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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Jesus is both the image bearer and the image giver. In Jesus’ incarnation we are redeemed and re-imaged.
Getting ready for Christ’s coming is a practice in humility.
Each week during this year’s Advent series, we will take a look at a specific implication of Christ’s incarnation. This week, we will discover how God reaffirms the goodness of his creation by making all things new in the incarnation.
“The days are coming,” and God said it. God, who kept his promise that Christ would come at Christmas.
If Jesus is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, everything his enfleshment brings is already assured: life, salvation, and forgiveness.
In Genesis 1-2, the Lord reveals—or, at a bare minimum, starts dropping some big hints—that he will be quite comfortable becoming a human being himself someday.
Thanksgiving utters a confession of dependence, an acknowledgement of the gift of something not earned or deserved.
The youths that mock Elisha are representative of Israel’s collective contempt and disregard for all things relating to their One True God.
Our experience with good fathers – even when they are not our own – can point us to God the Father.
One could reason that God might, at least, give the church a little worldly power.
Wilson reminds his reader over and over again that, in his love, God accepts sinners as they are so that we may be delivered from the self-acceptance, self-worship, and self-justification of our selfish definitions of love.
Christ has taken our failures and defeats and exchanges that yoke for his own.