This is an excerpt from the sixth chapter of Fear Not: How the Gospel Disrupts Our Deepest Anxieties by Luke Kjolhaug (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We draw near because Christ our Mediator has gone where we never could, and he has brought us with him.
The Israelite God was different from all the other gods, thus, the worship of Yahweh differed from that of all other gods.

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In life, we make decisions, from the most basic to the most lasting, lacking specific knowledge about the outcome.
While most of his letters were written as semi-private counsel and consolation, some, like the “Letter to the Christians of Miltenburg” were written openly for public consumption.
Thomas was without a doubt a skeptic. And he was a skeptic without a doubt.
With this declaration of peace, Jesus was telling His disciples, ‘Because I died for you, you are now justified.’
For Luther, Jesus does something much better for those who grieve than simply identify with them: He brings suffering and evil to an end in His own death.
There is God. He existed before anything existed, for he has always existed and he will always exist. He created everything that exists outside of himself, and therefore he owns it all, including humankind.
As usual, Luther took what he received and turned it inside-out, so that it shifted from a series of demands and became a bestowal of God’s gracious promise.
At the core of Luther’s advice is the proclamation that we are free to hand over our pain, our sin, and our inabilities to our Savior.
When Lamech named his newborn son Noah—which means “rest”—he said, “This one shall give us comfort from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed”
Worship not only starts with God; it also returns to Him through the filter of the cross. Jesus did not enter a cosmic retirement after his ascension.
Only in this manner could the good that the law pointed to be completed. It was completed in us, not by us.
He looked me straight in the eye and said these words, almost in a challenging way, “I hate God. I do."