We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
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.

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The Lord did for Hannah what he loves to do: he shifted everything into reverse, making the bottom the top and the top the bottom.
The crucified and risen Christ comes to renew, restore, and build up.
Christ is the beating heart of Christian faith and its only object.
This is the basic argument of To Gaze upon God: that we who now see as if behind a veil will one day enjoy the unveiled splendor of God himself, who will dwell with us forever.
Christ is always the ultimate for God's children, but we sometimes struggle with things that come before.
No matter how many times we hear this good news, it never stops being good news.
Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
To preach Christ and him crucified is to keep the message simple and accessible.
The sinful nature loves self, and pride is its native tongue.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Clothed with Christ written by Brian W. Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available!
This article is part of Stephen Paulson’s series on the Psalms.
In the Bible, we meet the God who also does not prance around naked as a jaybird.