This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.

All Articles

Christian freedom and Christian love go together in a most wonderful way.
We just finished celebrating the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
Luther accepted Augustine’s view of the church as a mixed body.
What is it to be an heir of the Reformation? It is to look outward to Christ bleeding and dying on the cross as Great Rescuer of sinners—of me.
When I was about 10, I went on a hike with a boys brigade. We were all racing down this path at lunchtime when I decided to beat everyone to the bottom by deviating from the path.
So bondage meets freedom, and God becomes our Master through Christ.
We are forgiven for Christ’s sake. Losers set free to trust in God’s promises.
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.
There’s something very attractive about both the cross-ladder and the cross-crutches. In fact, there’s something about both of them that the woodworker within us finds eminently more appealing than the simple cross of Jesus.