1. I hate to break it to you, but "are" is not an action verb. "Are" is a being verb.
  2. If you interpret James, as most do, as an encouragement toward proving your faith by your works and then say it is your "favorite" then you are proclaiming that your favorite thing about the Christian faith is the practical outworking, the proving your faith by your works.
  3. When I finished this book, I loved the Bible, and the Bible’s author, even more. And I can’t imagine a better endorsement than that.
  4. Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
  5. There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
  6. This week we will take a closer look at God's love in Scripture.
  7. This sermon was originally given at Luther Seminary chapel on May 20, 1986.
  8. We too are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
  9. Hidden beneath the sinner is a glorious saint. Jesus has declared it to be so in your baptism.
  10. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  11. All of Scripture, every last syllable of it, is meant to drive us to "consider Jesus," the One who comes to "make us right" by gifting us his righteousness.
  12. 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.