He doesn’t consume us, even though that is what we deserve. Instead, Jesus comes down to us and consumes all our sin by taking it on himself.
This article is the first part of a two-part series. The second part will take a look at when pastors abuse their congregations.
The following entries are excerpts from Chad Bird’s new book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of the Psalms (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 311 and 335

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This article is the second installment in an eight-part series inspired by the Lenten themes of catechesis, prayer, and repentance found in the Lord’s Prayer as Luther taught it in his Small Catechism.
Transfiguration is like a farewell party for a dear friend drafted and going off to war. We celebrate all that has brought us there, we rejoice in our friend, and yet we know we are sending him off to great danger.
We're ALL sinners in need of a Savior. We're all saints whose Savior forgives ALL our sin. We're all the same in relation to Christ crucified for the sin of the world.
He is no sweet and sappy, romanticized and Disneyfied, cartoonish Christ. He is ferocious, free, untamed, and heaven-bent on not leaving the battlefield until the war is won and he makes his enemies a footstool for his feet.
Faith is a gift from God. It’s not flashy or boast-worthy. It’s total dependency on the God who saves utter fools.
God’s will is not sparkly, flashy, exciting, extraordinary plans for your life—at least not in the Old Adam’s eyes. So, what is the will of God?
The implications were clear: Jesus’ death destroyed the things that distinguished people as educated or uneducated, rich or poor, free or enslaved, black or white, pious or godless.
His resurrection reveals that Jonah, and all of us, even the evilest people, are salvageable, even from suicide, in Jesus' death and resurrection.
They were righteous, but they were righteous because God declared it so. Just like us.
It would do us well to expand what we mean when we say catechesis and consequently broaden the reach of theological education into daily life.
I venture to assert I have never read, in the entire Scriptures, words more beautifully expressive of the grace of God than these two children words.
The easiest way for us to contend with our sin is to become an agent of sin. We slice and cut others to pieces for all the world to see.