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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Salutary funeral preaching seeks to set the life of the baptized believer who has died within the life of Christ incarnate, crucified, risen, and reigning.
I want the beginning of my funeral to be focused on Jesus, as well as the middle, the end, and every point in between.
The gospel of Jesus’ coming out of death and the tomb alive so that we might be restored to our identity as God’s children establishes the most enduring reality there is.
False holiness is always a possession and achievement of the individual in isolation from the good of others. And so it isn’t holiness at all.
Sometimes it’s important to go far away to learn of holy places back home.
When we own up to our sin, our Father is not scandalized, and his response is not to reconsider his calling us.
This is the patient love of God. He is stubborn about the salvation of sinners. He will not be rushed even if his name is mocked, and the trustworthiness of his promises are called into question.
There is perhaps no better observation about the nature of anxiety and depression than its fundamental desire for avoidance.
You might not know it, but every Christian hopes for the day when their faith will die. Really. I promise. Faith’s death is our celebration.
Justification and regeneration are, therefore, necessarily connected and have profound implications upon the craft of preaching.
Grace remits sin, and peace quiets the conscience. Sin and conscience torment us, but Christ has overcome these fiends now and forever.
Christians do have a hope that those who sleep in death will be awakened and their joy will never end, and we yearn for that day.