This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 74-77.
“The Church exists to tell anyone and everyone who knocks on her door wondering what’s inside: Come and see” (pg. 58). Such reminders make The Church a worthwhile read.
The way of the cross is the actual way of victory. Jesus absorbs the worst of what humanity and even the devil can do to him, and he spurns the shame of it all.

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All this disciplined living is to be done in freedom.
God is used to working with colorful figures. One of the most colorful in the Bible is Balaam. Hailing from Mesopotamia, Balaam was what we might call a shaman or a soothsayer.
The following is an excerpt from Law and Gospel in Action written by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2019).
We’ve all been there, waiting in line to check out, and the person ahead of us questions the price of something that was just rung up.
When we say “forgiveness,” we mean, “Jesus.” When we say, “righteousness,” we mean, “Jesus.”
Did the Apostle Paul just say that “he fills up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ?" That seems a little at odds with Jesus’ statement, "It is finished."
The history of the early Reformation in the New World is both a tale of pirates and the battle of catechisms.
Scripture is clear: God’s Spirit pursues sinners from conception to the grave with his life-giving Gospel and gifts.
The Scriptural pictures of atonement offer every Christian comfort and hope against sin through the power of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
We all know that Jesus can save sinners, unbelievers, pagans and heathens, all of them great or small; sinners who have been very good at being sinners. You’ve likely seen it yourself or at least heard of it happening.
This plague is no new thing. A dreaded deformity of disobedience clung to every soul since Adam and Eve.
Jesus is the heart of the Gospel, and the Gospel is Good News. But it is always Good News that comes to us best on the lips of another.