1. Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
  2. There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
  3. A Christian is a man who desires to enter heaven not through his own goodness and works, but through the righteousness and works of Christ.
  4. Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
  5. Zephaniah has given us something more visceral to help us understand the love of God: the sound of salvation.
  6. This sermon was originally given at Luther Seminary chapel on May 20, 1986.
  7. Predestination, Jim knew, is no longer a frightening doctrine of mystery when you understand that God makes his choice about you in the simple word of God, given from one sinner to another.
  8. This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023). Now available for purchase.
  9. This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  10. God gives us the power and authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins to burdened sinners who entrust us with their pain, guilt, and defeat.
  11. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
  12. Repentance is meaningless unless we are willing to acknowledge who we are: sinners needing mercy.