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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That's how true faith talks. It doesn't talk about itself. It says "Thank you!" to the one who gives healing and salvation.
The oddness of this moment, at the beginning of Advent, is God’s way of saying, “The reason I’m here...”
“God in general” is of little use to all of us suffering the ravages of sin, the fear of death, and satanic prosecution.
Look the judge in the eye and pin your sin on Jesus, the divine judge’s son. Jesus knows you can’t do it, so he trades places with you and pits himself against God’s righteous demands.
The Israelites had taken the Covenantal promise and the language of separation and interpreted them to mean the message of salvation and restoration was meant for only them. But this is counter to the reality of the Scriptures.
Trust in the midst of trouble. That is what our Lord calls us to experience today.
We won’t use the right words, but the Holy Spirit is interceding with and for us, as we pray.
Fourteen years ago, drowning in the muck of dark despair, in the middle of a life gone terribly wrong, I wrote in my journal, "I wonder how, once this is all over, how I’ll be, how I’ll turn out…” Now I know.
Everywhere we look, there is suffering. But Jesus is not calling us to look. He is calling us to listen.
A Sermon on Psalm 130:3–6.
Jesus meets us in our life of lies, in our falsehoods, in the untruth of our being, and in the company, we create to cover up our nakedness.
Grace and mercy are a powerful act of the Almighty God. God alone can grant forgiveness and restoration, salvation from the sorrow of this world.