1. Unprompted, without any warning, for no reason at all, without any instigation say, "I love you." And that will wash over your parents like a beautiful absolution.
  2. The hardest thing you and I will ever be called to do is to believe that it is done already, that it really and truly is finished.
  3. If you interpret James, as most do, as an encouragement toward proving your faith by your works and then say it is your "favorite" then you are proclaiming that your favorite thing about the Christian faith is the practical outworking, the proving your faith by your works.
  4. A Christian is a man who desires to enter heaven not through his own goodness and works, but through the righteousness and works of Christ.
  5. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  6. We too are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
  7. This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023). Now available for purchase.
  8. We assert, we herald, the truth about God becoming King of the world in and through Jesus of Nazareth alone. It is our public announcement.
  9. This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  10. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  11. The nefarious thing about idolatry is that just about anything can become your idol: career, family, fame, wealth, status, spouse, you name it, any good thing can become a ‘god-thing” with ease. 
  12. Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.