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 an edited excerpt from Addendum A, “The Church Year,” On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service, written by Michael Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023), pgs. 113-120.
With the Spirit we will get lost in the world. We are on a new track.
We know we are made for something great. We humans were created in God’s image and restored through Christ in his perfect image.
The Battle of Frankenhausen stands as a warning for what can happen when we abandon the Word God has given us and chase after some vision of our own imaginations.
Five promises were seemingly all those apostles, staring into the sky, had to go on. Five promises that were more than enough.
Elsewhere makes promises that can’t be kept, but God’s promises are secure, reliable, and certain.
Like the serpent on the pole, God still puts real-life things up for us to look to for salvation.
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.”
This article is written by guest contributor, Christopher J. Richmann.
Sometimes, we get prayer dementia. We can’t remember what we were going to pray for, we can’t put the words together, and, frustrated, there is nothing we can do but sigh and groan.
There is no AA for legalists. At least not officially. But there ought to be, and it should be called your local church.
It would serve us well to embrace the beauty of our diversity within the unity of the body of Christ.