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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We sinners share a common problem when it comes to Jesus’ parables. We read them with an eye to our own righteousness.
The Christian Church is one of the last refuges in modern American society where people who have perpetrated or suffered trauma and violence can gather together to receive the truth about themselves.
The accusations of the voices we hear on a daily basis are deafening. There is no shortage of voices that will remind us of our failures.
I walk in the local mall for exercise several times a week. I purposely avoid weekends and hours when the mall is likely to be crowded because, while I am not a racewalker, I do like to keep up a steady pace as opposed to stopping, starting and inching and this is difficult to achieve even when there are few people around.
Just when we think we had it all under control, Christ breaks into the midst of our futile efforts to save ourselves.
The idea is that Jesus has called His church to make disciples, and since the church doesn’t look much like the One they are following, the people need to be changed.
Ultimately, however, we find in the Heidelberg Disputation the root and core of Luther’s theology, which he would build and expound upon throughout his life.
For every child in a mother’s womb, the whole host of heaven and earth, indeed God himself, intercedes.
“My Old Man” is the story of a single father, a grossly flawed character, told through the eyes of his son who can’t help but love him.
You can see it far off, looming on the horizon, a thick fog menacing off the coast and swirling in the distance. You know the signs.
In Christ we are already dead to sin and the eternal consequences of sin. “There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,” writes Paul (Romans 8:1).
Yet, just as the Jews had two choices, true God or no God, the Christian has the same, true Jesus or no Jesus.