We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
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.

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Predestination is a promising teaching as Paul teaches it in Romans 8. It’s promising when Christ and his work for us are held firmly in hand.
Our forefathers dedicated Holy Cross Day to jolt the Church into remembrance that Christianity is not principally about ethics.
In this parable, notice how Jesus invites us to consider that forgiveness is something more than a moment. It is a way of grace that extends throughout an entire kingdom.
The gospel fires up within us the gratitude, joy, and love to pull off what the law never could get us to do.
We forget that Christians need the Gospel. Not as a side note, but as the front-page headline.
Cyprian actually rejected the accusation that he believed in rebaptism because he considered only the baptism within the church to be a valid or true baptism.
We don’t just need someone to bear our guilt and die for us. We also need someone to defeat all of the forces of sin and darkness and anxiety and depression that overwhelm us.
Sunday after Sunday, God’s people appear to have it all together… which makes you wonder why Jesus even continues to come. After all, everything is great among God’s people here.
The fact that baptism specifically unites me to Christ in his death means that I share in his sufferings in my identity, not in my activity.
In both Psalms, we hear the Messiah becoming sin for us, and thus he pleads on our behalf before the Father
What does it take to be a Christian? Christ.
This is an excerpt from the book, “Paul and the Resurrection” written by Joshua Pagán (1517 Publishing, 2020).