1. 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).
  2. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  3. Unprompted, without any warning, for no reason at all, without any instigation say, "I love you." And that will wash over your parents like a beautiful absolution.
  4. 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.
  5. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  6. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  7. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  8. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  9. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  10. 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.
  11. Morons though we all have been, there is nothing we need that Christ hasn’t given us.
  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).