1. I can guarantee you that when Paul was overtaken by the Spirit and inspired to write these words, he did not have in mind your local school's boys' basketball tournament.
  2. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  3. This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023). Now available for purchase.
  4. God gives us the power and authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins to burdened sinners who entrust us with their pain, guilt, and defeat.
  5. Repentance is meaningless unless we are willing to acknowledge who we are: sinners needing mercy.
  6. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  7. Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
  8. That great truth of creedal Christianity – that God is man in Christ – is not set forth for our speculative enjoyment.
  9. That is the task of preaching in these last weeks of the Church Year, to enable the people given to our care, to praise God from the perspective of the end when our Lord will return in glory bringing us into His Kingdom of glory.
  10. You’re not new because of what you do. You’re new and so you do new things, even in spite of yourself, because of your sinful nature.
  11. If a key part of the Reformation was placing God’s Word back into the hands of the people in a clear, understandable way, then John of Ragusa can be called a “Prometheus” in his own right.