Robert Kolb

Above all, pastors must aim their preaching at the people God has placed in the care of the pastor rather than airing pious ideas that did not speak to their situations.

Our words of proclamation from the pulpit not only bring repentance and comfort, enacting in our hearers an exchange of sinful identity for the identity of God’s child, but also the motivation and fuel for loving others.

Trust may risk, but trust produces a sense of assurance letting us rest easy and enjoy peace while it drives us to ventures which may seem dangerous but are possible to do because trust defies the dangers.

Forgiveness is ours, Luther continually proclaimed, because Christ has put His claim on our sins and taken them as His own to the Cross and into His tomb.

Reconciliation with God affirms the worth of our persons, and it banishes the inhibitions and fears, as well as the resentments and desire for revenge, which create gulches between us and those around us.

Jesus purifies His own and ends their identification as unfit to appear in His presence or in front of other people as the person we identify as our true self.

This restoration to righteousness that results in our freedom for loving and supporting other people whom God places within our reach takes place, Luther believed, through Christ’s liberating victory over Satan.

Belonging to Christ means we have a place where we fit, a resting place where we are at peace because we know our Lord accepts us as His own.

Imperatives are good for many things. Luther said the Law is good, but precisely because it is good, it has become poison and death to the bad. The Law does not give life but evaluates it, and we encounter day in and day out its negative evaulation of us.

Lenten meditation is the one time Luther might advise us to be turning in on ourselves--and taking a cold, honest glance. For only in the shadow of the Cross can we look honsetly into the cause of the death of the man from Nazareth, the second person of the Trinity.

Gerhard's preaching categories ring true of descriptions ring true of the ways in which we attempt to communicate the Gospel in the twenty-first century. His words of advice deserve our attention too.

The homiletical task of diminishing and debilitating mistrust begins, at every part of preaching, with the preacher. The person and message must, of course, must be kept distinct but they are never totally seperable in the minds of the hearers.

In the last two decades U.S. Americans have given way to fear of many things: economic decline, loss of values, limits on our personal rights, to name a few. Too many of us live with some sense of threat and menace hanging over our heads and haunting our hearts.

Good communication depends on trust to make such conversation work effectively. The truth springs, first, from God's own promise and the punch put into that promise by the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit.

Prechers translate as a calling. Called by God, they are given a message, and for most of their hearers it is to one degree or another a message in a language from afar, with strange concepts, sometimes with a more familiar ring, sometimes with a strange sound.

Today you’ll hear the giddy voice of Dr. Keith and the calm demeanor of Dr. Kolb as they go over the details concerning the history, background, and Loci of Philip Melanchthon. If you're even remotely interested in Lutheran theology this…

Hallo! This week the Thinking Fellows are in Germany as special guests to the Confessio Augustana conference. Capitalizing on this experience, Dr. Keith, and producer Caleb sit down with Drs. Bob Kolb and Uwe Siemon-Netto. Our guests along with Dr…