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.

All Articles

God is holy, nothing I say or do or pray is going to make God any more or less holy. So what are we praying when we say, “hallowed be your name”?
This is an excerpt from Martin Luther’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535), written by Martin Luther and translated by Haroldo Camacho (1517 Publishing, 2018).
The following is an excerpt from “The Christian Life: Cross or Glory” written by Steven A. Hein (1517 Publishing, 2015).
If you get out your red-letter bible and just read the red letters, as I did today, you're in for a shock. When you read just his words, Jesus seems harsh and pretty ticked off most of the time!
Love continues to gently but endlessly pursue the narrator, despite his persistence in pulling away in the opposite direction.
In this context where death looms large, Jesus reveals a kingdom where life looms even larger.
The resurrection of Jesus was the moment when the one true God appointed the Man through whom the whole cosmos would be brought back into its proper order. A man got us into this mess; the Man would get it out again.
The “New David” will manifest the power of the LORD and will not set Himself in opposition as did the false shepherds.
God's justice is marked and measured by sacrificial love, not power as the world defines it.
Unlike human marriage, which is marred by sin, Jesus never seeks to divorce us due to irreconcilable differences.
A life of faith is a life of wisdom, which is a life lived knowing that it is God’s authority — and his alone — that prevails as the consummate active power in the cosmos.
The tragedy of this parable is not the failure to serve. It is the failure to truly know your Savior.