Paradoxes hold everything together, not just in Inception’s plot, but in your life and mine.
We don’t flinch at sin. We speak Christ into it.
One might say that the first statement of the Reformation was that a saint never stops repenting.

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This sermon was originally given at Luther Seminary chapel on May 20, 1986.
God has the power to take that which is small, that which is overlooked, that which is despised, and use it to create something wonderful.
Let us not recoil at the sight and sound of the crucifixion. It is the battlefield of victory. It is the throne of the King. It is the symbol of salvation.
Isaiah says in summary “liturgical ritual without works is dead” because we render the meaningful worship of God meaningless and even sinful when we do not love our neighbor.
Predestination, Jim knew, is no longer a frightening doctrine of mystery when you understand that God makes his choice about you in the simple word of God, given from one sinner to another.
He has given us more than a surprise Gospel in our text. He has given us everything we need for life and salvation in Him.
Christianity is not principally about ethics. It was the Cross on the Hill rather than the Sermon on the Mount which produced the impact of Christianity upon the world.
I hope your people expect and even demand this of you. But how we proclaim the central message, that can (and probably should) vary.
Authentic proclamation, then, is the love of Christ for our souls, which we have seen and experienced through the under-shepherd’s pastoral care put into the words of Christ Himself.
This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023). Now available for purchase.
Though it may feel to us like the darkness is winning, God’s Word reveals the darkness is waning. The Light of the world has come.
The Church becomes anti-church when the new world order Christ inaugurated by eliminating demographic division through the commonality of Baptism is exploded by allegiance to cults of personality.