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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It’s time to call bull on a theology the dominates Christianity.
We want to know how God rules this world, how he is present in all things, how he exerts his control over the course of world events. We want to know why some get cancer and some don’t, why terrible things happen to the best of people, why volcanoes erupt and hurricanes strike and fires consume.
When we explain away God’s Word, we jettison the reality of our ominous diagnosis in the “Thou shall/shall nots” of the law, and with it the sweet cure in the, “This is My body/blood” of the Gospel.
One thing is for certain: my day was heaven compared to his. My minor headaches nothing compared to whatever he was going through.
The most powerless person in this story is the key to it all. God uses her who is nothing to effect everything.
We can leave all the stuff of life behind, because our great treasure God flaunts before the world on Calvary.
The Christian faith makes a bold claim: We are the world's problem, but we are not the world's solution.
We treat the Scriptures as if they’re our literary property to toy with as we please.
A promise was made to my older brother roughly 50 years ago. He was just an infant and had no idea that this promise was being set upon him.
Being a Christian is hard because it’s easy.
The time constrained authoring of the Augustana caused great angst, for the part of Melanchthon that was never satisfied with his own literary output.
What we see in the face of this God is not a loathing expression. We find the face of a compassionate man who knew all about shame himself.