One great thing about our post-denominational age is that it has opened up opportunities to make common cause with other Lutherans who, despite their differences and eccentricities, can agree on some of the most important things.
Pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.
We can willingly admit the fact that we're just like tax collectors and thieves.

All Articles

God is used to working with colorful figures. One of the most colorful in the Bible is Balaam. Hailing from Mesopotamia, Balaam was what we might call a shaman or a soothsayer.
Holding to Jesus’ teaching while denying His divinity presents a host of complications that make it difficult to take one and leave the other.
Your eternal salvation isn’t dependent on performance or effort. Well, not your performance anyway...
All the weight of our sin is lifted by Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the whole world, past, present, and future.
The following is an excerpt from Law and Gospel in Action written by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Like the Pharisees, as well-meaning, contemporary Christians we too can often add fences to God’s Law.
When we say “forgiveness,” we mean, “Jesus.” When we say, “righteousness,” we mean, “Jesus.”
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.
The prophet Jonah longed for one thing: to see the Assyrian city of Nineveh utterly destroyed by the wrath of God. His wish eventually came true
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.
We all know that Jesus can save sinners, unbelievers, pagans and heathens, all of them great or small; sinners who have been very good at being sinners. You’ve likely seen it yourself or at least heard of it happening.
This plague is no new thing. A dreaded deformity of disobedience clung to every soul since Adam and Eve.