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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Christmas is not for remembering, thinking, pondering, trying to make sure you are really celebrating it properly, or for wondering whether you truly have faith.
Lewis once pointed out that Christianity does not begin by telling us how to behave, but by telling us what is wrong.
What God perceives is not what our eyes see; he is focused on righteousness because his love creates what is righteous.
Seek moments of silence, and use them to listen and ponder.
Christ did not merely urge humanity to be kind. He embodied perfect kindness by giving his life for those who neither earned nor expected such a gift.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
Was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is…yes.
The unity of God’s people is grounded not in lineage nor land but in the promise of the coming Christ.
Every age has its emergencies, and the church must never ignore them. Yet, our response cannot be one of panic or propaganda.
When we fail, our first impulse is the same as that of our spiritual ancestors: to sprint headlong into the bushes.
On this, the birthday of Martin Luther, I will pause to thank God for his birth.
This is the fifth installment in our article series, “An Introduction to the Bondage of the Will,” written to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will.