1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  4. Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
  5. That great truth of creedal Christianity – that God is man in Christ – is not set forth for our speculative enjoyment.
  6. Despite our best efforts to avoid him, King Jesus remains very much unavoidable.
  7. When and how did the church start this season of anticipation?
  8. Help comes for those who cannot help themselves. When we bottom-out and come to the end of ourselves, that is where hope springs.
  9. That is the task of preaching in these last weeks of the Church Year, to enable the people given to our care, to praise God from the perspective of the end when our Lord will return in glory bringing us into His Kingdom of glory.
  10. Preachers and church workers must also hear the gospel preached to them.
  11. If a key part of the Reformation was placing God’s Word back into the hands of the people in a clear, understandable way, then John of Ragusa can be called a “Prometheus” in his own right.