1. Edward's goal of teaching his people to know the scriptures and to believe that their salvation depended on Christ is also essential for us today.
  2. Confession is not another ecclesiastical bludgeon but is instead a gift. There we can tell the truth about ourselves, knowing that Christ has only mercy for us in response.
  3. Luther had a living Word from God intended to land squarely among sinners.
  4. The language of faith speaks promise and persecution, hope and trial, victory and pain. The language of the world may well speak the former, but rarely the latter.
  5. Mephibosheth’s story is a living parable of the gospel. It reeks of redemption, demonstrating precisely what Christ does for even the chiefest of sinners.
  6. An immense amount of ink has been spilled contesting and interpreting Bonhoeffer's significance as a figure of Christian history and a theologian of the church.
  7. Aquinas would craft a systematic theology that did with the matter of faith what Aristotle had done with the natural world.
  8. God's power and works are awesome and cannot be stifled. His grace and mercy will be heard above the growls and howls of those who deny Christ Jesus is God and Savior
  9. Not only does Scripture command us to maintain purity of doctrine and practice, it also commands us to reconcile with our brother, to seek to end division, and recognize common ground where there is common ground.
  10. Viewing the Word as a unified theological narrative prevents us from treating the Scriptures like a cage match between competing theological systems, with prophets duking it out with apostles, and psalmists with evangelists, all supposedly fighting for their voice to be heard.
  11. Christ has received the mark of law that we might be marked with the gospel, with the sign of his holy cross on our heads and hearts as redeemed children of God.
  12. This Christmas season we are thankful that even though we “fallers” are unable to climb up to God, he came down the ladder to us.