Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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To say that whoever loves has been born of God is also to say that those who are born of God are recipients of love. They do not have God because they love but because they are loved.
Jesus is the anti-Cain: a giver, not a taker.
Hope is found precisely while we’re dead.
Lord, today we remember...
Walking in the light doesn't entail a spotless moral record but rather an honest appraisal of who we are.
Faith is like a horse with blinders because it only beholds God’s promise. It is obsessed with what God has already said.
Our only hope in life and death is that God loves sinners, who fail and forget constantly, with a love that is just as constant.
If you want something empty, the tomb is the way to go. The point of the manger is that Jesus was in it. The point of the cross is that Jesus was on it.
Your loving Lord is not oblivious to your pain and sadness.
The point Luther made, again and again, was that distance between God and sinners is collapsed when the crucified Christ himself comes to sinners through a preacher.
The promise here is that God is present with us in our troubles, issuing commands to save us before we ask. God does not ignore our suffering and cries.
We cannot love first. Therefore God comes, takes hold of the heart, and says: "Learn to know me."