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.
The confessors at Augsburg remind us that every generation of Christians is called to bear witness to the gospel amid the challenges and pressures of its own age. As they confessed Christ before emperors and kingdoms, so the Church continues to confess Him before the world today.
When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.

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This is an excerpt from Romans 14 in Romans: A Devotional Commentary by Bo Giertz, translated by Bror Erickson. (1517 Publishing 2018), pgs 79-80.
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
Moltmann is gone now, but his theology will continue to provoke and provide.
Like Jacob, sinners approach the Heavenly Father wearing the clothes of their older brother, Jesus.
We know we are made for something great. We humans were created in God’s image and restored through Christ in his perfect image.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.
The profound significance of Christ’s resurrection comes from the threefold justification it provides: it justifies the sinner, the sinner’s hope, and God himself.
The notion that your goodness is “good enough” to make you right with God is a lie straight from the father of lies himself.
Bathed in the waters of baptism, you are placed in God's path of totality, a path he won for each and every one of us.
Jonah’s biggest blunder was a failure to understand that God’s grace is always undeserved and always falls on those who are unworthy of it.
Paul knew that, without the resurrection, the Christian life was a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.