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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It would serve us well to embrace the beauty of our diversity within the unity of the body of Christ.
Do our petitions move God?
How’s your ticker?
God has a hall ready for us, for us and for so many more
When the waters of anxiety and depression rise, there is One who understands.
Finding rest in God when the “what ifs”come calling
Faith sees your neighbor not as a means to an end, not as a way to score points, but as an object of love: Christ's love and yours.
The issue is not the existence of so-called inner rings, but our desire and willingness to spend our lives in order to gain from an inner ring what is freely promised in Christ: hope, security, and identity.
What if Jesus had said on the cross, “Earn it”?
Honest confession brings us into the fatherly care of God where we are always greeted with grace, mercy, peace, love, and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
I’ve experienced firsthand the promise that God never leaves a congregation empty-handed.
We may not all be mass-murdering Nazis. But we all have the same root sin that causes the most egregious criminal activity on the face of the earth. We all have the desire to be our own God.