When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.
The life we are trying to manage, improve, and secure is not something to be mastered. It is something to be surrendered. And this is where everything changes. Because in Christ, the approval we are seeking has already been spoken.
It is within this charged atmosphere that Luther’s writings take on their full significance. His responses to the Turkish threat were not merely reactions to military events; they were rooted in a deep theological reflection on the nature of God’s rule over the world, the responsibilities of Christian rulers, and the role of the Church in times of crisis.

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Your eternal salvation isn’t dependent on performance or effort. Well, not your performance anyway...
The following is an excerpt from Law and Gospel in Action written by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2019).
The majority of churches still use the traditional eight-sided font. The question I’d like to explore in this post is, “Why?”
Like the Pharisees, as well-meaning, contemporary Christians we too can often add fences to God’s Law.
The history of the early Reformation in the New World is both a tale of pirates and the battle of catechisms.
Pergamum! Oh, Pergamum! Behold the glory of Pergamum! It was not at this time the greatest provincial power, nor was it the most favored in the Roman Empire.
And so, when you preach the Law, you are also instructing the conscience and thereby forming it. For some of your hearers, this will result in activating their consciences, making them more sensitive, so they become more aware of their sin and more urgently seek the Gospel. For others, it is a re-instruction.
The following is an excerpt from Always be Ready: A Primer on Defending the Christian Faith written by John Warwick Montgomery (1517 Publishing, 2018).
In our democratic society we love to talk about freedom. But anybody out there ever tried to be perfect? Ah, shucks. Turns out we’re not as free as we thought.
The preached word ensured the work of the Holy Spirit, so long as it was the written word of the Gospel. Gospel preaching was the one domain in which we could be assured of the convicting, saving, and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
We don’t need another human to love us, so we become our own divinity full of self-directed, unconditional acceptance.
From political parties to sports teams, we know all too well how quickly we can ruin a good thing, turning a temporal allegiance into a spiritual one