradox. For as much as Protestants have spurned Roman Catholicism, they’re much more Catholic than they’d ever like to admit.
Many Christians are worried—perhaps legitimately—that the state is a short step away from turning the Law of God into hate speech and silencing the legal preaching of God’s Word.
As I was reading Romans 7 today, I was reminded of a pivotal scene in one of my favorite movies, As Good As it Gets.
God’s Law is a death sentence for us sinners. There is no winning beneath the Law of God.
The Gospel predominates when hearers receive the saving gifts of Christ as God’s final word to them.
What did Christians do, both when they encountered a Rome in its glory, as when Christ was born, and in it decline, as when Constantine tried to pull stuff back together?
There is just something about the idea of not being ‘under Law’ that sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of many Christians.
As sinful humans, we are adept at taking what God gives as gift and making it into a work. Nowhere is this made more evident than in the universally misunderstood doctrine of sanctification.
This reflection was adapted from Sexy: The Quest for Erotic Virtue in Perplexing Times (1517 Publishing, 2017).
While I was still an over-eager seminarian the professor warned me, “Mr. Riley, this is exciting stuff.