Paradoxes hold everything together, not just in Inception’s plot, but in your life and mine.
We don’t flinch at sin. We speak Christ into it.
One might say that the first statement of the Reformation was that a saint never stops repenting.

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The good news for Jacob is that God humbled himself so that he could lose a wrestling match to a man with a dislocated hip so that he could give him a new name.
Despite the fact that this could sound strange to modern ears, Luther has an important reason for saying what he does about the Commandments.
The Christian must always remember that personal piety and liturgical uniformity are by no means the marks of true religion.
We don't associate the word "regret" with anything "good," but God does.
Surely a division now called the "Great Schism" should command our attention, but it is vital that we do not impute similar significance to all modern disagreements in the church.
This is an excerpt from the Chapter 12 of Hitchhiking with the Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available!
It is Jesus himself who is the ladder by which sinners get to God, not by them climbing up but by God climbing down.
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).
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available for preorder.
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
Like Jacob, sinners approach the Heavenly Father wearing the clothes of their older brother, Jesus.