Robert Kolb

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.

The homiletical task of diminishing and debilitating mistrust begins, at every part of preaching, with the preacher.

Undershepherds of our shepherd go rejoicing as sheep among the lambs entrusted to us into God’s everlasting sheep pen, no shabby place to spend forever.

We encounter the triune God in various ways and unexpected places, at countless moments of our daily lives.

Wrestling alone puts us always at a disadvantage and every wrestling face-off needs a referee. Pastors are called to be such referees for their people.

What preacher’s deliver to their hearers is not just one or another gift, a present or two that enriches life. Preachers also deliver the very presence of the Lord.

Sermons begin with an audience of one, me. But, preaching to oneself is always dangerous.

Do we honestly believe what we tell our hearers really makes any significant difference in the coming week for them?

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours patience and hope into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Each day gives us occasion to die to our sinful identities of all kinds and to live out a life in Christ’s footsteps as children of God.

Golgotha is the point where not only Mary and John’s family life assumed a new character, but it is the point of orientation for all human community that uses the cross to straighten out the lives of individuals turned in upon themselves.

The cross does not remain on a hill far away. It pursues us into the valleys, the ravines, the crevices in which we get trapped as we wander in search of a fixed point for our lives.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance powers our ability to view the world with perceptive sensitivity and, therefore, to treat others fairly in the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours generosity and hospitality into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours kindness and gentleness into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance breaks through sorrow and worry; such trust pours joy into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours the ability to abandon fixing our eyes only inwardly and lets us see ourselves as others see us.

Our trust in Jesus pours contentment into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours gratitude into the way we think and the way we experience life.

God makes all things new. He refashions us from those turned in upon ourselves, turned to idols of our own choice and making, to experience the freedom He gives by pronouncing us His righteous children.

As we close out an old year, Saint Silvester can remind us God is the Lord of history and He has used and is using even people whose lives sink largely or totally into obscurity to keep the confession of our faith in Jesus Christ alive.

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 evaluation of us.

As long as our illusions of control over storms and germs persist to govern our thinking, we will never be able to take the saving work of Christ as seriously we ought.

The Church's hymns help us see our own world from another—and perhaps not so different—vantage point that illuminates the impact of the work of Christ and the general providing and protecting activity of our Creator in our lives.

God does not take us out of a world of evils of various kinds, but He does stand beside us and accompany us, as a shepherd accompanies his sheep, through valleys of shadows of all kinds.