1. This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  2. Paul is writing as a man who has already lived a life of law-keeping while denying the resurrection.
  3. This is the prelude of Easter. Is a dead Jesus still resting in the tomb? No!
  4. This is an excerpt from the prologue of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  5. This is an excerpt from the introduction of “Common Places in Christian Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly,” edited by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  6. I hate to break it to you, but "are" is not an action verb. "Are" is a being verb.
  7. As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.
  8. If you interpret James, as most do, as an encouragement toward proving your faith by your works and then say it is your "favorite" then you are proclaiming that your favorite thing about the Christian faith is the practical outworking, the proving your faith by your works.
  9. A Christian is a man who desires to enter heaven not through his own goodness and works, but through the righteousness and works of Christ.
  10. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  11. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  12. This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023). Now available for purchase.