Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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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 a companion article to “Johann Spangenberg on Dying Well”
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
Strasbourg’s hymnals are especially relevant to American Lutherans because much of what we experience in our churches comes to us from Strasbourg.
Now that the Lord of Sabaoth has involved himself, something ends, something is born.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these early Lutheran hymns – and their physical availability in hymnals – in the piety of common people living in Lutheran towns and territories.
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.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.
God chose Russell Brand, chose to defy his fast-escaping life and drink up all his swift-running sin in the River Thames.
The profound significance of Christ’s resurrection comes from the threefold justification it provides: it justifies the sinner, the sinner’s hope, and God himself.
The Good Shepherd doesn’t leave the sheep to fend for themselves.