This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.

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Jesus has instituted his living-breathing disciples, his shepherds in his church, to declare the full forgiveness of sins.
To obtain this righteousness, you have to admit you don’t have it and could never produce it on your own because you are unrighteous.
When joined with a good Reformation theology of vocation and the freedom of a Christian, Fujimura’s vision for culture care is something all Christians can embrace, regardless of whether they are artists in the formal sense.
There is a bit of Narcissus in all of us. We are all lost within ourselves.
What the gospel does is take people who were enemies of God and transform them into lovers of God
The one who delights in the law of the Lord learns to fear his own good works and trust God outside of them.
The good news for Jacob is that God humbled himself so that he could lose a wrestling match to a man with a dislocated hip so that he could give him a new name.
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
We know we are made for something great. We humans were created in God’s image and restored through Christ in his perfect image.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.
The profound significance of Christ’s resurrection comes from the threefold justification it provides: it justifies the sinner, the sinner’s hope, and God himself.
The notion that your goodness is “good enough” to make you right with God is a lie straight from the father of lies himself.