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.

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Such faith is faith alone. Even our Spirit-produced fruit is not to be trusted. Rather, faith rests entirely in Christ’s work for us.
Each of these little epiphanies in Middle-earth are like the star the magi saw arise in the sky, a light that reflects and points to Jesus who is the Light of the world.
When bishops err we must not follow...We must obey God before man.
Advent is one big answer to the question of free will in matters of salvation. God is free. Our will is bound.
Christmas wrecks all attempts to penetrate God's hiddenness and seek him out in Heaven. He comes to us clothed in our humanity.
My nonfiction reads took me into Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and various varieties of Protestantism. Some of my favorites didn’t fall into neat and tidy categories, such as Jordan Peterson and Richard Selzer. It was difficult to narrow the list down, but here are my 12 1/2 favorites of the year.
The Pope Leo X used the psalm description of a boar uprooting grape vines in a vineyard as a metaphor for what the upstart German monk had been doing at that backwater university.
Luther’s theology lets the believer in Christ dwell under the cerulean sky of God’s unchanging grace.
“Whatever you do, don’t share the Gospel with me?” Those were my exact words to my slightly mystified seminary professor. As he set his coffee down, I could tell that he was holding back in an effort to allow me to process what I was thinking.
The following is an excerpt from Handing Over the Goods: Determined to Proclaim Nothing But Christ Jesus & Him Crucified - (A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. James A. Nestingen), edited by Steven Paulson and Scott Keith (1517 Publishing, 2018). Edited and used with permission.
He was a beggar on the streets. And, he was as good as dead if he didn't receive a blessing. The words, "you're cursed" haunted his mind.
When we say in the benediction, “The LORD make His face shine on you,” grace is what we mean.