Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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In Christ, this world’s never-children are his always-children, because he isn’t a God of death, after all.
If your faith is rooted in the gospel of Zion, in the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection on your behalf, you are already a member of the “heavenly Jerusalem”
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
It is your privilege—we may even say “right”—to call upon this Father and to call him Father.
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
Dispel some of that darkness bottled up inside you, with the grace first shared to us by Christ that is now ours to share with those around us.
We know we are made for something great. We humans were created in God’s image and restored through Christ in his perfect image.
Instead of a death sentence, those brothers hear the words of deliverance.
I have to believe that grace - God’s grace - will be waiting on the other side.
The cross not only stands as the measure of our hatred of God but also as the measure of God’s love for us.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these early Lutheran hymns – and their physical availability in hymnals – in the piety of common people living in Lutheran towns and territories.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.