Fulfillment can sound awkward as a title or name, but it is one of the most prominent proclamations concerning Christ found in the New Testament.
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.

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I’ve always been more at home in the Old Testament than in the New Testament.
God is for us in His foolish, scarred Word and Wisdom. Nothing is against us, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
Apologetics isn’t optional for the Christian, just as Christ isn’t optional to apologetics.
This reflection was adapted from Sexy: The Quest for Erotic Virtue in Perplexing Times (1517 Publishing, 2017).
In him, retribution is set aside. Forgiveness comes. A new order begins. Remember that God’s mission will prevail, because grace is in, with, and under the fabric of human history.
Only a god could be wise. We are seekers, lovers of divine wisdom, but it is forever beyond our grasp due to human limitation.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that simple boy. An orange sky warms the deserted streets with the final glow of safe light.
In an age when the phrase “new and improved” applies to everything from phones to marriages, when we as a nation mimic juveniles, lustily pursuing the next new thing, the worst decision a church can make is to cater to this weakness.
We are all sojourners in a perilous cosmos, what is sometimes conceptualized as the theology of the pilgrim.
Our little congregation is part of a much larger church—the body of Christ, both here on earth as well as in heaven. And that church worships 24/7, never ceasing in its adoration of Jesus our Savior.
We strive, in short, to master the art of swatting mosquitoes. And all the while, we remain blind to the fact that in pulpit after pulpit, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is as rare as Merry Christmas inside a synagogue.
Luther accepted Augustine’s view of the church as a mixed body.