The gospel isn’t for the strong but people who know they aren’t.
One great thing about our post-denominational age is that it has opened up opportunities to make common cause with other Lutherans who, despite their differences and eccentricities, can agree on some of the most important things.
Pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.

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“In a culture that promotes self-interest, children in church learn that something much bigger and more important than themselves is going on in their midst."
While I was still an over-eager seminarian the professor warned me, “Mr. Riley, this is exciting stuff.
Freedom from the Law does not come through personal perfection, it comes through Jesus Christ. The answer is not a better you, but a you who is united to God through Christ.
You are made new by the eternal satisfaction for sin in Christ, by the precious treasure at God’s right hand.
God created Israel to be the vessel into which he would place both his Law and his Son.
These teachings are the heart of the Reformation…If it is about you, it isn’t about Jesus.
The power and the purpose of the Reformation was to bring the full force of the Law and the Gospel to the ears of sinners.
The Law though it does many things—restrains, exhorts the Christian unto righteousness, punishes—always rightly accuses and condemns sinners of their sin before a righteous, holy, and just God.
I spend a lot of time talking to people in coffee shops. Some share my Christian faith, some are exploring and questioning faith and others have left the church, having had a crisis of faith.
If this opening verse offers to us both door and doorkeeper, then the doorkeeper stands with the door held securely shut.
We sinners share a common problem when it comes to Jesus’ parables. We read them with an eye to our own righteousness.
Yet, just as the Jews had two choices, true God or no God, the Christian has the same, true Jesus or no Jesus.