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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I came across a "deep commentary" in the form of a Facebook meme, extolling the frustrations of the natural man's inability to understand the things of God.
God the Father Almighty is good. And He must be good in ways that surpass my earthly father.
Surely everyone reading at one time or another in their lives has heard the popular phrase I’m writing about today.
As it turned out, the novels in which I had sought escape, became part of the means whereby the Lord rescued me from my own death.
So what's the back side? What's the promise? We shall not have other gods, but we do have the one, true God—the promise of a God for us.
The manna God provides is never tasty enough. God never lives up to your expectations. So silently or audibly you wish for an easier way.
The mother of this prophet is visited by the Mother of God. In the coming together of these two pregnant women, we see the coming together of the old and the new.
He loved me, to be sure, but in a very nondescript, emotionally detached way, which is the way my grandfather loved him.
As C. S. Lewis, in "The Magician’s Nephew", has Aslan sing the world and all its beautiful intricacies into existence, so the Lion of the tribe of Judah, our Lord Jesus, hymns the heavens and earth into being.
Is God the perfect loving father for whom we have all longed; or is he an angry, blood-thirsty deity who can only be appeased by the torture and death of his own child?
Nevertheless, we believe, teach, and confess that this unlikely King advents weekly to meet with His people in the Divine Service through His Word and Sacraments.
Here’s what lurks beneath this seemingly righteous behavior: they wanted to make a name for themselves, these tower-builders.