A rightly-oriented heart and a rightly-oriented love will consistently do what is best for God and best for our neighbor, which is why St. Augustine speaks of sin as a disordered love.
For Bonhoeffer, Christ crucified, and the cross of the Christian life were not of peripheral importance, but foundational.
While we often talk about our growth, our progress, and what we are doing for the kingdom of God, the reality is that any goodness in a Christian does not originate in us.

All Articles

This is an excerpt from Romans 14 in Romans: A Devotional Commentary by Bo Giertz, translated by Bror Erickson. (1517 Publishing 2018), pgs 79-80.
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.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of Your God is Too Glorious: Finding God in the Most Unexpected Places by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2023).
Don’t get in the habit (or, if you already do it, get out of the habit) of saying, “I could never talk about these things the way my pastor does.”
Sin is a heavy thing to bear. Its jacket is shame, its medals are guilt.
The love of God in Christ Jesus never changes. That love is for you.
Jesus has gone ahead of you on the road, and promises to be with you still.
We are not pursuing dragons; we are the dragons. We are, all of us, Eustace Scrubb.
A truly Lenten mindset sees the season as preparatory for the resurrection life of Easter as opposed to the mortification of Good Friday.
Your champion steps forward.
The number forty calls to remembrance narratives of God’s great acts of redemption, but also our conformity to and participation in those narratives.