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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This is the sixth installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Translation of Theses 11 and 12 by Caleb Keith.
Last week we talked about what happens when the Triune God shows up, and how we practice this every week in Sunday worship with the Trinitarian invocation, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
When I hear the word “repentance” my mind quickly goes to those old terror inducing Chick Tracts.
This is the fifth installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Translation of Theses 9 and 10 by Caleb Keith.
Prechers translate as a calling. Called by God, they are given a message, and for most of their hearers it is to one degree or another a message in a language from afar, with strange concepts, sometimes with a more familiar ring, sometimes with a strange sound.
This is the fourth installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Translation of Theses 5 and 6 by Caleb Keith.
As a bass player, when I listen to music, I listen for what the bassist is doing. But, when I listen to music in my 2004 Honda Civic I have a problem: only one of the four speakers works.
This is the third installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Translation of Theses 5 and 6 by Caleb Keith.
This is a weekly article series working through the book of Revelation.
The Confessions instead look forward and provide a critique of the world and of all my various religions and idolatries.
But when we trust Jesus, then we close our eyes to it all and say, “Heavenly Father, I’m your child.
Too often, we equate “repent” as the final warning to stop a particular sin before God ceases to love you and sends you to hell for your evil deeds.