This is an excerpt from the sixth chapter of Fear Not: How the Gospel Disrupts Our Deepest Anxieties by Luke Kjolhaug (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We draw near because Christ our Mediator has gone where we never could, and he has brought us with him.
The Israelite God was different from all the other gods, thus, the worship of Yahweh differed from that of all other gods.

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Our little congregation is part of a much larger church—the body of Christ, both here on earth as well as in heaven. And that church worships 24/7, never ceasing in its adoration of Jesus our Savior.
Above all, Luther understood the importance of the Biblical narrative as the story of God’s love and man’s salvation revealed in Christ Crucified.
In Christ, the Word become flesh, this is a concrete, real fact. It is the bedrock foundation of the Gospel.
Growing up, I dreaded the first Sunday of each quarter. Every time during the evening service, we would have Lord’s Supper after the sermon.
We just finished celebrating the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
What is it to be an heir of the Reformation? It is to look outward to Christ bleeding and dying on the cross as Great Rescuer of sinners—of me.
The Lutheran Reformation was a reformation of the Christian imagination alongside its theology.
Rather than presenting Christ’s words as a rule or a threat, Luther reveals it to be the promise of God.
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.
This emphasis in Luther also applied to his understanding of the sacraments, and particularly comes out in his writings on the Lord’s Supper in his Large Catechism.
If this opening verse offers to us both door and doorkeeper, then the doorkeeper stands with the door held securely shut.
One thing that makes John different than the other three Gospels is the absence of the Lord’s Supper.