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.

All Articles

In our attempts to flee from our fears and escape death, we will become imprisoned by them.
Those who occupy the pulpit will always be sensitive to various kinds of reactions, expected and unexpected, and eager for the feedback that helps evaluate whether the words from the pulpit have achieved their intended goal.
We cannot control the resistance of people to God’s Word, but we can trust in God’s power and promise to work through His Word.
Our passage from Romans steers us between these two dangerous misconceptions: The mythical monster Scylla of believing the body to be evil on the one shore, and the beast Charybdis of believing the body constitutes all there is on the other.
The message is clear and assuring—the Word of God does what it says it will do!
Using common everyday events, Carnell sought to clarify that there are three standards of duty that we demand others to respect to protect our dignity.
Ever since the tragedy of the Garden, God’s plan of redemption has been in motion. His movement upon this world has never ceased, and it never will.
Comfort is not a platitude; it is a promise. A promise from our God who left his place of glory and died a sinner’s death for poor sinners.
The people gathered in Jerusalem that day were making a bold statement of faith. They believed Jesus was the New David.
Paul has gone through all this explanation to belabor the point: The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything.
Jesus did not come to be first. He came to be faithful, faithful to His Father’s mission for you.
The gift of new life through His death and resurrection, creates Christ’s children, all of whom are being sent with beautiful feet and beautiful tongue and lips to serve as the Lord’s hitmen and midwives.