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The 1517 Blogcast is a daily, microcast of articles from 1517. These articles share insight from a community of writers communicating the proclaimed forgiveness through Christ's death and resurrection, the importance and relevance of historical Christianity and defense of the faith through Christian apologetics.
When there is no “shining example” to follow or moral hero to aspire to, we are compelled to cry for Someone Better to instill in us the hope we so desperately crave.
Strasbourg’s hymnals are especially relevant to American Lutherans because much of what we experience in our churches comes to us from Strasbourg.
If you are a Christian, you already have what you need to give a reason for the hope within you. That reason, though, is not you.
It is an epic event when the One who makes the world names us as a gift, baldly stating reality.
Little did they know that the one showing them all this kindness was the very one they had betrayed.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.
The Holy Maker is going to create what no one ever sees: something from a nothing, someone from a no-one.
Eucatastrophe is the coming untrue of all sin, evil, and death. And where that starts is the empty tomb of the risen Jesus.
In Israel today, it's still possible to witness the same scene the disciples saw 2000 years ago when the Bedouin shepherds bring their flocks home from various pastures at the end of the day.
The notion that your goodness is “good enough” to make you right with God is a lie straight from the father of lies himself.
The Church isn't built or expanded by human efforts but by Christ himself, the chief cornerstone of our faith.
There and back again is not just a hobbit story. It is the story of Good Friday and Easter. Jesus journeyed to the cross, through the grave, and rose from the dead on the third day.
The church is called to preach the good news of Jesus Christ. Where is that message found? In every blade of grass, on every page of Scripture.
Sometimes, we get prayer dementia. We can’t remember what we were going to pray for, we can’t put the words together, and, frustrated, there is nothing we can do but sigh and groan.
The number forty calls to remembrance narratives of God’s great acts of redemption, but also our conformity to and participation in those narratives.
Legalism invites you to look and observe and see what Christ wants from you, to follow his example, and to do what Jesus would do. The gospel proclaims Jesus as your Savior and Mediator and therefore shus your eyes and opens your ears to the Word of God.
One day, either through the firestorms of life or the decay of time, our earthly love will end up in ashes.
We’ll find that the driving impulse of Lent isn’t so much “giving up” things as it is “putting on” something
At the Transfiguration, we say farewell to alleluia and hello to the horrific reality of our lost condition.
This is what drove Rod’s theology—that the good news—that Jesus died for sins and rose for the justification of the sinner—is for you and for all people.
The essence of what it means to be a son or daughter of Abraham, an inheritor of the Abrahamic promise, was irrevocably tethered to faith.
Anderson encourages us to meditate upon the ways that Christ truly is the end of our exploring.
Confession and absolution offer more than assurance, they gift real and genuine Divine promises.
When I came to view my own difficulties through the lens of Lewis’ work, I realized that I was not so much rebelling against God as longing for him.
How can he say it? How can he say that Christ is after all the entire meaning of life for him, and that death is no real worry?
The legacy of Jonah is troubled with most remembering him not for what he said but for what he did: run away.
Of all the Inklings, Williams was certainly the most enigmatic. His mind and body were always moving.
God knows that when we face insurmountable odds in our moments of weakness, we are more likely to turn to him in trust and reliance.
If poetry elevates its subject, we could also say the reverse: the subject, in this case, the Most High God, elevates the language.
Even at Lewis’ graveside, Havard was a faithful friend, and a friend full of faith in Christ, confessing his hope in the resurrection.
The Lord has remembered to help his servant Israel, to fulfill his promises to Abraham and to his offspring forever, not mostly or mainly because of his mercy, but exclusively so.
This week, we’ll take a closer look at what it means to have a God who remembers us. Today, 1517 Scholar in Residence Chad Bird first introduces the Old Testament meaning behind the word and the Hebrew way of remembering.
Remembering is not recalling, its reflexing. It’s not meditating on things past and gone, but mediating into the present the truths learned in the past.
When God remembers his covenant with Noah and causes the flood to subside, he also chooses to forget.
Faith sees your neighbor not as a means to an end, not as a way to score points, but as an object of love: Christ's love and yours.
Barfield taught Lewis the importance of balancing both reason and the imagination, both the rational and creative sides of the mind, something which was deeply influential in Lewis’s later apologetic, imaginative, popular, and scholarly writings.
This communion is like a hospital for wounded souls, a place where people can be brutally honest, emotionally naked, and receive fellowship from their brothers and sisters in Christ.
The issue is not the existence of so-called inner rings, but our desire and willingness to spend our lives in order to gain from an inner ring what is freely promised in Christ: hope, security, and identity.
The only place to begin a discussion of human/creaturely identity is with our relationship to the God whose breath filled dust, brought us to life, sustains us and gives us a hopeful future.
A pastor is sent to proclaim the unconditional grace of God, reminding us again and again that it is our Heavenly Father who reaches out to us in love through his Christ-won forgiveness, and not the other way around.
God’s published will offers us anchorage, the anchorage of Jesus Christ, in the midst of chaos, reminding us that there is a greater purpose to our lives than the pursuit of worldly success or fleeting pleasures.
I do not see how the existence of aliens would impact the gospel's validity for us in any significant way.
If God doesn't actually, show up in real human history and translate himself into the one category we know and understand best—the category of humanity itself—then we are orphaned and alone in the universe.
If we believe that ours is truly the greatest story ever told, then we must share that story in creative ways and allow it to change the desires of its hearers.
The point is this: Christ Jesus brings his word and presence to where you are and he is even willing to do so through the likes of your personally present pastor.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep bursts through the confines of convention and demands that we embrace the messiness of life and the unpredictable ways in which God's grace and forgiveness operates.
Caesar boasted: “I came. I saw. I conquered.” Christ can rightly say: “I came. I saved. I ascended.”
It’s not our eloquence or persuasive rhetoric that changes hearts, but the Word of God that pierces through the hardened shells of unbelief and breathes life into the dead bones of sinners.
This is an excerpt from chapter 9 of What Can Really Know?: The Strengths and Limits of Human Understanding by David Andersen (1517 Publishing, 2023).
The Lord’s Prayer is liturgy and catechism, action and instruction, praxis and theology.
Tim wanted everyone to know to the deepest part of their being that they were justified by Christ alone.
The Lord’s prayer is a prayer in perfect accord with the will of God, and Jesus gifts it to us to plagiarize at will.
Walther’s living legacy is his enduring teaching on how to distinguish the law and the gospel in the Church’s proclamation.
Judas’ sins helped Jesus to the cross; our sins held Him there. Judas was a horse. Peter was a horse. I’m a horse. You’re a horse.
A father's struggle to pray for his child's healing is one of the most difficult experiences he can face.
Only by accurately and honestly reporting the views of those with whom we disagree can we then properly address and refute them. This is the approach Solberg has taken, both in his book and in his videos.
This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
Dear hearers of the word of God, you are finished. You cannot be the same now. All that is ended, over.
Maundy Thursday is your big night. For the Passover Lamb is given for you, given to you.
In the years I worked at camp, very few left camp without hearing The Legend of the Dogwood.
We are the fruit of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We sinners have been called and saved by the Holy Spirit.
When we meditate on Jesus’ last supper, and come to the Lord’s Supper, it is a powerful testimony of the paradoxical nature of faith.
Sunshine and rain, food and harvests, family, friends, and health, love and joy. All these things and more he gives, not because of what you do or don’t do, but because he is generous and gracious.
Unprompted, without any warning, for no reason at all, without any instigation say, "I love you." And that will wash over your parents like a beautiful absolution.
If you interpret James, as most do, as an encouragement toward proving your faith by your works and then say it is your "favorite" then you are proclaiming that your favorite thing about the Christian faith is the practical outworking, the proving your faith by your works.
When I finished the book, I loved the Bible, and the Bible’s author, even more. And I can’t imagine a better endorsement than that.
Zephaniah has given us something more visceral to help us understand the love of God: the sound of salvation.
The earliest followers of God sang their faith, which is no different today as we sing of the hope we have in Jesus.
We are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
Hidden beneath the sinner is a glorious saint. Jesus has declared it to be so in your baptism.
Love is more than a feeling; love is the person and work of Jesus Christ incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended, and reigning.
The words exchanged from one believer to another count as preaching, as long as Christ for you is the punchline.
Forty days after giving birth, Mary, along with her husband Joseph, presented their firstborn Son at the temple and "bought" him back with a sacrifice of two small birds. This is known as the "Presentation of Our Lord."
Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
He gives us the power and authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins to burdened sinners who entrust us with their pain, guilt, and defeat.
The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
The answer to our messages is God's "yes," Jesus, who sends his preachers to proclaim that there's no place for us now other than in the grip of our God and Savior.
The usual acclamation when one becomes King is: “Long live the King!” But this King of kings, this son of David, has come to die.
To trust in the Lord, the Messiah, the Deliverer, is our salvation and our only hope. Yet he does not trust us to have this “trust” on our own or of our own will.
A.I. can’t make the proclamatory move that delivers God’s word in a way that is specifically for me.
Take courage, you who were lost: Jesus comes to seek and save that which is lost. Ye sick, return to health: Christ comes to heal the contrite of heart with the balm of his mercy. Rejoice, all you who desire great things: the Son of God comes down to you that he may make you the co-heirs of his kingdom.
Hains offers a novel yet simple contention: Luther is most catholic where he is boldest.
He’s big enough for you. O weary ones, O long-time waiting and watching ones, O ones who are late to the game, he is your rest this busy season, and always.
In whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence he might recall them, and teach them of his own true Father, as he himself says: I came to save and to find that which was lost.
By his first Advent in the flesh, through his second Advent with bread and wine and water and Word, we await his third Advent at the end.
The waiting of Advent isn’t just for Christmas; it’s for God’s reversal of all sin and evil and his renewal of all things.
It is terribly easy to set up our theology as a buffer against the real coming of the Lord and its consequences.
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of him who works.
It all starts with God; and it all ends with God. He is the alpha and omega of giving and generosity.
We ache in eager anticipation as we see Christ in action and as we take in the snapshots of his life, death, and resurrection.
A theologian is a passive receiver of God’s active revelation about Jesus Christ, his words, works, and ways.
Help comes for those who cannot help themselves. When we bottom-out and come to the end of ourselves, that is where hope springs.
While we are looking for reasons to cancel one another, our God comes running down the road to greet us.
We live again, not so that we will now pay our debt, but to proclaim that we live because our debt was paid.
Vrtues aren’t abstractions. We don’t learn them intellectually. We don’t practice them like the piano or layups. They’re done to us.
From the beginning to the end of his letter, John really wants one thing: for us to be in Jesus.
If our relationship with God is primarily about instructions, commands, behavior, then we’ll be well-versed in the do’s and don’ts, the checklists, but not in what matters most, the center of all Christian teaching and the Christian life, Jesus Christ.
This is an excerpt from the Sinner/Saint Advent Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2022), written by Kathy Morales and Kyle G. Jones.
If a key part of the Reformation was placing God’s Word back into the hands of the people in a clear, understandable way, then John of Ragusa can be called a “Prometheus” in his own right.
When the Reformers read the Bible (especially when studied in the original languages), they found a God who was gracious and merciful for the sake of Christ.
The good news is that with our God there is always more: more than we deserve, dare, ask, or expect, more than we can see, hear, feel, or think.
Sometimes in hanging on to our useless guilt, we are idolaters. We believe our sin or conscience is more powerful than our God.
We can appreciate what we have received from God, we can receive it all as free gift, but only when we stop investing in fool's gold
In the Reformation, as in the tabernacle, God gave skill, artistry, and craftsmanship to put his Word in images so that through art, his Word would be revealed.
We need to hear the gospel because it is good news that is not from you, or about you, or because of you.
This is an excerpt from the Sinner/Saint Advent Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2022). Now available for purchase from 1517 Publishing
It seems to me that our greatest task is not that of seeking skills and methods whereby we can inject power into the gospel, but simply to beware lest we obscure the power that the gospel is.
Christ is not an idea. He isn’t a concept. He isn’t a religious notion or sentiment. He isn’t a product. He is the Savior, flesh and blood,
Luther's September Testament not only shaped the reformers’ theology but also was as big an influence on the German language as Shakespeare was for English.
This is an excerpt from “The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah” written by Steve Kruschel (1517 Publishing, 2019).
It’s the notion of mercy that leads us to the atonement, and it is the atonement that provides a foundational basis for the justification of sinners.
The one who embodies the dove, that is, the Holy Spirit will be mounted upon the staff of Calvary.
Increasingly, to forgive is seen as winking at evil, as shrugging one’s moral shoulders, and as being complicit.
The power of the Word of God is the power of God himself, for he is always faithful to his Word.
A group of unassuming apostles was given a graphic illustration of how the Lord would use them to turn the world right-side-up through the upside-down logic of grace.
Good, we tend to think, is the absence of evil. But this reversal of the formula can only have disastrous consequences.
When you see the Ichthus you see what Christians have seen for thousands of years: a picture that confesses, communicates, and teaches us the love of God in Christ Jesus his Son, our Savior.
The legal record of debt for our sin was canceled because Jesus satisfied the legal demands for us by his life, death, and resurrection.
Walking in the light entails not so much a spotless moral record, but rather an honest appraisal of who we are.
If you are going to lose your life for the gospel’s sake, you must begin by hearing it.
Our value and our values, our life, our everything is from Jesus Christ given to us as a gift.
God is consistently rooting us in reality—both what is seen and unseen—because that is where he is.
When we confess that we believe in God and his saving work for us in Jesus, we also confess a reality about ourselves as sinful people and about God as our gracious forgiver.
We bring nothing with us that contributes to the preaching or the hearing of God’s promise to us.
God’s goodness spoke a promise of peace and mercy to the bewildered, a promise that rings out to this day.
Our challenge today is to inspire trust and curiosity so this generation will openly ask the question, who speaks the words of truth?
At the heart of The Idiot is Dostoevsky's confession of faith and the confession of all Christians.
We cannot overstate that no person outside the Bible has been as influential to Christian theology as Augustine.
Origen is wrong about stuff, but he had the foresight to say that if he was wrong, he was open to correction.
Finding the balance between indifferentism and obsessiveness has never been easy, and it’s especially difficult in our environment.
Sometimes I think we should be more tempted to laugh at the gospel than we are, not in derision but in sheer surprise and awe.
To return to Marx then, with the Bible, we can say that man is not simply a material being but a being of address.
This week, we are grateful to publish a series of sermons from our beloved late Chaplain, Ron Hodel. This is the fifth installment of that series.
This week, we are grateful to publish a series of sermons from our beloved late Chaplain, Ron Hodel. This is the fourth installment of that series.
God has a plan for this world that he put into place from eternity, a plan that is carried out in Jesus Christ and promises unimaginably great blessings for believers.
This week, we are grateful to publish a series of sermons from our beloved late Chaplain, Ron Hodel. This is the second installment of that series.
This week, we are grateful to publish a series of sermons from our beloved late Chaplain, Ron Hodel. This is the first installment of that series.
Our only hope in life and death is that God loves sinners, who fail and forget constantly, with a love that is just as constant.
That on Pentecost God’s Spirit should function through a dozen seeming inebriates should be no surprise when this same God saves through the ignominy of the cross.
The relationship between faith and prayer or belief and worship is mutual. Faith produces prayer and prayer expresses faith.
In the face of abject evil, these two faithfully cling to the words and truths of he alone who is Good, Jehovah God.
The list of things our kids need to know when they leave the house is much simpler than we might believe.
In the face of abject evil, these two faithfully cling to the words and truths of he alone who is Good, Jehovah God.
If you want something empty, the tomb is the way to go. The point of the manger is that Jesus was in it. The point of the cross is that Jesus was on it.
I trust that because of the gospel, God will continue to mend what I, in my sin, continue to break.
1517 would not exist without the leadership, friendship, and faithfulness of Pastor Ron Hodel.
Jesus does not put us on trial and make us pay for our own sin, but he, himself, is put on trial in our place.
The point Luther made, again and again, was that distance between God and sinners is collapsed when the crucified Christ himself comes to sinners through a preacher.
Armed with great analogies, airtight logic, and razor sharp wit, Lewis keeps you spellbound from one chapter to another as you find yourself going “further up and further in.”
God’s gifts, in turn, conform our minds to the mind of Christ, and catechize our imagination in the image of God’s Son.
But make no mistake, sinners are in fact being pursued by a most hideous beast called sin, death, and the devil, unleashed and striking continuously.
Nothing stands against you. Only Christ stands now, and he is for you, more for you than you could ever know, for you like nothing else that has ever loved you.
The God who abundantly restores is still in the business of total restoration, even today. Even now the God of heaven restores dead sinners to life.
Every part of Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene in John 20 was incredibly intentional and personal for God to systematically redeem what was lost.
Almost a year after entering the monastery, on May 2nd, Cantate Sunday, in the year 1507, Luther celebrated his first Mass.
This is an excerpt from “A Shepherd’s Letter” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2022).
Baptism is not the moment God judges our true, inner hearts. He already knows all about that, and it isn’t good.
This book is not in your hands so that we can simply commiserate with each other’s difficulties. It is meant to pierce your sin-darkened night with the light of God’s Word.
While so much remains the same week after week, the past years have taught me how much changes. And I kind of like it.
To help us navigate the psalms, probe their depths, and untangle their mysteries, we need wise guides
God has found a way to be God even for the likes of us. He has found a way to save sinners.
Today, Maundy Thursday, we receive the feast of Christ’s true body and blood for us, for the forgiveness of our sins. All of them.
Christ has come to make every last aspect of your life the object of his eternal, never-ending, always transitive grace.
The Savior wasn’t always forthright with his intentions behind using and relaying certain parabolic narratives. This he did not because he relished in callously or coyly playing with the truth about his Father’s kingdom, but because he purposed to impress upon sinners the necessity of faith.
Easter must be seen in light of the cross. It must never overshadow Good Friday. They are a packaged deal!
Great things are contained in these seemingly unimportant words: "Behold, your king." Such boundless gifts are brought by this poor and despised king.
Scott Hall may not have been a theologian or a preacher but for me, at that moment he might as well have been.
False holiness is always a possession and achievement of the individual in isolation from the good of others. And so it isn’t holiness at all.
What grace is this? It’s grace from Christ, who often seizes us when we least expect it, even through the hands of His enemies.
The promise here is that God is present with us in our troubles, issuing commands to save us before we ask. God does not ignore our suffering and cries.
When you are stripped down to nothing, desperate, lowly, you will again know what she knows: the crumbs are enough, Jesus is enough, for you.
We cannot love first. Therefore God comes, takes hold of the heart, and says: "Learn to know me."
God is often hidden in history, even as we make it now, but He is always manifest where He has promised to be.
Lent means that we do not have to look to ourselves but can look to our neighbor in love as Christ has loved us.
For Luther, those who refuse Christ as a curse want their sin removed not in Christ but in themselves.
When we own up to our sin, our Father is not scandalized, and his response is not to reconsider his calling us.
Confession is not another ecclesiastical bludgeon but is instead a gift. There we can tell the truth about ourselves, knowing that Christ has only mercy for us in response.
God is mercy. He was mercy then. He’s mercy now. God showed them His glory, if only a reflection, in the face of Moses.
This is the patient love of God. He is stubborn about the salvation of sinners. He will not be rushed even if his name is mocked, and the trustworthiness of his promises are called into question.
Christ powerless on the Cross is where the false definitions of glory theologies are exposed and everything is turned upside down.
The firestorm of the Reformation which turned Europe upside-down was not Luther’s doing. It was the Word, and the Spirit working through it.
Luther’s confessions and writings during that time demonstrated the diagnosis of the problem he faced had always been the same.
Only in Christ has God taken upon himself the worst that could ever happen between God and man: he has allowed himself to be rejected.
Maybe it was because I read this book to put myself to sleep. But maybe the lack of any Christian references was part of my sadness.
The problem with sin is that we fail to honor God who wants to take our hearts captive and fill us with his goodness.
I finally watched the film “Encanto” with my kids. I had heard many people say the subtext of this movie was deeper than most. So, we snuggled up on the couch and watched it to see what everyone was talking about.
The language of faith speaks promise and persecution, hope and trial, victory and pain. The language of the world may well speak the former, but rarely the latter.
An immense amount of ink has been spilled contesting and interpreting Bonhoeffer's significance as a figure of Christian history and a theologian of the church.
The world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.
Rest doesn’t come cheap. Perhaps there’s no scarcer commodity in our time. Plenty sell it, but there’s no warranty, and it seldom lasts.
When we read a good story, we sojourn with the characters and authors upon the trail of longing. Such is the pilgrim’s path.
The sword of the spirit in Holy Scripture does indeed show us our sin, but thanks be to God, it also shows us our Savior.
Our hope is God's mercy. It's like a well that never dries up. His mercies were there before he created us. They are present for us today.
If we think God’s power, love and beauty are reserved merely for the glories of Transfiguration, then we have not understood the Father; we have not understood divine revelation.
Here, robed in Word and Sacrament, is your King, infant though He be, come out of eternity into time to bring you out of time and into eternity.
Our children are not our own, but even more, our children are born in need. They are sinful, from conception and from birth.
I write this as someone who’s genuinely concerned that American congregants are getting bamboozled by preachers who are giving them less than what they need Sunday after Sunday.
At its heart, this is what Deacon King Kong is all about: the paradox of Jesus carving his victory out of the last thing we expect, not our triumphs but our defeats.
Our only claim to fame is that we have been claimed by a God who is consistently drawn to losers!
You are not in debt to sin. You don’t owe it anything. There’s no reason for you to serve it.
Meeting the crown prince is one thing; meeting God in the flesh, as the Light of the Gentiles and the Savior of the world is another.
Kelsi Klembara and Daniel Emery Price have a conversation with Scott Keith about the incarnation and why it matters. They are then joined by Blake Flattley to discuss the hymns of Christmas and the new Christmas EP “Jesus, Coming Light” from 1517 Music. Have a listen and Merry Christmas!
Let us ponder the Son, the precious Son of God, given as a ransom and sacrifice for us, that we too might be called children of God.
Gideon’s “foolish” weaponry of clay jars and shofars will give way to the Messiah’s “foolish” ways of doing things, for his weapons will be humility, fidelity, and, above all, the word of his Father.
Isaiah speaks to our time. He speaks to our rejoicing now and an anticipated joy-filled future. Christ’s coming, Christmas, brings them both.
Because of Christ, we find safety and healing in the light. Because of Christ, we do not have to be afraid of the truth that his light reveals.
We don’t have to worry about deserving, earning, or reciprocating his gifts. Our Lord doesn’t give us what we deserve. We are given what he deserves, what Jesus has won for us.
Moses was sent to keep the house in order, but this Child is sent to bring the house home, and you are part of that house, the household of God.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 27 in “Pastor Craft: Essays and Sermons” written by John T. Pless (1517 Publishing, 2021).
The thought of losing even one of those for whom his Son died pains God beyond belief, and the angels rejoice when even one of his children repents.
So what, if anything, makes us different from those who are waiting on the grassy knoll in Dallas, TX? Can we be any more sure of our belief in the resurrection?
Jesus is both the image bearer and the image giver. In Jesus’ incarnation we are redeemed and re-imaged.
Christ, who is without sin, became sin. How did he do that? He had an incarnate body, which he did not spare
“The days are coming,” and God said it. God, who kept his promise that Christ would come at Christmas.
There is no other transitionary event in human history that warrants three full months of focused attention and persistent acknowledgment than the incarnation of the Son of God.
If Jesus is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, everything his enfleshment brings is already assured: life, salvation, and forgiveness.
In this meal, we have communion with him and with all of those who have and who will partake in it.
In the Lord’s Thanksgiving Supper, we are not served turkey, green bean casserole, and cornbread. We are served Christ.
The Word of Yahweh is not a trifling thing that can be visited only when it’s convenient. It’s a book of life, for all of life, that imparts life to those who believe in it and the God of it.
Forgiveness of sins does not come in bits and pieces. There are no levels of forgiveness.
The Reformation was yet another era of history when God’s people were faced with the question that Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”
We won’t use the right words, but the Holy Spirit is interceding with and for us, as we pray.
Reading, understanding, and studying Scripture is a life-long process of contemplation in conversation with others.
Our experience with good fathers – even when they are not our own – can point us to God the Father.
Jesus meets us in our life of lies, in our falsehoods, in the untruth of our being, and in the company, we create to cover up our nakedness.
Grace and mercy are a powerful act of the Almighty God. God alone can grant forgiveness and restoration, salvation from the sorrow of this world.
What do Habakkuk and Israel have? Nothing but the word of God. Nothing but the promise of God. Nothing but God himself.
In contrast to the human courts of our land, the Divine court never makes errors nor excuses
The same Spirit who gives us his overabundant life has also given us doctrine. Scripture and Spirit cannot be put in opposition to each other.
The tragedy of the incidental Christ I was raised with is that he was really no Savior at all.
Erasmus sought to find meaning behind the words of Scripture in order to make an ultimate claim. Luther, on the other hand, found the Gospel to be meaningless outside of Christ and his Cross.
While the insights in each chapter are uniquely personal to the individual writers, the overarching theme is one of the sufficiency of Christ.
Forty-five seconds is about how long I have as a pastor leading a Sunday morning service to sit at the feet of the cross and receive Jesus’ body and blood given to me by the hands of another at the Lord’s Table.
When we — sinful, reprehensible we — become the enforcers of justice, we never bring about true justice. We either go too far or not far enough.
Jesus came from the heights of heaven above to the depths of earth below to rescue and redeem his long-lost love.
The way to salvation does not consist in works invented by men, but that which leads to God is believing and trusting in Him.
Martha’s pain is not met by a to-do list. Jesus’ reply is not that she should try harder or change her behavior
Bo Giertz attained infamy in Sweden for a humble adherence to unpopular, orthodox practice and doctrine.
God and Jeremiah may have been looking at the same person, but they were seeing very different things.
Grace does not emancipate us from any requirement of obedience. Rather, grace allows Jesus to be obedient on our behalf that the righteous demands of the law can be fulfilled.
There are plenty of reasons why you do not already do whatever you want out of fear of the law, and you will find these reasons persist and remain long after the gospel has its way with you.
The goal of language in the mouth of a Christian isn’t to hold power for ourselves but to give it.
Except for the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon’s Loci communes of 1521 were the most important of his writings.
We shouldn't be surprised that God chose to work through two seemingly opposite people, however, because God always chooses to work in the ways we would least expect.
For Luther, Erasmus’ Christ-less, Spirit-less theological conclusions demonstrated that behind his supposed humanistic optimism lay a profound despair and pessimism.
God’s word is creative in both the imaginative sense and the constructive sense. It brings things into existence and displays new ideas, images, and concepts we did not previously perceive.
The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.
Despite his trust in empiricism, throughout his life, Locke never entirely let go of the inspired Scriptures—or perhaps more accurately, the Scriptures never let go of him.
The night has passed and the day broken. In response to the morning dawn, birds sing, beasts arouse themselves and all humanity arises.
For all mankind, the answer is terrifically simple and remains the same: God wants to turn us towards the cross and then turn us back to our neighbors.
It turns out that when Elijah battled depression, God sent someone to just be with him. To comfort him.
Although God is always closer to us than the nose on our face, he has not taken the wraps off and given any sinful and mortal human being a full-measure, face-to-face meeting.
Calvary is our mountain of pardon. It is the place which reveals most definitively God’s plan to redeem and reconcile sinners to himself.
This spiritual giant of the Middle Ages is worth considering on this anniversary of his death.
He picks the unexpected and the unlikely, and goes to the unforeseen places, stacking the odds against himself, in order that age after age might stand in open-mouthed wonder at his sovereignty in and over all things.
The grace of God does not save us at the beginning only in order to keep ourselves in his good graces by our good enough readiness.
Green is the color for “ordinary time” in the liturgical church year. It's the regular time of year that always gets overshadowed by other seasons such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.
Erasmus laid out his argument for a theology of grace and free will in much the same way modern Protestants have done since the Enlightenment.
For sinners who cannot seem to get out of their own way, Dane’s brings to bear the gospel of Christ’s heart, which aerates one’s spiritual lungs with undiluted grace.
Baptism is always valid because no unrighteousness or faithlessness on our part could nullify God’s faithfulness.
I am cognizant of the powerful lessons for life I owe to those nights in the air-raid shelter.
God will give you more than you can handle. But he doesn’t leave you alone. Not at all.
Luther's response to Erasmus was not meant to be a polite contribution to an academic duel.
The reason the mind is endlessly troubled about God predestining everything is the vague generalization. Generalizations are cold as ice, without the warm Christ.
It isn’t that God struggles to believe our repeated cries of “wolf.” Rather, we struggle to believe God when he repeatedly comes to us with forgiveness and mercy on his lips.
The Psalms aren’t the clandestine successes of a faithful soul, but are the journaled hopes of a desperate soul — of one teetering on the edge of oblivion.
We are not saved by the success of our refining process. We are saved precisely because our impurities, no matter what the percentage, ruin the whole thing.
Luther’s allies and opponents also would not allow him to put off responding to Erasmus indefinitely. They badgered him constantly to write a response.
The Church is where God has instituted the office of the preacher of the gospel. And if you are let-down, the gospel is what you need to hear.
Ascertaining the what and how of the Church greatly factor into the very purpose of the Church, that is, they essentially answer the question why the Church?
This is an excerpt from the introduction of “Urchin at War: Volume 1” by Uwe Siemon-Netto (1517 Publishing, 2021).
Through the often abominable and lamentable and occasional commendable season, there is one who remains unmoved by it all.
The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament by Chad Bird is now available to order
We do not have to endure the pain and suffering of this fallen existence forever, just for a little while.
But Jesus didn’t see it that way. He saw his arrest not as the kingdom’s program being thwarted but as it being “fulfilled.”
The acquisition of salvation, the giving of salvation, and the keeping of salvation are entirely dependent upon the Savior himself.
Questions of our purpose and significance as a church abound with fewer and fewer people in the pews.
What Luther is doing in his Catechism is teaching how the gospel is an action of the whole Trinity, not just one of the persons.
The only one rightful heir of the kingdom of God, inherits from us, our cross, and descends into the kingdom of the damned.
Jesus did not come because we had our act together. He came because we couldn’t get our act together.
The giver of life, the source of joy, stands weeping together with the human family as they grieve under the curse of sin.
With Jesus, troubles and sorrows, problems and worries, heartbreak and mourning are gathered up like left-over crumbs from a feast marking the celebration of victory over the enemy's forces.
We can not give our Heavenly Father anything that will make him love us more or less. He gives and we receive.
The reformers were compelled to confess the true faith and challenge corrupt practices—this is what the Augsburg Confession is about.
God invites you to confess the skeletons in your closet so that he might bury them in the grave for good.
The story of Juneteenth is one of living between proclamation and emancipation, and the story of the Christian faith is one of living in that same tension.
Christian hope means always hope in God and hope in Christ simultaneously without distinction.
The only one truly blessed of God, who in himself is God’s incarnate makarios, surrounds himself with a multitude of the accursed, the non-makarios.
We continue to run the race, knowing the victory has been won and given to us through Christ Jesus.
It is not her sacrifices that define Jane's faith, but her belief in the one who sacrificed for her.
This is an edited excerpt from “The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah” written by Steve Kruschel (1517 Publishing, 2019).
That a celestial phenomenon should be appropriated worldwide for iconic value or to illustrate a mythological legend makes perfect sense. One cannot copyright the rainbow.
Some of our 1517 staff members have shared what they are looking forward to reading in the coming months below. If you’re looking for titles to fill your own summer reading list, we hope this list is a helpful resource.
Jesus comes to you. He binds your wounds, and he pours out his body and his blood for the forgiveness of your sins.
This is an excerpt from “Hermeneutics in Romans: Paul’s Approach to Reading the Bible” written by Timo Laato (1517 Publishing, 2021). Now available for preorder.
Everyone is living as a naked sufferer who’s been duped into believing that the nakedness of suffering has to be covered up.
God daily broadsides us with his abundant power and glory as we observe nature around us. And yet, as glorious as this book of nature is, it is not enough.
The one true God has revealed himself as the answer to the longings of every human heart. The search has ended. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Holy, Holy, Holy.
If you and I were to examine our own lives, we’d likely have to admit that we are frequent disciples of Jeroboam’s “bootleg religion.”
God bestows faith that it should deal not with ordinary things, but with things no human being can master such as death, sin, the world, and Satan.
The law is good and holy but so often when we are “shoulding” on one another, we actually are just going to end up “burning” each other’s fields.
Pentecost reminds us of not only what happened on that day described in Acts 2 but what is happening every day: the Spirit of God working in and through God’s people, according to his word.
You and I have a God who pardons all our wrongdoing by taking all of them onto himself. He doesn’t zap us into oblivion at the first sign of rebellion.
Sin, death, and Satan may have had more than a puncher's chance to beat us, but when God stepped into the ring, they should have admitted defeat and thrown in the towel.
If the Risen Christ is ushering in a new kingdom and a new creation, then maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to see some earth-shaking and mind-blowing things taking place.
The whole point of Church is to be in a place that hands over the gifts and promises of Jesus Christ to dirty rotten sinners who are in desperate need of them.
In Christ, we live beneath an open heaven having the definitive proof in the cross of Christ that God is outrageously for us, not against us.
We confess the ascension of Christ every Sunday in the words of the both the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creed.
Death may speak, and its voice may sound authoritative and decisive. Nonetheless, it is a mere whimper from the grave.
We all know what I think (maybe) Rachel knows: Celebrating ourselves isn’t enough. It won’t ever be enough.
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Ragged: Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritually Exhausted written by Gretchen Ronnevik (1517 Publishing, 2021), 122-125. Now available for preorder.
God leads us to the refuge that’s more secure and safe than any man-made thing, more than anything we own, more than anything that owns us.
Those called out for their sins, who find themselves knee deep in their transgressions, always need grace.
When we come to God with our faithful obedience to make a case for our just cause, we expect to hear his deliverance in the form of a "yes."
People are searching for connection, direction, and hope in a troubled world, and we can use their star-shaped questions to point them to the shape of the cross.
The result of this day’s proceedings, in Luther’s mind, was likely to be a painful death at the stake.
Despite our continual choice to accept the devil's offer, the Lord still provides for us so that we, "shall neither hunger nor thirst."
Forde’s work testifies to the liveliness and vitality of confessional Lutheranism, and its promise for the continuing need to preach Christ crucified in this, and every, age until the Lord’s return.
The Holy Spirit does what his name implies. He makes us holy. We believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and come to him only by the Holy Spirit who calls us with the gospel.
Jesus’s touch of this leper is the touchstone of the gospel itself. It’s a living parable of his entire ministry.
The cross is not some mystic metaphor for the change we must undergo before our self-realization, but the earth-shattering event that changed the course of eternity.
We will always need comfort until the reign of God, his kingdom, comes in full with Christ’s return, and our suffering and the sin that causes it is no more.
Jesus offers to the anxious soul the one thing it ironically wants: certainty of the good.
God loves you no matter what. Loves you no matter how many times you have screwed up. Loves you to death, he does.
Tomorrow Jesus will laugh his way out of the tomb, spit in the face of death, and kick the devil in the throat as he dances to the clapping glee of angelic masses. But today he just rests. It is the final Sabbath of God.
The cross offends so much that the only way for it to free you is to stop looking at it and have it preached.
Good Friday encompasses the silence of God, even as it focuses on our salvation in the cross of Christ.
I can look at all of my failings and foolishness because I know who Christ is for me. I rest in his wisdom and life not my own.
This is not a plea for us to be given the strength to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. It is our helpless cry when boots – straps and all - slip off the edge of temptation’s cliff.
The true liberty that Christ gives to us through the gospel is not political. It is spiritual freedom. It is freedom from fear of God's judgment and wrath.
If sin is only a matter of “doing,” then “undoing” and/or “redoing” would serve as the equivalent savior necessary to find redemption.
Ultimately, there is only one Lord of the Universe, and he does not share power. If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.
The petition not to be led into temptation is found in just the right place within the seven petitions.
Though envy whispers to us that peace can only be found by “keeping up,” Jesus whispers to us a better word: “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest."
When you walk into church on Sunday, you may not notice, but there are wounded soldiers sitting in every single pew.
If Jesus is better than Moses, then everything changes. If Jesus is better than Moses, then the ultimate becomes the penultimate.
Jesus lives to intercede. So we needn’t bring him our feigned righteousness or our faux rehabilitation.
Repentance means being cut down by the law’s declaration of judgment. It’s not an activity we do to prepare for grace, but a point of despair worked by God himself.
If we want to see evidence of our Father’s answer to the Fifth Petition, we need only to look at the cross and the empty tomb.
Our ears are opened by the Spirit through the word. Then, faith in Christ is present in us.
It’s not the disciples’ faith that invented the resurrection but the resurrection that gave birth to the disciples’ faith.
In schools and on barstools and in delis and where two or three gather, your Savior turns you loose to encounter those who are delightful and loveable.
Even though the horn of plenty on our table is there as the fruit of our labor, that is also a gift of God’s grace.
God preserves language so he might continue to communicate his love and grace to us, and that we might communicate his love and grace to others.
Apathy, melancholy, and disillusionment plague the footsteps of the up-and-coming generations more than ever, especially in the realm of religion, and it’s worth asking, “Why?”
Nostalgia is a looter who impoverishes us of the truth that God is in our midst right now.
When it comes to the Book of Concord, there are really two types of people: those who read the contents and see a series of rap albums, and those who aren’t Flame.
Repentance comes on account of suffering, loss, failure, and death. It happens when the promise of forgiveness of sin given in Jesus’ death is proclaimed to us down-and-outers.
The “Word” isn’t a thing, it is a person, the Son of the Father, who with the Holy Spirit is one God.
The place where it is most difficult for us to accept God’s will is when suffering, calamities, and finally, death itself.
Yes, Adam and Eve both participated in sin. This was a joint effort of the two genders of mankind. They are both sinners. But the first sin wasn't letting the serpent in the garden.
The Bible is a book for the desperate. That is its target audience. Recognizing our desperation readies us to hear the consolation that only God’s Word can offer.
The forgiveness of your sins and your reconciliation with God the Father courtesy of Christ’s cross and blood is gifted to you, for you.
We cannot scan any random passage of Scripture and automatically assume the words are unconditionally addressed to us. Often, very often, they are not.
Ash Wednesday, is meant to remind us we have a death problem. All living things made from the soil shall return to it.
Jesus Christ is our peace because he doesn't criticize us. He declares us freed from our perceptions to accept the truth about ourselves.
Jesus is coming again to renew all things. It may seem somewhat hidden right now, but make no mistake, hope abides.
This second word—the gospel—is not something more to be done, but something to be believed. Which is to say, it is received through faith.
The paradoxical Puritan doctrines of an inability to convert oneself and the command to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling placed would-be converts like Mather in quite a bind.
Our prayer confesses that God’s abode is beyond us, yet ever so near for the prayer presupposes that we are being heard, even in our sighs and whispers.
Our prayer confesses that God’s abode is beyond us, yet ever so near for the prayer presupposes that we are being heard, even in our sighs and whispers.
We can celebrate what others consider mundane and ordinary because it's miraculous. After all, it's God-given.
God’s plans and purposes for this world aren’t dependent upon us. They’re dependent upon him. This means our faith is liberated.
God is not what we experience him to be, what our emotions narrate him to be, or what our intuition thinks he might be. God is what and who he says he is.
Regardless of my experience, my talents, or even my mood, it’s these gifts of Christ that I have to give away. They are all I have, and they are everything.
Our anxiety about the future is a consequence of our old self’s attempts to achieve freedom for himself apart from Christ Jesus.
So, what do we pray? What do we say? In times of fear, in times of chaos, in unprecedented times, we pray and say the words that have been written on our hearts.
Your forgiveness means you are in God’s favor, and no matter what tomorrow brings, God’s face is shining upon you, and he is gracious to you. Whether you live or you die, you belong to the Lord.
And because Jesus on the cross was sin in its entirety, God cannot look at him. He turns his face away, causing Jesus to cry out in utmost agony, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
From the womb to the tomb, from the cradle to the grave, Jesus’ name defines and describes who he is and what he is all about.
As a parent listens for the cry of a hurting child, our heavenly Father waits for our cry of weal and woe.
Out of great pain and suffering often comes goodness, beauty, and truth. John Donne, born on the 22th of January in 1573, is an excellent example of that for us in his masterful work, Death Be Not Proud.
Has the modern world taken too strong a dose of the gospel as its inheritance from the Reformation?
When God cancels you, it is an occasion for all of the canceled who are in heaven and earth to rejoice in that one more is added to our number.
From Professor Rosenbladt, I learned to see the grace of God in Christ crucified on every page of Scripture. From Professor Tolkien, I learned to see Christ crucified in some of the best stories that are told.
In our transactional view of our faith - “If I don’t… then God won’t.” “I need to, so God can” - we are seriously underestimating who we are dealing with.
Good works do not give us a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Rather, good works result from righteousness given by the good work of the Righteous One on the cross.
Perhaps this past year has prompted the recognition that God is not the tame projection of our highest hopes and dreams. Instead, he is the one who uses even his foes to make a point.
The church does well to remind the world that God is unmasked, indeed, that God has unmasked himself in the person of Jesus.
The setting for Luke 2 is the first century analog to my backyard. The stage is dressed with rust and decay, guilt and shame, sin and death.
Fred Rogers did not teach children how to live through a pandemic, but he had many profound things to say about loving our neighbors and finding our identity in that calling.
God's Word is the final word on you, and his claim on you as his people, his children, is the ultimate claim.
People do not seek the gospel because they want to, but because God’s Word drives them to it.
I hope this Christmastime affords ample opportunities for you to publish the Good News of Jesus Christ.
When all seems hopeless and lost, God is doing his great and gracious work, often hidden from our eyes.
The well-meaning advice “time heals all wounds” is offensively false when we confront the overwhelming evidence that the constants in our lives are death, taxes, and suffering.
His feast day on December 14 commemorates the day of his death in 1591, at the height of the Catholic renewal movement that followed the Reformation.
It turns out the family trait of not being able to wait runs deep and wide in the family of God. We do foolish things while we wait for promises to be fulfilled.
How do you handle the combination of waiting for things you want and trusting in promises for something with which you have no experience?
If the proclamation of that Gospel of Christ through our work at 1517 is important to you, too, please support us financially today.
The closer we want to get to God, the more self-centered and shallow we will become trying to get there.
In reality faith and hope are barely discernible one from the other, yet there is a certain difference between them.
Life includes suffering that we will have to endure. Life will not go as planned nor as we would hope, but "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
The following is an excerpt from “The Christian Life: Cross or Glory” written by Steven A. Hein (1517 Publishing, 2015).
Jesus overcame sin, death, and Satan on the cross. His bloody suffering and death marked this sinful world's defeat.
We are both “guilty of dust and sin” and totally exonerated as worthy guests in the eyes of Love.
Although theirs is an impressive show of faith, the display of God’s faithfulness to them is far greater. After all, faith is only as strong as the object in which it is placed.
The following is an adaptation from Law and Gospel in Action written by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Unlike human marriage, which is marred by sin, Jesus never seeks to divorce us due to irreconcilable differences.
Paul says to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly (Col 3:16). Not poorly. Not meagerly. Not just enough. But richly. My prayer is that Unveiling Mercy will do just that.
Now more than ever, it's good to take a closer look at the Christian confession about evil, pain, and suffering.
This is an excerpt from Unveiling Mercy: 365 Daily Devotions Based on Insights from Old Testament Hebrew written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2020). Used with permission.
This earth is not the place where your promise is to be found. Rejoice because the kingdom of God comes to you!
The parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew hinges on whether a guy is wearing the right costume for the party.
God uses the fifth commandment to protect us from selfishness, prevent us from only thinking about our needs, and to drive us to Christ and our neighbors.
This is an adaptation of the introduction from “In Defense of Martin Luther”written by John Warwick Montgomery (1517 Publishing, 2017). Used with permission.
It’s so easy to slip into thinking about forgiveness solely in terms of our authority over it.
Jesus will strengthen and encourage us because he is true life, and life has defeated death.
We now stand holy and blameless before our Heavenly Father as his own dear children, and we are set free to serve our neighbor in love.
Satan and the old Adam don't want Jesus to bear our crosses for us because that means we can't claim that we've done anything to merit God's mercy and salvation.
Christ crucified is at the heart of both our freedom from sin and death and our freedom to serve and love our neighbor.
Our freedom as Christians is not a form of independence. Our freedom in Christ comes from our dependence on him.
You who would be a law unto yourself, Christ is the gospel unto you, proclaiming you forgiven.
This is an excerpt from Adam Francisco’s conclusion in “The Freedom of the Christian” written by Martin Luther and translated and edited by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2020). Pgs. 57-59.
What is it that the 13th session actually has to say about the Eucharist, and how does it compare to what Luther and the reformers confessed about the Lord’s Supper?
Understanding that I am completely free in Christ allows me to read the injunction to “love my neighbor as myself” as a promise instead of a threat.
God redeemed his people’s bodies from slavery in Egypt and now was preparing their minds for freedom.
This is an excerpt from “The Freedom of the Christian” written by Martin Luther and translated and edited by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2020).
The only reason we're aware of our old self is in baptism, God created a new self for us.
The love God showed for us in the death of his Son continues in us because we remain his children as long as we are incorporated in the body of Jesus through faith.
Luther's signature insight on the sacraments was that God’s word of promise doesn’t just symbolize an absent reality but that it gives and bestows God’s real favor.
The freedom here is first to be as God has designed us to be, and then to do as we are. It has nothing to do with self-determination or voluntary commitments.
When works include the false condition and confused notion that through them we will become righteous and saved, then they are already no good and completely damnable because they are not done freely.
The theme of guardianship permeates Christian observances of Michaelmas, unifying this wide variety of celebrations
That unremarkable trip to the zoo on September 28, 1931, was the last in a long line of experiences that brought C.S. Lewis (Jack) back to the faith.
This is an excerpt from “The Freedom of the Christian” written by Martin Luther and translated and edited by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2020).
We vote because we are citizens, and it is our duty. We serve our neighbors in love because it is our Christian calling
This is an excerpt from “The Freedom of the Christian” written by Martin Luther and translated and edited by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2020).
"Whom shall we fear?" We fear no one. We're not afraid of anything. Instead, we wait for the Lord with good courage. He will strengthen our hearts, as the psalmist writes (Ps 27:1).
Viewing the Bible as literature is an essential and natural way of engaging the text. But there are also ways in which this practice can get lost.
The scope of catechesis from the Reformation was broad and included not only instruction at church, but in the home and in schools.
This is an excerpt from Crucifying Religion written by Donavon Riley (1517 Publishing, 2019).
As much as Luther calls Christians to a sober belief in the devil, he also calls them to a firm and steadfast faith in Christ.
When Christ crucified for our sins is kept central, we can hear passages like this one in a new and promising way.
The gospel fires up within us the gratitude, joy, and love to pull off what the law never could get us to do.
Little do we know the ancient and everlasting healing powers of God’s beloved tender shoot.
This is an excerpt from “God’s Devil” written by John Warwick Montgomery (1517 Publishing, 2020).
We've all felt the pain of betrayal by a friend who abandoned us when we thought we could depend on them.
Cyprian of Carthage is one of the most notable Latin theologians of the first five centuries alongside Tertullian and Augustine.
The fact that baptism specifically unites me to Christ in his death means that I share in his sufferings in my identity, not in my activity.
In both Psalms, we hear the Messiah becoming sin for us, and thus he pleads on our behalf before the Father.
This is an excerpt from “With My Own Eyes” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2017).
This is an excerpt from the book, “Paul and the Resurrection” written by Joshua Pagán (1517 Publishing, 2020).
I will continue to cling to the only hope I’ve ever truly had: that Jesus is my Lord and yours.
Look, sir; I’m not going to lock you up, despite the well-founded objections of the district attorney. I’m offering you the deal of your life.
Even as children of God, we have down days. That’s just a fact of being sinful and living in an evil world.
Galatians 5 isn’t a move beyond Christ to the Christian life. Galatians 5 is the Christian life in Christ.
Saying the words of the prayer together meant that if my voice became too weak or shaky, other voices would be around to support and continue the message.
Faith Alone really wrestles with themes that Christians of all ages have to wrestle with.
Jesus is our confidence because he reveals truth from falsehood, right from wrong, and reality from appearance, so that we may rely on him for our every need of body, soul, and mind.
His word is what strengthens and changes our hearts. The Lord God will bring us victory.
Faith Alone is a translation of Bo Giertz’s second novel, which was originally titled Tron Allena.
Your prayers are not what make you acceptable in his sight. You have already been made acceptable through the blood of Christ.
“Rembrandt goes so deep into the mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language.”
These words not only rescue and defend; they also attack. They push back my sinful tendency to praise myself for relying on myself.
He is our gold. He is our pure garment. He is our healing. He is our sanity. He is our wholeness.
Both Hus and Luther arrived at the same conclusion: neither councils nor the pope had final authority in the church. Headship in the church belongs solely to Christ.
It is one thing to pray against death’s slow and aggressive assault on God’s creation. It is another to trust in the one who has conquered the grave.
This change during a time of crisis is nothing new; it's an experience we can see throughout history.
In the quiet of your own uptown, where your own sins bear down on you and create a troubled conscience before the world, before others, and before God, your Lord reaches across the chasm of brokenness to take your hand.
By basing our assurance on the promises of God, which we not only hope for in the future but live in now, the Christian can finally rest in the comfort that they are both saved and not responsible for their own salvation.
When we look at the trees of Christian denominations, we can lose sight of the forest that is Christianity and become cynical and hopeless. But we can take heart.
When experience and the promises of God collide, we will either succumb to thinking we were deceived or hold more tightly to the promises,
The disciplines of history and archaeology have assisted in demonstrating the integrity and accuracy of the Bible.
In matters temporal, while they should strive to be good and dutiful citizens, ultimately a Christian is more of a pilgrim anxiously awaiting the greater end of citizenship in God’s eternal city.
Using common everyday events, Carnell sought to clarify that there are three standards of duty that we demand others to respect to protect our dignity.
Comfort is not a platitude; it is a promise. A promise from our God who left his place of glory and died a sinner’s death for poor sinners.
The following is an excerpt from Ken Sundet Jones’ chapter in “Who Am I?” written by Scott Ashmon (1517 Publishing, 2020).
He would not go back on his word, for his word is the word of the Father and the Spirit, and they all say “come.”
Scripture is clear in its main teachings and doctrines. People don’t need any special knowledge or training to understand sin, grace, forgiveness, and salvation.
We're not called to be obedient consumers. We're free in Christ to love and serve our neighbor according to his need.
If all is right with you, then there is no need for God. No need for salvation. No need for help. No need for faith.
Satan scatters, and God gathers. Satan divides and defeats us, and the Holy Spirit gathers us together to submit to the Lordship of Christ.
Philosophy teaches us about a good life in the creation, and the gospel predominates with its message of free forgiveness apart from the law and beyond the most sophisticated dreams of all human wisdom
Since Jesus has done everything we need for salvation, we can focus our works and efforts on serving our neighbor.
The following is an excerpt from Faithless to Fearless written by David Andersen (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Sin seeks to destroy us in body, soul, and mind. It sends fear flooding into our lives.
To be a theologian of the cross is to have another’s will exerted on you to make you what you are.
We discover in the book that all of history is unfolding according to a plan, but the plan is hidden from our typical ways of seeing.
God doesn’t permit me to write you off regardless of who you are or what you may have done. Nor does he allow you to dismiss me because I might not fit your image of a vessel of God’s mercy.
The image of the cross stands as central to Luther’s comfort for those who endure persecution.
Justice and love are united in God, and we see this most clearly in Jesus on the cross. There, both God's hatred toward sin and compassion for the world come together.
We are meant to serve in love both our neighbor in need as well as the neighbor who doesn’t think they need us.
Our use–or disuse–of language reveals a deeper need than a bubbly carbonated soda. It highlights a gift given and a gift fallen, and it leaves us thirsting for a gift restored.
To understand the meaning of the Pentecost miracle for the life of a Christian, we must first learn to see it through the lens of the history that came before it.
When Revelation’s words read against their original context, old meaning and new meaning are simultaneously brought to light as language and imagery is translated from the Old Testament to the New.
We must also remember that our enemy is a creature of God. He is someone for whom Christ Jesus died. He is a sinner just like any other, no more or less selfish than us.
The biggest point Luther makes about the descent is not that Jesus triumphed over hell idle and unaffected, but that Jesus defeated hell by suffering hell away.
We know God has a plan to bring forgiveness and salvation and healing to people, but we can’t see how it’s all going to work out.
In the middle of the spring, on a run-of-the-mill Thursday, the ascension interrupts the mundane to herald the extraordinary: Christ is in charge and is present on earth as he is in heaven, guiding history for the sake of his church.
In his last novel, Islands in the Stream, Hemingway shows us what we get when we look to nature for ultimate truth: death.
What we can learn from all these instances is that we are all born into this world with a pre-existing condition. It’s called mortality, and no earthly authority or expert can save us from it.
Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah is now available for preorder from 1517 Publishing
The point is that the whole lot was wicked. And so were the Galatian Christians. And so are we.
Jesus has conquered, he who has an ear let him hear. There is nothing to run from, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to fear because the Lamb of God has done it all.
Zipporah and Moses were bound by blood. More than that, God and Moses were bound by blood.
Bonhoeffer’s simple little book makes clear how privileged many of us are to enjoy the Communion of the Saints here on earth.
The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah written by Steve Kruschel is available through 1517 Publishing. The following is an excerpt.
The Word was preached into your ears, the Holy Spirit worked through that word, and wormed His way from the sinful preacher's mouth to your wicked ears and onto your sinful heart.
While faith forms the relationship with God and love the relationship with the neighbor, hope forms the Christian’s relationship with the future.
When we try to create meaning for our lives or transform Jesus into a mere example, the Holy Spirit comes to us, with a preacher in hand, ready to unleash a sermon like Louis Armstrong blasting out "When The Saints Go Marching In" on his trumpet.
The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah, written by Steve Kruschel, is available now for preorder and will be released by 1517 Publishing one week from today, on May 11. The following is an excerpt.
When a manager faces imminent termination by his wealthy master for mishandling his wealth, what will he do? Where can he turn? In this challenging parable, Jesus teaches us that our salvation lies outside of ourselves and our works.
God doesn't help those who help themselves. He saves those who can't do anything for themselves.
This love story goes on and on, from the beginning of time. Every retelling of this incredible story reveals a little more, exposing our inadequacy, producing more devotion, capturing unspoken emotion, inspiring us to a greater love.
Elisabeth Cruciger is the first female Lutheran hymn writer. In fact, her hymn was included in the very first evangelical hymnal, published in 1524. With her life and her hymn, she becomes a witness, an example, and a proclaimer of the gospel to us almost 500 years later.
This gospel is not like all other human acts of gift-giving. It doesn’t come with the expectation of a gift in return. His mercy is an unreturned gift.
"As we stare down another day, the struggles and joys that it will bring, take a deep breath. In spite of all the failures, floundering, and “that-should-have-been-something’s” flying in our faces, there is peace and redemption in Jesus.
When God's Word went to the cross and made full payment for all our sinful, self-serving, self-seeking activities, and then rose from the dead, Jesus added an "always and forever" to our days and life.
We may hear the voice of Jesus through recordings and digital media, but the Jesus who walks through locked doors has no problem coming to us through technology.
There is great value in reading fairy tales in a pandemic. There is freedom and joy to be found when we turn off the news, stop scrolling Facebook, and read. Above all, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest Christ’s holy Word. And while you’re at it, take some time to read a good fairytale too. You won’t be disappointed.
Instead of remaining silent when we wonder if someone is struggling with suicidal thoughts, and rather than judging for ourselves whether or not suicide is an unforgivable sin, let's lean on God's Word.
In the midst of our grief and sorrow, there are times when words fail us. When they do, we know that God has given us words that will never fail us. He’s graciously given us his words of hope and comfort from the Psalms.
The parable of the two sons whom their father sent to work in the vineyard is not a well-known parable--or one about which we hear many sermons. What does it mean? And what does it tell us about life in the church? In this article, Del Campbell explores this parable for us.
If you want to stay out of jail, look to the law. If you want into heaven, look to the promise. If you want to earn a paycheck from your boss, work. If you want to receive salvation from your God, believe.
The gospel promise is that God in Christ knows exactly what your temptations are and still bids you find protection from them in him.
Luke presents Mary to us as a model of Christian faith and discipleship. On this Festival of the Annunciation, I invite you to consider this view of the Virgin Mary for your own life of devotion and faith in Christ.
God made us to live together, to live in harmony with each other, to serve and sacrifice for the health and well-being of each other. When we hurt one part, we injure the whole body. And, as the philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, wrote, “What injures the hive, injures the bee."
When Luther's barber, Peter Beskendorf, asked him how to pray, Luther wrote him an open letter that has become a classic expression of the "when, how, and what" of prayer. It is as instructive today as when it was first penned it in 1535.
Without the influence of a 19th-century minister named George MacDonald, we may never have had classics such as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, or even Alice in Wonderland. It was George MacDonald whom C.S. Lewis claimed as his master, saying, “I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.” So who is this MacDonald?
This petition is proof that the Christian life is not a practice in perfectionism. Rather, it is a life of dying and rising, lived under the cross of Christ, in the continual forgiveness of our sins.
The book, Paul and the Resurrection: Testing the Apostolic Testimony, by Josh Pagán, has just been released by 1517 Publishing. In this innovative, interdisciplinary study, Pagán combines the analytic tools of history and philosophy to explore and evaluate competing explanations of Paul's belief in the Resurrection of Jesus. In this article, he introduces us to his book, which is available now on Amazon (see link at close of article).
Despite the grave threat of martyrdom during his roughly thirty years of ministry, St. Patrick persevered and experienced enormous success.
The newest book from 1517 Publishing, Paul and the Resurrection: Testing the Apostolic Testimony, was released this week. In this article, we asked the book's author, Joshua Pagán, to answer a series of questions about the book, so we could better understand his approach, his arguments, and how his book helps us better understand the resurrection of Jesus as the foundational confession of the church.
When anything other than the gospel of Christ crucified for sinners becomes the center of the parables, we exchange the Gospel for the law.
The monsters we fight against and the monsters we become are drowned in the blood of the Lamb. Jesus' death, and the power of his resurrection, restore our humanity.
Ashes and dust do not need the services of spiritual EMTs; we need a Second Adam from whom we regain life itself.
On this day in 1984, Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, a leader in the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, died. He left behind a controversial legacy. How should we regard him today, thirty-six years after his death? Was he a hero? Was he a villain?
When we pray, “Thy will be done,” we are praying a cosmic, grand and mighty prayer.
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Into our world of sin, broken hearts, physical ailments, and psychological suffering, our Lord of grace descended.
The more we demand from Christ, the more of Himself He gives to us. When we demand a glass of grace, He gives us an ocean of Gospel
We are praying here, not for God to establish some kind of earthly, political government, but rather, to draw us into his very active reign.
Ash Wednesday confronts us with our true nature, our mortality, and marks us with the only escape from it: the cross of Christ.
The end of the pursuit isn't regeneration, but degeneration. We're fighting fire with bottles of gasoline.
Though not without his faults, Anselm of Canterbury is unquestionably one of the great theologians of the last millennium.
This article is the second installment in an eight-part series inspired by the Lenten themes of catechesis, prayer, and repentance found in the Lord’s Prayer as Luther taught it in his Small Catechism.
Transfiguration is like a farewell party for a dear friend drafted and going off to war. We celebrate all that has brought us there, we rejoice in our friend, and yet we know we are sending him off to great danger.
Ultimately the Christian life isn't about progress, it's about promise--the Pilgrim's Promise.
What a person quickly realizes when sin, death, and Satan attack in concrete reality is how inadequate and ill-equipped they are to fight them off.
How did we get love and romance associated with Valentine and his likely mid-February death?
This article begins an eight-part series inspired by the Lenten themes of catechesis, prayer, and repentance found in the Lord’s Prayer as Luther taught it in his Small Catechism.
The implications were clear: Jesus’ death destroyed the things that distinguished people as educated or uneducated, rich or poor, free or enslaved, black or white, pious or godless.
The Scriptures are not a collection of platonic ideals laid out for us to strive after. Rather, they are God’s truth given to His beloved church.
His resurrection reveals that Jonah, and all of us, even the evilest people, are salvageable, even from suicide, in Jesus' death and resurrection.
The following is an excerpt from "Finding Christ in the Straw," written by Robert M. Hiller (1517 Publishing, 2020).
It would do us well to expand what we mean when we say catechesis and consequently broaden the reach of theological education into daily life.
This is our frontier religion: God is waiting to shower blessings upon us if only we will unlock those blessings with the right kind of works, and a sufficient quantity of the same.
God hides from us on purpose so he can be God for us without limits or measures in the way of faithful, loving-kindness.
David Anderson answers questions about his new book, Faithless to Fearless.
Notes:
Faithless to Fearless
Your faith is not dependent on whether or not you suffer well.
Your faith is dependent on the fact that Christ did.
By submitting to John’s baptism, Jesus took the sins of the world upon his shoulders so that he could carry them to the cross and bury them in his tomb.
It’s a delivery of historical facts that tells us who Jesus is and what he has done for us through his dying on the cross and his rising from the grave.
Pelagius maintained an orthodox appearance while rejecting original sin and the distinction between law and gospel.
The following is an excerpt from Finding Christ in the Straw written by Robert M. Hiller (1517 Publishing, 2020).
We sing, and in so doing, we are blessed as we are instilled with the word of God in word and song.
Faith is a certainty about something one has encountered, something factual, an experience— just as certain as any experience in the external world.
We confuse salvation and vocation in our quest to determine who is in control of our salvation.
Indeed, the law said, “You shall love the Lord your God,” but the law cannot give me such love, nor can it take my hand to grasp on to Christ.
What then does this sequence of stories teach us? It teaches us a pertinent lesson about the Christian life.
A few weeks ago, I watched a video of fireworks going off in modern-day Nazareth on New Year’s Eve. The person filming was on the roof of his building, so he was able to capture quite a spectacular panoramic display. There was anticipation and excitement in the air as the sky was filled with color and flashes of light. Everyone in Nazareth that night would have been able to see the light.
Here’s a radical statement: there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a creature. You’re a baptized child of God. You’re exactly who you’re supposed to be, regardless of what you or anybody else may say. Whatever is in the past is in the past.
America has bequeathed to the church a fixation on politics. It’s not merely that American Christians are politically active, but that church-institutions in the public space have taken it upon themselves to engage in political action of various kinds and from various perspectives.
The Word of God, the Eternal Logos, Jesus Christ himself is revealed to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Little by little, we find that God hands us his story as our own.
The following is an excerpt from “Faithless to Fearless” written by David Anderson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Looking back on the year, the narrative we’re fed is that we should be able to show how much we’ve grown, how much we’ve done, all the successes we’ve had, how improved we are.
Christians are given a new name at baptism. We are given the Triune name of Father, Son, and Spirit.
Christians are given a new name at baptism. We are given the Triune name of Father, Son, and Spirit.
The real power of his hymn comes from the fact that Bonhoeffer does not offer a rosy picture of life or any of the tropes so typical of cheap piety that tell us that everything is always right, that things happen for a reason, and that we should try to stay positive.
It is that Christmas carol, the curious “We Three Kings” that we are looking at today in our examination of the origin and meaning of Christmas carols
We think that if we are good enough, brave enough, or at least if we try hard enough, we will be someone who can be both fully known and fully loved.
As Christians, we are not cold ascetics, depriving ourselves in the here and hereafter. We are given good things from our heavenly Father in heaven, and even a foretaste of the things to come.
Christmas is, therefore, the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry, even while he awaits a number of years to gather his disciples and inaugurate his preaching of the kingdom.
Should we really be surprised that it would happen this way, that the servant would suffer for our salvation and die for our forgiveness?
In some measure, if Luther had any success during his last two decades, it happened because of the woman who’d insisted on him as her bridegroom.
One gloomy, silent night, God stepped into our darkness. The Word had not only spoken but was now made flesh
Isaac Watts thought it was time for the church to have a new song. But he didn’t just come up with one new song; he composed a whole host of them. Known as the “Father of English Hymnody,” he is credited with over 700 hymns, many of which are still in use today.
How amazing is the scene from the night of Jesus’ birth we all know so well: angels singing lullabies with the sweet mother Mary, poor shepherds gazing upon the manger in wonder and awe, wise men appearing from afar with strange and ominous gifts, and the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.
It often breaks our hearts to accept reality, but we can't save anybody. We can't save our brothers and sisters in Christ from unbelief, error, and a heart that's run cold. We can speak up.
Many of us probably remember singing the song, “Father Abraham,” as children in Sunday School, but have we ever really thought about the words? Father Abraham? How am I a son of Abraham?
Next week, December 20, marks the anniversary of the death of Katharine von Bora, whose husband was Martin Luther. Her importance goes beyond simply managing the reformer’s household.
The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace: Collected Sermons of Advent through Pentecost” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Hands in her lap. Eyes clenched shut. Black swells of emotion rushing from deep behind her eyes down to the pit of her stomach. Sketchy scenes replay from her past as if from a damaged filmstrip. Shameful thoughts and conversations bring an uncontrollable shudder from the depths of her soul.
The Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” continues to captivate the English-speaking church 158 years after John Mason Neale translated five of its verses into English for the 1861 hymnal, “Hymns Ancient and Modern.”
What is the significance of God’s promise that Christ will be born of a virgin? Is it significant because of Mary’s example of purity or something else entirely?
Christ continues to go to surprising places, into enemy territories and darkened rooms to sing, “Merry Christmas,” to prisoners of shame, fear, and death.
When it comes to biographical material on Saint Augustine, in the last 50 years, no work has surpassed Peter Brown’s seminal biography, Augustine of Hippo. This biography is a formidable one, but well worth the time to walk through the life of a truly great church father.
Every year, while I prepare the sermon for Thanksgiving morning and plot out the day’s menu with my wife, I go back and read Robert Capon’s book, The Supper of the Lamb. I do this because, like Capon, I’m a theologian and a foodie. And, like Capon, I can’t help but apply the former to the latter.
You don’t need to imagine it. You’ve seen it in countless sitcoms and movies. It’s Thanksgiving Day, and the family is gathered around the table. Maybe things have gone hilariously wrong; maybe they haven’t.
The real question we must ask about God’s will isn’t, “God, command us according to your will and we’ll do it,” but, “God, what are you willing to do for us who can’t do what you command?”
We might not appreciate that God chooses to save us by his word alone, but our discomfort doesn’t make the promise any less effective.
If you want to boil Schleiermacher down to some foundation upon which to build up his theology, think feelings.
An age-old debate amongst Christians is the number and use of the sacraments. Rome and the Eastern Orthodox hold that there are seven sacraments of the church. On the other hand, most confessing Protestant groups will say there are only two.
When we ask ourselves, "My God, how did I get so lost," he answers, "I am the God who comes to seek and save the lost in the power of my resurrection.
Could it be that the root of not asking is not believing, either in the power, or worse, the graciousness of the Lord to address the issue that lies before us?
The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace Volume 2” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
In an earlier article, I did my best to confront the false idea that God’s will is something we must uncover to make daily decisions in the vocational sense, specifically when it comes to marriage.
Where Erasmus saw fear and collapse, Luther saw the never-ending comfort of Christ and his gospel.
As much as we may long for heaven, even death itself does not usher us into the final state of the new creation. So, in life and death, we must wait. And as the philosopher, Tom Petty, sings, “Waiting is the hardest part.”
We were lost. We didn’t know where we were going or which way to turn. We had been driving around in circles for hours with nothing to show for it. And now we weren’t sure how to find our way home - and losing hope by the minute.
If we’re alive, we’ll suffer. It’s inevitable. We’re bed-ridden with the flu. Taxes are due. A boss abuses his authority. Our spouse lies to us. People kill and commit suicide. A flood destroys a city.
The dead may tell no tales, as the saying goes, but on All Saints’ Day, those dead in Christ preach the gospel.
As you read the New Testament and early church history, it is clear that believers in Christ where anticipating his return from the moment of his ascension to the Father. As persecution ravaged the church, Christians began to wonder if God had forgotten them, or worse, abandoned them.
On a balmy June morning back in the 1960s, my older sister and I were participating in a traditional western South Dakota kid’s summer activity, namely, running through the sprinkler. The flat green hose hissed sprays of water in the grass alongside our eight-wide trailer house.
Should we celebrate Halloween as Christians? This question came up during a recent discussion with fellow pastors, where I bemoaned the popularity of trunk or treats.
Humility kills pride. So “humble yourself before the Lord,” as James writes (Jas 4:10). Kill your pride before it kills the things you love. Subdue it before it gets you into the kind of trouble that may even kill you. Conquer your pride before it defeats you. It’s that simple, but we all know it’s not that easy.
“Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ Instead of responding to his words as the good news they are, Jesus’ hearers are offended. They buck at the idea that anyone has to set them free. “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” (John 8:31–33).
“Just admit it; we know it was you!” “How long since your last confession?” “Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” These are all examples of calls to confess the truth where the one confessing the truth is left on their own to formulate the words. But, when it comes to confessing the truth of the Christian faith, Christians are given the words. We don’t have to formulate them ourselves.
Any conception that contends that Jesus only died for some sinners turns the gospel into an uncertain message for everyone.
When I hear my brother’s name, I will grieve a little. But I will also rejoice, for I know that he is with his Savior.
So long as we entrust death to Jesus, new life is ours. He has lunch ready and he is waiting for us in the power of his resurrection.
The following is an excerpt from“Credo: I Believe,” edited by Caleb Keith and Kelsi Klembara (1517 Publishing, 2019).
2 Peter 2:1-21 continues the thought that began in 2 Peter 1:16. In this passage, Peter assures his audience that the gospel of Jesus Christ is trustworthy, being amply supported by witnesses of his ministry, his death, and his resurrection.
I’ve got a confession to make. I’m not very good at praying. Sure, I pray regularly for my church, my family, and for those who are sick and in need. I’m a pastor, so obviously, I do a lot of praying, but I wouldn’t say I’m particularly good at it - not like those “prayer warriors,” you sometimes see in other churches or on TV.
The temptation is always there to let our imaginations run wild. It’s easy for us to imagine all the ways things can go wrong. Fear about what has, and what does, and what might go wrong can cripple us. It can crush our spirit. Our whole life can be shut down when we let our imaginations run wild.
Terror and even hatred of God are the only things with which divine hiddenness can leave us, since the only thing that can be known about this God is that he is free and sovereign over all things
Friends are a gift from God, but all gifts flow from God to his children because of his love for us on account of Christ.
He begins the letter with grace and peace (2 Pet 2:1) - gifts that had been given them by God through the righteousness of his Son, Jesus Christ, their Lord, and Master.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who have fallen asleep in a history class, and those who lie about it. But in all seriousness, this is precisely how history is often viewed, isn’t it?
Everything vanishes so quick. Our body is gobbled up by the earth. Our memories are devoured by time. Time diminishes our physical gifts.
One of the most notable contributions of the Eastern Orthodox tradition to Christian theology is its strong emphasis on what they call theosis, or divinization.
The following is an excerpt from“Where Two or Three Are Gathered” edited by Scott Keith (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Second Peter is a short, straightforward epistle. It begins, after the salutation, with an exhortation to piety, encouraging Christians to practice virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, kindness, and love.
For a long time, well-intentioned pastors and college evangelists have applied Jesus’ words (dictated by John as a part of the seven letters to the churches of Asia minor) from Revelation 3:20 to the unconverted.
Most people don’t pray they will be able to show mercy. They hope for good luck or strength to meet a challenge. They yearn for things to break their way today. Sometimes, when they’re panicked, they pray for God to pity them.
Robert W. Jenson (1930–2017) is one of the most important, yet often overlooked and frequently misunderstood, theologians from the English-speaking world in the past century.
The optimism of a Christian extends beyond the deathbed and has its origin in a historical event without historical boundaries.
As we conclude our walk through 1 Peter by looking at chapter five today, I’d like to begin at the end. As Peter sends his final greetings, he references his brothers-in-arms, first Silvanus, who wrote Peter’s words, and then Mark, Peter’s faithful companion.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes a famous analogy comparing the universal church and church denominations to a large home with many different rooms:
“I hope no reader will suppose that “mere” Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions — as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else.
We meet, and affection blossoms. We love each other. We change, and arguments erupt. We stab each other with words. The door slams shut; the lock is bolted. We separate, breakup, then divorce. The threads of our relationship are torn. We’re sinners behaving like sinners. So now what?
When we think about God, each of us has an image come to mind. We expect that God should look and act a certain way. But God’s words in Isaiah 53 highlight a theme that prevails throughout Scripture, a theme that finds its culmination on the cross: God reverses our expectations of him.
There are many examples of friends serving one another in life. Some are extreme and extravagant, but most are ordinary. I’ve heard many stories that have inspired me to look for good friends with whom I can engage and be engaged.
There is some irony in the fact that St. Peter is writing to us about suffering for the sake of Jesus. After all, isn’t this the same man that had a less than stellar record when it came to his own response to persecution and suffering during the ministry of Jesus?
In the past three years, Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research have worked together to survey the theological state of Christians in the U.S. Amongst other shocking discoveries, the project found that the majority of evangelical Christians in the U.S. espouse the heresy of Pelagianism.
Following the death of Martin Luther in 1546, the Lutheran Church entered a tumultuous period as an ecclesial game of back and forth was played in the German lands between Lutheranism, Roman Catholicism, and Calvinism, according to the religious proclivities of political officer bearers.
The Lord’s banquet room will not be empty. The wine will flow. The food will be served. Music will play. Conversations will be had. The Lord’s table will be crowded. He will make sure of that.
The following is an excerpt adapted from “Let the Bird Fly” written by Wade Johnston (1517 Publishing, 2019).
If we’re perfectly honest with one another, 1 Peter 3 has some great but also uncomfortable content. Modern theology has no love of Peter’s words about men and women, suffering, or baptism.
Human beings are storytellers. From the time we get up in the morning and take that first sip of coffee until the time we go to bed at night, our daily lives are full of stories. It may be the short story told by your teenage son or daughter.
There is not much about being a Christian that is particularly groundbreaking: focus on Jesus-crucified for us sinners. Enjoy the benefits of his forgiveness, life, and salvation in words, water, bread, and wine. Love others by serving them in our baptismal vocations.
"Practice makes perfect.” I am sure you have heard this wisdom before. It’s good advice. You need to work at a particular craft to master it. You may have been born with a better aptitude towards woodworking than I was, but you were not born with a chisel in your hand.
Luke 12 repeatedly speaks about anxiety and fear, and even earlier in the gospel book, we are told another story about anxiety featuring the sisters, Mary and Martha. While Mary listened at the feet of Jesus, Martha kept herself busy flittering about to make sure everything at the party was just right.
The most well-known sentence of Peter’s first letter to the dispersed, exiled Christians sojourning throughout the Roman empire is also the high point of the letter’s second chapter. 1 Peter 2:9 reads, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Righteousness is our commodity. It is what we buy and sell. It is what determines value. It is what we use to build our personal portfolio. It is how we judge one another. It is how we determine who is worthy and who is not. We trade in righteousness.
Life is what we make of it unless life is located in the One who calls himself, "Life." Then, life isn't what we make of it but what Jesus, God's Word who speaks all things into being, makes of it. When life is what we make of it, making a mess of life is inevitable. We're flawed, fragile, creatures. We plot out life, but we don't know the best way to live. Life is what we make of it until we can't make anything of it anymore.
Ultimately it’s at the cross of Calvary, through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the great Lion of Judah, that the stone table is broken, and everything sad does indeed finally come untrue.
What are the two things that should not be discussed in polite company?
If you answered “religion and politics,” you understand the essential rules of etiquette for anything from family dinners to boardroom discussions. On the other hand, if you spend any amount of time on social media or reading the news, you’ll find the fruits of this mannerly maxim.
So Peter closes out the section of his letter that has come to be referred to as “1 Peter, Chapter 1.” He writes to the Christians of Asia Minor and uses this portion of the letter to remind them of all that God has done for them through His Son Jesus Christ. He closes with a quote from Isaiah to emphasize the eternal nature of the word that was preached to them; the word that promises new life and gives what it promises.
There is a message going around these days that many Christians are missing out on significant blessings of Christ because of insufficient awareness of the power of His indwelling presence. This message goes something like this: There is a distinction between Christ-for-you and Christ-in-you.
It’s easy for us to get attached to things. An old suit that doesn’t fit anymore. A cabin we’ve inherited. A pew at church our family sat in for generations. An ideology we can’t give up. An argument we’re sure we won.
Like most good Christian girls growing up in the last few decades, the advice I received about marriage during my teens and early adult years is largely a mixed bag. Some of it has been helpful.
I am a zealous advocate for doing apologetics. While apologetics is defined as the defense of the Christian faith, the simplicity of this definition does not help one understand the complexity of the problem of defining or practicing apologetics. There is a great diversity of approaches when it comes to the task.
“Baptism…now saves you…” (1 Peter 3:21): this is the climax of 1 Peter, a letter by the apostle with the same first name written to congregations in Asia Minor. Peter’s goal was to strengthen the faith of believers in the face of oncoming persecution; persecution he was probably already feeling at the hands of Emperor Nero in Rome. His letter is awash in the language of baptism, reminding his readers they are, “born again to a living hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).
George Frideric Handel, the Saxon Lutheran living in England, locked himself into his London flat on this day, the 21st of August, in 1741. He would emerge 14 days later with a 300-page oratorio that was destined to become the greatest piece of music written in the English language.
What would have happened to Peter, Paul, or any of us if there were no pain and death? On Sunday morning, instead of going to church, we would all roll over and go back to sleep. Snoring our life away, more or less in comfort, but never understanding the purpose and goal of pain and death.
I am quiet and relaxed. The temperature is just right. Breathing slowly and purposely, I focus on the black emptiness behind my eyelids. I listen to the hum of a fan spinning just a little too loudly above my head. No, don’t think about the fan, I tell myself. Block it out. Open your heart. Inhale.
On a recent episode of the Thinking Fellows, where I was a guest, Dr. Rosenbladt asked me what he rightfully considered to be one of the most vexing of all questions regarding the founding of these United States and the role of the faith of our founders.
The phrase, “simultaneously justified and sinner,” or simul iustus et peccator (simul for short), is a statement or confession concerning the Christian life in this world. While the saying is simple, unpacking its implications can take some time due to the number of doctrines which support it.
We pursue what matters most to us and sacrifice what’s necessary to reach that goal. Whether it’s time, money, or health, we must sacrifice something if we want to achieve our goals. But, there’s often an unaddressed dichotomy as regards to what we want and what we’re willing to sacrifice to get it.
Each verb is jarringly violent. The visceral lyrics and fiery enunciation pair with an oddly upbeat melody, artfully crafted to be relevant to the human experience.
One of the items that often comes to the fore in any discussion on the authority of Scripture alone (sola scriptura) is the relationship between the Bible and preaching. If the Bible alone is authoritative, what relationship does it have with the traditions of the Church, preaching from the pulpit, or the confessional documents to which we subscribe?
In early 1945, Japanese Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was deployed to Lubang Island about 100 miles south of Manila in the Philippines. He was leading one of several groups sent to the Pacific Theatre.
We're always in search of a spotlight. It's natural for us to crave attention. Just watch a baby when everyone else in the room is pre-occupied -- especially if they're focused on another baby! When we see a light shining on someone, we want to push them out of the way and take their place. We want the accolades.
We recently explored ways Martin Luther comforted those experiencing sickness, depression, anxiety, and more through his Letters of Spiritual Counsel. We saw that Luther, the Reformation celebrity known for boldly clinging to the Word of God and taking a stand against the errors of the Catholic Church, also served as a personal pastor to many suffering souls in his hometown of Wittenberg.
The following is an excerpt from “Let the Bird Fly” written by Wade Johnston (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Christmas in July is one of those made-up holidays that seems to be growing in popularity these days. Its origins date back to a 1933 girls camp in North Carolina, but now it has become an excellent reason for shopping centers, strip malls, and the online retail giant, Amazon, to have mid-summer sales. Even the White House is planning a Christmas in July event.
It was on this day, the 31st of July in 1970, that the Lockman Foundation first published the New American Standard Bible (NASB). While new vernacular and sometimes sectarian translations might not cause us to bat an eyelash, the history of translating the Bible into various English vernaculars has been a bloody affair.
Are we entitled to a good day and sweet dreams at night? No. The Bible doesn’t promise us we should feel good all the time. Experience also teaches us that a painless life is unattainable. In fact, God promises Eve, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.
“America exists to destroy Baptism.” I’m still captivated by this line from Steven Paulson at the Here We Still Stand Conference a couple years back. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that he is right. America, as a culture, has always emphasized that we are to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, get to work, and make this world a better place by our own efforts.
The following is a Question and Answer session with author and pastor Donavon Riley where we talk about his latest book, “Crucifying Religion: How Jesus is the End of Religion”.
She lounges in a beach chair and sips on a Corona as the sun shines from above and the grass brushes her toes from below. It’s a perfect summer day, and she should have little to worry about. She feels lucky to live in a free country, with access to ease and convenience, comfort, and peace. Yet her mind is tormented with the worries of tomorrow.
Today is John Newton’s birthday. This week, I’m sure churches everywhere will sing his, “Amazing Grace,” and possibly hear the tale about the self-proclaimed wretched sinner saved by grace. While this story is most certainly true, it’s not the whole story.
Even a child recognizes when he’s naked and exposed. He’s startled by a thunderclap or a choked breath and wails for his mother to pick him up, hug him close, and offer him protection from his own mortality.
Human rights stand revealed as an idea that polarizes, encouraging uncritical support and also extreme reaction from both secularists and religionists. But the stark reality of man’s inhumanity to man in our time compels us to take the human rights movement with the utmost seriousness.
“Jesus answered...‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’” (John 12:32).
I have heard this verse dozens of times in churches, often in conjunction with a church body announcing plans for their worship ministry and growth. Many church websites include a phrase similar to this: “Everything we do in worship at our church is all about lifting Jesus up” (notice the subtle shift of focus from Christ’s work to ours).
The smell of the lavender hits your nose as you remove the plant from its tiny plastic shell and rough up the compacted roots that have pullulated despite their confinement. Life is like that, making a way, filling in the gaps, taking advantage of limitations and seizing opportunities.
It was on this day, the 17th of July in 180 AD, that 12 African Christians were added to the list of the earliest church Martyrs. These Scillitan Martyrs (named after Scillium, a province in northwest Africa) had rejected the way of Empire, refused to recant their faith, and were summarily executed at the order of Proconsul Vigellius Saturninus.
When pain bears down on us, how hard is it to keep going? We ask ourselves, “What did I do to deserve this torture?” “Why can’t my family and friends appreciate how much I hurt?” The pain and hurt haunt us and punish us for being alive.
The nineteenth century’s revival of Reformation theology is known for stimulating renewed interest in the Lutheran Confessions (set forth in the 1580 Book of Concord), the Gospel witness of Martin Luther, and the historic liturgy of the Church.
The following is an excerpt from “Crucifying Religion” written by Donavon Riley (1517 Publishing, 2019).I am convinced that the theology I received from Augustine, Luther, C.S. Lewis, Pastor Kreuger, and others—the theology I’ve described up until now—is entirely grounded in the scriptures. However, as you no doubt know, the Bible is interpreted in so many different ways.
You have heard the expression, forgive and forget. This has been a popular prescription for how Christians should respond to those who trespass against us. Indeed, what is often explained as the evidence that we have truly forgiven those who have done us wrong is that we have put their transgressions out of mind.
On this, his 510th birthday, I would like to walk through the basic questions surrounding the life and thought of John Calvin with a few bibliographic references, as well as suggest a historical approach to this confessional figure without the sectarian pitfalls.
Fatherhood is, according to Jesus, the way God wants to relate to us. God as Father speaks, and by his word, molds every life and all that exists. Why? Fatherly goodness and mercy. Celebrities, athletes, and life coaches compete for our time, money, and attention.
Lady Tremaine stands motionless on the stairs, looking towards but not truly seeing her step-daughter. She utters no apology, no excuse for her horrible treatment of her late husband’s only child. She expresses regret only for herself and out of fear of her impending punishment. Her mistreatment of the now-future queen would not go unavenged, but her posture exudes unremorseful, selfish pride as if to say, “I have nothing to confess.”
In the 14th and 15th centuries, there were not one, not two, but three popes, all claiming to be the “Vicar of Christ” on earth. How did this happen, you may ask, and what does it have to do with the burning of Jan Hus? Below, are both stories, in brief:
The celebration of the Fourth of July marks the founding of the United States and brings with it the year’s most vital displays of American patriotism. Usually, the various elements of the political spectrum put down their proverbial weapons for this particular occasion to join together in commemorating the American founding, even while they may still conscript the day for their own respective interests.
This is the second part of a series on the importance for Christians to think historically and read broadly. You can catch Dan’s daily historical podcast, the Christian History Almanac, wherever you download your podcasts.
We're all born hostile: hostile toward God and hostile toward each other. In theology, it's the consequence of what we call "original sin." Original sin produces violent fruit. We fight battles every day. A baby battles to walk upright.
Anyone who lives in a metropolitan area of the United States can have almost any kind of food delivered to their doorstep within minutes and can post about it immediately on social media for the world to see and critique. Food is no longer just about sustenance, but a qualitative means by which we gain (or lose) righteousness in this life.
The following is an excerpt from “Crucifying Religion” written by Donavon Riley (1517 Publishing, 2019).
So what is the Apostles’ Creed and why is it important? In the late fourth century, a little known figure in church history, St. Vincent of Lerins, is famous for a single sentence: "Hold fast that faith which has been believed everywhere, always and by all."
As a history professor, I spend an excessive amount of time trying to justify my discipline and trying to convince students to sign up for the major or at least a few elective courses.
We can't heal past wounds. The pain may ease, but the wounds are still open. They still bleed. We can bandage our wounds with food, alcohol, work, drugs, sex, cigarettes, gambling, and whatever feels good. But, the wounds still bleed.
Church history has left us with three ecumenical creeds recited by the communion of saints throughout the centuries. While most are familiar with the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed, the Athanasian Creed often remains shrouded in obscurity.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) is perhaps remembered as the most famous Christian martyr of the twentieth century. He was also a Lutheran pastor and theologian who helped start the Confessing Church, launched an underground seminary, and conspired with others to plot Hitler’s assassination. Bonhoeffer’s fascinating personal story might be the most significant draw for many people to his literary output, and so the legacy of his scholarly and popular reception has been diverse, to put it mildly.
In his great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, St. Paul tells us that love is the greatest. “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13).
It was on this day, June 19th in 1623, that Blaise Pascal was born in France, south of Paris in Clermont-Auvergne. A mathematician, philosopher, and general man of letters, he is best known for his last work, published posthumously as the Pensees (French for “Thoughts”) mostly in aphoristic form.
Jesus has taken away sin and death, and through the cross, God's furious anger is taken away. God's Word of Law hurled God's furious anger at us, but the Gospel frees us to believe that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Holy Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost in the church calendar, turns many Christians into mini detectives. Magnifying glasses in hand, they twist themselves into knots trying to unravel and explain the mystery of the triune God without wandering into heresy.
Biblically speaking this is the power of a parent’s prayer, not because of how hard we pray, but on account of the strength of the One who saves: the resurrected Jesus Christ.
Once upon a time, there was a story. Year after year, decade after decade, this little story was told to children, passing on her great wisdom from generation to generation. This story gave riches and honor, comfort, and life to all who heard it.
If you google “do I have to go to” it will auto-predict the most popular questions. The first two are “do I have to go to college” and “do I have to go to church?” It seems my life is essentially one, long exercise in answering one of these two questions.
The Holy Spirit keeps us in faith and pours us out into the world so others may also hear and believe.
He reversed the scattering at the city of Babel in the gathering at Pentecost. And, He still carries out this reversal, week after week, in the church.
Where we find Scripture, we find Christ, and therefore where we find Scripture, we find a genuine comfort that breaks us free of our own thoughts and points us to the cross.
The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace: Collected Sermons of Advent through Pentecost” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
The job of a Christian parent should be simple: “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). This wisdom seems simple enough, perhaps even self-explanatory.
Why does Jesus do it? Why sacrifice His life so we can live? Love: He does it for love. He overcomes our fear of God, judgment, and death by love. Jesus on the cross is a shield that protects us from God's judgment and death. He does this for us.
It’s all about the conscience. Once we understand that, so much of what Martin Luther wrote, taught, preached, and acted on makes more sense, especially when it comes to the spiritual counsel he provided to others.
Popular opinions can be like overgrown vegetation blocking our view of reality. One overgrown opinion says Christianity and science are mutually exclusive and so must be in conflict with each other. But they aren’t.
In 1523, papist patience had worn thin within the Holy Roman Empire, and persecution of those holding the pejorative name of Lutheran began in earnest. Although God's hand managed to protect Luther from the flames, he had to endure the sad news as many of his followers throughout the empire lost postings as pastors, were imprisoned or exiled, or were burned at the stake.
Down is bad, up is good. These aren’t willy-nilly choices. Our bodies lead our linguistics. We associate “down” with sickness, collapsing in exhaustion, and dying, while “up” is iconic of vivacity, standing strong, health. Our positive and negative experiences are mapped onto the metaphorical language we use.
The Easter morning narratives that relate our Lord’s glorious resurrection in the Gospels are accented with several occasions of believable skepticism. Not for a moment did anyone anticipate a far-fetched, eighth-day miracle.
In the world, if we don't betray our spouse, it's because we've settled for good enough. Pizza delivery is faster than first responders. People fear terrorists more than God. Worshipping God interferes with our schedule, even at the best of times.
Easter sermons have been preached, blogs written, and triumphant music played and sung. It seems time we now move to the next liturgical celebration. We turn the page, but is there really any other?
The events of human suffering and death – and how to care for the bereaved left in the aftermath of these events – present some of the most difficult pastoral challenges imaginable.
Scripture says things, and it says them as God said them in Genesis 1, with a creative, formative purpose and power. Scripture is not ours to play with; no, we are Scripture’s. Words mean things. The Word means things. He came, a real person, flesh and blood, was crucified, died, and was buried. Jesus is not an idea.
While we don’t have a record of when the poet Dante Alighieri was born, many historians have dated May of 1265 his likely birth month based on autobiographical records, including his most famous work, the Divine Comedy.
The Bible and church confess Jesus as king. But, what does this mean? Jesus doesn't come to conquer like other kings. There's no brutality. There are no weapons and armor. There's no show of strength. Instead, as the Bible portrays Him, Jesus comes to show us kindness.
Are there any more wonderful words in this life than, “for you?” Martin Luther writes in his Small Catechism, “That person is truly worthy and well prepared (for the Lord’s Supper) who has faith in these words: “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
In many churches, the pastor wears clothing referred to as “clerical vestments.” This may seem odd, particularly if you’ve never attended a church where this is practiced. Clerical vestments are the adaptation of ordinary clothing to set clergy apart from regular church members.
We're rebel children and children of God the Father. For the Baptized, this is how it goes. We're baptized into Christ. We're forgiven, but we're still sinners. We are sinners in the flesh, but at peace with God through faith in Christ. That's how it goes for us.
And so the shape of our life with God through Jesus is unlike American myths and stories of conquest. In the first place, Jesus’ victory is not born of ambition, grit, and determination, but of humility, weakness, and even death. Yet that miserable death lead three days later to the victory celebration of Easter itself and the news that sin, death, and the devil have all been licked. We don’t repeat that through our own lives, but rather live in light of it. We don’t seek to match or outdo what Jesus has achieved, but we are baptized fully into Him, His life, and His gifts (Romans 6).
The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace: Collected Sermons of Advent through Pentecost” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Luther’s letters of spiritual counsel have long been a favorite resource of mine. I often use them before turning in at night as a devotion. Luther’s letters and table talk comments, most of which were written in his later years, are full of down-to-earth advice and Gospel insights that are often surprisingly still relevant to the troubles of our day.
Many a pastor has turned to Revelation 3 in attempts to incite zeal for witnessing the faith we confess or to preach that we cannot rely on Word and Sacraments, but instead must have a separate indwelling of the Spirit to be saved.
You’ve likely seen some of these stories on your social media feed: “Union Seminary President Denies Resurrection!”, or “Ex-Evangelicals reaching new audiences with edgy podcast,” or “Mega Church Pastor claims Old Testament is true ‘like Star Wars’ is true.” While some of this might be clickbait, there is a trend in a certain brand of self-conscious, center-left, modern evangelicalism.
What if everyone adored us no matter how selfish we were? What if, no matter what we said, people didn't hold it against us? What if everybody forgave us no matter what we did, but God judged us? What if God kept a record of everything we said and did, and judged it all?
I looked into his eyes. My hands fidgeted, my heart was racing, and I was sweating like a sinner in church. Though I was waiting for him to speak, I was not at all sure I wanted to hear what he would say.
For more stories like this check out the newest podcast from 1517, the Christian History Almanac with Dr. Dan van Voorhis, a daily five-minute podcast with stories, readings and poetry available wherever you download your favorite podcasts.
In the sixteenth century, society experienced upheaval as a result of the theology of Martin Luther and his Heidelberg Disputation being proclaimed and embraced by the Protestant reformers. Five hundred years later, the West is once again in upheaval as the truths of the Heidelberg Disputation are being rejected.
We like systems, or at least I do. They help me rationalize complexity and understand the world around me. We also like to think and talk about ourselves. Ask me about my personal ambitions and life plans and you’ll be sorry you opened pandora’s box. So it makes sense, then, that personality tests are popular because they offer us a better way to think about, well, us.
Have you ever been in a situation where a person declared themselves in charge and then proved the least qualified to be in such a position? I don’t mean they disqualified themselves by some moral failing.
Jesus died with a Psalm on his lips, Psalm 22 specifically. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1, Spoken by Jesus in Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34). And on many occasions before His death, Jesus lived with a number of other Psalms upon His lips.
Church tradition gets a bad name for being meaningless, stuffy, and boring and sometimes rightfully so! Occasionally we do something for so long we forget why we started doing it in the first place.
The blood of Christ. This is the New Testament. The blood of Christ purifies our conscience (Heb. 9:13-14). This means that we're not upset by memories of sin. Fear of death is quieted. Future punishment isn't on our radar. As the Psalmist says, "The righteous man isn't afraid of bad news. His heart remains secure, full of confidence in the Lord" (112:7). The blood of Christ does all this for us.
“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many” (Matt. 27:50-53).
Easter is a day of visceral gladness. On the day of the resurrection, all guilt and doubt are erased and replaced with righteousness and sure hope. While the Psalms speak and stand for themselves, they are also a vast reflection of the emotion and movement of Scripture as a whole.
If you attend worship on Good Friday, you’ll no doubt hear Jesus’ dying words in John’s Gospel: “It is finished.” So much was finished there on the cross. It was the end of Jesus’ career, the end of His ministry, the end of His breathing, the end of His life, the end of Jesus Himself.
“Why is this night different from all other nights?” the child asks. The golden twilight feels heavier than usual. Father ties up his sandals hurriedly, and mother paces looking out the front window. Dustier by the minute, neighbors and friends suddenly stir up the narrow streets with suspense. Bleating little lambs, anxious shouts across the houses, serious murmurs swirl along this evening breeze. The child listens for the answer to his question; he knows something is coming, but cannot understand.
Without using Google, tell me what you know about the illustrious lives and careers of Chris Burgess and Adam Keefe. What about Bob Hamelin? You might know something about him if you followed the Kansas City Royals in the ’90s.
God can't be tied down. If anyone disagrees, try it and see what happens. Worship God the way that seems good to you.
Like us, the Psalms share a bed with suffering. Psalm 31:9–16 puts words to the grief and loneliness we feel. But David does more than provide a vocabulary for our suffering. He puts words of truth and faith in our mouths. He gives us a confession.
Whether your native tongue is English, Icelandic, or Arabic, during Holy Week you'll share a handful of words in common with believers around the world. They are Hebrew words.
He staggers through the filthy, scorching desert. “So this is where it ends,” he mumbles. “This is it. Surrounded by dirt. Covered in dirt. You win, dirt! Congratulations, dirt! Well played...I’m dying alone.”
Church membership often presents itself as a frightening prospect to many. It involves an array of potentially unpleasant things: offering envelopes, planned giving, annual congregational meetings, weekly programming, requests to serve on the council, board or in a volunteer group, or maybe even leading a bible study or small group.
The Father plants the Seed, which is His Word. Jesus is the seed that’s planted. We don't plant. The Father plants the Seed. Jesus is the Word, the Seed that's planted in the world. Jesus is planted in the world by the Father without any of our help. The Father plants the seed, not Jesus, and not us.
More than anything I felt that these essays could help bring renewal to the church—not through offering some specific technique or glitzy program but instead challenging all the agendas, other than law and gospel. These other agendas beguile Christians and sedate them into sugar coating the gospel as either a spiritual self-improvement program or a social-gospel agenda.
Have you ever stopped to think about how remarkable it is that Jesus prays (Heb. 5:7-8)? God incarnate, the One who breathed out all of Scripture when in the flesh, breathed out His own prayers to God the Father. If we listen to Jesus, we will hear Him breathing out the very prayers He inspired in the Psalms. God speaking God’s Word, not just in proclamation, but in prayer. This is the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from a God who chose to identify with us by putting on flesh and walking through our Baptismal waters. He is found identifying with us in prayer.
“Worship not only starts with God; it also returns to Him through the filter of the cross. Jesus did not enter a cosmic retirement after his ascension.”
In some Christian denominations, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday features a special, liturgical worship piece called “a farewell to alleluia.” This usually involves a special hymn that repeats the word “alleluia” throughout its stanzas, a reminder to the congregation that this word will not be sung again until Easter morning. I have always found this a moving reminder that this side of eternity, our God understands what it means to say goodbye.
The year 1517 has become synonymous with the posting and publication of the 95 Theses, however, perhaps more important to Luther at the time was the first publication of his lectures on the penitential Psalms, or Psalms of Confession, in that same year.
After teaching in both venerated institutions and glorified junk heaps on three continents over the past decade, I can tell you the scariest place in the world: adult Sunday School. I am not anti-Sunday School but would like to point out that in some Christian traditions giving the wrong answer to a theological question is akin to something between adultery and leprosy.
Many who bear the title "Christian" can't accept the fact that all their effort to save themselves is useless. They can’t accept that no matter how hard they try to get themselves right with God, their efforts will go unappreciated by God.
The following is an excerpt from Romans: A Devotional Commentary written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2018).
You’ve been here before, and it’s all too familiar, almost boring (if it wasn’t so depressing). You’ve sinned that sin again. You know the one. Any notion of the “victorious” Christian life, or the leaving-behind of past ways—that is not your story.
“Always preach the Law, if necessary use words." I know this isn’t exactly the Assisi quote, and I’m also aware of a severe distaste for this proverb among some. The idea behind the original quote, “Preach the Gospel, if necessary use words,” goes something like this.
Gentle and humble, that's how God describes himself (Matt. 11:28-29). Jesus doesn't want us to know Him as a harsh, stern, or violent God. He's gentle, not proud or arrogant. He's humble, of no importance. Unimpressive. God isn't harsh or impressive. He's gentle and humble.
The full arc of our path through Lent and our final arrival at the Resurrection lie hidden within Isak Dinesen’s short story “Babette’s Feast,” upon which the Oscar-winning film was based. The story takes place in a Norwegian coastal village where two spinster sisters, Martine and Philippa, spend their days in plentiful prayer, generous good works, and ascetic living.
Mephibosheth was the victim of circumstance and timing. He was the grandson of Saul—the man who tried to kill David. When Saul and Jonathan died in battle against the Philistines, power shifted to David. Mephibosheth “was five years old when the news about Saul and Jonathan came ... and his nurse took him up and fled, and as she fled in her haste, he fell and became lame” (2 Sam. 4:4).
Over the past 125 years, a destructive force to the Gospel in American churches has spread among academics and lay people alike. This force is the use of the assumptions and methods of an approach to biblical interpretation known as The Historical-Critical Method, or Higher Criticism. While practitioners often vary in their interpretative conclusions, they uniformly deny the divine authorship of the text of the biblical writings.
While waiting to pick up our kids from school one day, I sat with a friend who is a devout Muslim recently immigrated from Pakistan. We happened to pick up a discussion on the particularities of our religious communities. We know each other as broadly representative of our respective religions for no other reason than proximity and school zoning, so a deeper conversation, however brief, was welcomed by both of us.
Psalm 121, is as Luther says, a psalm “written to exhort believers because it contains the doctrine of faith. However, faith is the recognition of things that cannot be seen and must be hoped for, things that depend on the promise of the word of God.”
Where do we get our courage to believe the Gospel? Who leads us to the font? Who supplies us with Jesus' body and blood? Who provides us with the strength and ability to meet the needs that arise as we do the work God gives to us to do? Who supplies us with the right habits, toughness, and perpetual alertness to keep our eyes trained on Jesus, even when we cower before death and doubt in His resurrection? Who issues us the belief in ultimate victory over sin, death, and hell?
I couldn’t understand why she smiled today. I recognized her blue dotted dress as it brushed past the pew hurriedly on the way to the front of the church. Her hands were clutched together tightly and shoulders uncomfortably hunched.
Christ Jesus, not the Law, is revealed in the Gospels as the one Mediator between God and sinners. Christ, the God-man, communes with sinners who remain sinners their whole life long but now through faith, for Christ's sake, have no sin credited to them.
Scripture records the fasts of numerous people and groups of people. Moses, David, Elijah, Hezekiah, Jesus, and Paul fasted (Deut. 9:9; 2 Sam. 12:16; 1 Kings 19:8; 2 Kings 18:6; Matt. 4:2; Acts 9:9). Jehoshaphat called for the nation of Israel to fast (2 Chron. 20:3).
Imagine how silly I felt, sitting there repeating this self-help mantra over and over. As silly as it felt, and still feels, I have followed my psychiatrist's instructions and again learned the power of speaking truth. And I know that when it starts to feel like the life is being sucked from me, I can confess all the truths. I am worthy of basic dignity. I am baptized. I am not worthless or a burden. I am forgiven.
Arm over arm I make my way to the other side of the pool. Mentally I count the strokes. As I touch the pool wall, I pull my head out of the water and meet his eyes, anxiously hoping to hear the words, “Perfect! That’s exactly what I had in mind!”
Recently, a well-known pastor suggested we should obey the commandments in Scripture in order to experience a level of joy we cannot tap into any other way. The theological system that creates statements like this is commonly referred to as “Christian Hedonism.” To be clear, that is not the name critics have given it. It is the name given and used by its theological subscribers. There are many problems with the statement and the theology that produces it, but today, let’s focus on three.
What are the thoughts that run through your head as you read or sing this section of Psalm 51? Do you wonder if you sing or pray them with enough contrition? Do you worry you lack a clean heart, a steadfast spirit, the joy of salvation?
On Ash Wednesday, sinners and saints leave church marked with a cross, marked with the sign and material of death. Heads become canvases painted with ashes. The sobering words, “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” spoken to Adam and Eve as they rebelled against the Lord, are echoed today (Gen. 3:19).
Unlike other gods, Jesus isn't far away. He doesn't wait for us to find Him on some distant mountaintop. He's near us now, nearer to us than our next breath. He's true God, begotten of His Father from all eternity. He's true man born of the Virgin Mary. He's your Lord. He's our God.
Sitting in my office is a painting called The Two Crowns. In this painting, a king rides through the streets in full regalia, seated on an elegant, white horse. The crowd goes wild for him. The women swoon. The king, however, is distracted. He stares at the upper corner of the painting, at a dark, almost imperceptible crucifix, at the true King, his sovereign Lord, crowned with thorns.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (Matt. 28:19)
"How many do they worship?"
This question was asked of me by a representative from a neighboring church.
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. He was not a Hebrew. But he knew the God of the Hebrews, in addition to other purported deities he believed he could summon or charm.
What happens when Jesus is separated from the Gospel? He becomes an abstraction, free to be molded into any image or idea we want Him to take. No longer is He the God who loves us through concrete, verifiable ways in history. No longer is He the God who came down from heaven to die on a cross for our sins. No longer is He the God who rose to new life to bring us into eternity with Him. Jesus becomes a directionless divinity, an idle idolatry.
It's difficult, even painful, for Christians to daily suffer the full weight of our past sin. Often our past drives us forward like a blind animal fleeing from the sound of the hunter. Wherever we go it's always there, our sin, made so brutally clear to us in hindsight, like a big ship's anchor chained to our foot. Also, in this world, we most often bear the weight of past sin alone. Other Christians can't and won't carry it for us; no one wants to take it from us, and nobody wants to break the chain or do something that will ultimately relieve us of the weight. And why should they?
Current approaches to discipleship tend to run along one or the other of two tracks. One type copies the neo-revivalist tactics of North American evangelicals. It anchors discipleship in a unique experience of God in worship and serves then as the basis for specific practices that move “nominal” members of the church into more disciplined lives of faith.
In the church, a “font” is simply a receptacle to hold water to perform the rite of Holy Baptism. They have varied in size, shape, and placement within the history of the church. Since the word used in the New Testament for “Baptism” carries a range of meanings—pouring, sprinkling, immersing, dipping, and cleansing—churches of the Reformation have never made much ado about the mode of the water’s application in the rite. However, the majority of churches still use the traditional eight-sided font. The question I’d like to explore in this post is, “Why?”
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. I will be having a conversation about what the Word of God says about Baptism and the question will come up, “Do you actually believe Baptism is necessary for salvation?”
Fences of the Law are not modern phenomena. They also existed in Jesus’ day. Much of His conversations with the Pharisees centered on the Law and tearing down the fences they had erected. Fences that kept people out of the kingdom of God and away from the Gospel. We can find one of these conversations in which Jesus seeks to kick down the fences in Mark 7:1–23 and Matthew 15:1–20.
God speaks to us to give away His salvation gifts. He sends us preachers for this reason: to hand out His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation through simple, earthly words, water, bread, and wine.
Most scholars consider Melanchthon to be a Reformation enigma. He, the developer of the Reformation doctrine of forensic justification, is contrarily condemned as a synergist. Known well as the Protestant preceptor of Germany, he was Martin Luther’s lifelong friend, colleague, teacher of Greek, and fellow reformer.
I was born November 1949 in Cartagena, Colombia (pronounced “Carta-hen-a”). Cartagena was founded 416 years before, in 1533, by Dominican and Franciscan monks. A few years later, Jesuit and Augustinian monks catechized the indigenous dwellers. My ancestors were among those whose first catechism had the shape of a rod in hands of armed deputies dispatched from the nearest office of the Roman Papacy.
How does one know that they are saved? Where can the Christian turn for any ground of certainty before God on the day of judgment? As a pastor, these questions are often found in the fear-filled voices of guilt-ridden Christians in my study. Lead a Bible study on Romans 9-11 sometime and watch fear fill the eyes as folks realize God is actually, actually sovereign over salvation. If He loved Jacob and hated Esau, what hope do I have that my love for stew isn’t going to be the end of me? Bring up the fate of Judas in a class and see if anyone who has any semblance of their role in the death of Christ is feeling comfortable about their standing before God.
It’s been said that Martin Luther was an occasional theologian. Luther did theology as occasions arose. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t doing theology otherwise. It simply means that theology for Luther wasn’t some abstract thing removed from daily life and the people around him. I suppose the same could be said of Jesus.
Is there room in God’s family for children with disabilities or severe deformities? What about adults? Is there space for a disabled baby in the waters of baptism? Is there a chair at the table of faith for someone who is mentally disabled? For Christians, the question strikes at the foundation of what it means to be called the “communion of saints,” or, “the Church.” Are God’s gifts handed out indiscriminately, or not?
Believing in God is a nice idea; it solves serious philosophical problems. But it doesn’t necessarily solve the personal problem of getting right with the universe. We are told that “the devils also believe” in God, but they remain devils (James 2:19).
While justification and salvation are clear doctrines that answer the question of what is gained by the death and resurrection of Christ, the doctrine of atonement tries to answer the question, “Why did Christ die and how did such a death actually address and deal with the problem of sin?” When we turn to Scripture with these questions, what we get in return is a plethora of pictures of what happened at the cross.
A deadly disease is sweeping our nation, one which you may not even be aware. Some have felt the tragic effects in their own families, many more are affected by it and do not even know the symptoms.
It’s a humid, August afternoon. The courtroom is packed. There aren’t many murder trials in this town. Everyone and their mother wants a seat. The stench of sweat fills the wood-paneled room. The judge enters. The crowd rises on command. The accused is called to the stand, sworn in. To the disappointment of many gathered to gawk, he hardly looks a murderer. He looks like the guy next door—you know, the good neighbor.
There is concrete, real evil in this world. But running and hiding from evil men does no good. When a man becomes a predator, he'll eventually turn his attention on someone else, track them down, hunt them, and prey upon them. More often than not, a predator believes he's doing good for himself, his family, his community, or the world.
If there’s one thing social media has influenced, it’s the rise of thematic, self-help resolutions. Pick an area of life you want to improve, and there’s a group (or app) for that. Supporting your physical fitness, mental health, or spiritual awareness is only a click or tap away.
Jesus has a way of ruining the cause. Whatever we pin our hopes on, whatever we convince ourselves is going to win us the future or stave off defeat, at least for a while, Jesus has a way of ruining. Christians ought to be the least ideological of all people, because Jesus is the death of ideology, as He is the death of us—a blessed death.
The dying came slowly and hard as the completion of a season of surgery and tests, treatments and procedures, referrals and home health, hospitalizations and palliative care, and finally, hospice care. The dying was haunted by ugly things like the word ‘metastasized’, by debilitating pain and the loss of speech, by a growing deafness, a tracheotomy, and anxiety and panic.
Cana of Galilee. The first miracle. The first sign that Jesus is different. It isn't people's grief, but people's joy that Jesus visits. He works his first miracle to increase people's gladness. The One who loves all people loves their gladness too. For Jesus, there's no life without joy, no living without gladness. Everything that's true and good is joy and gladness and always a cup full of Jesus' forgiveness.
In a bid to convince consumers that their cellular service is superior to others, a phone company has rolled out commercials with the tagline “When Ok is Not Ok.” They suggest that you would never want a simply “ok” mechanic, surgeon, or cellular service. So you should choose them. Point taken.
Who is Jesus? As elementary as it seems, that question can prove embarrassingly difficult. Answers pile up quickly: Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior, the Redeemer. But what do these words mean? Does a person who knows them really know Jesus?
“We surrender confidence in God because we lack faith in Christ, and we lack faith in Christ because we rebel against the fact that each, single moment of self-destruction is nailed to that cross.”
"I Love Lucy” was a popular TV show in the 1950s and is arguably one of the greatest comedies in television history. Featuring the Queen of Comedy, Lucille Ball, the show followed the escapades of Lucy, her husband, Ricky Ricardo, and their best friends Fred and Ethel Mertz.
As you drive by the church I pastor in San Diego, one of the things that immediately catches your eye is the color of our entrance doors. Red! In fact, the color is so prominent that we have incorporated it into our church logo.
Paul wrote to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal. 2:20, 21).
A party where the featured guest denounces everyone probably wouldn’t last long. But, if the act of denouncing started to free people, a new entirely different type of party might begin–one with quite a future
Our sins are either with Jesus or with us. If we insist on holding onto our sin, even if it’s just one or two of our favorites, we’ll keep them away from Jesus.
“Our sinful nature is ever present this side of eternity. We need a constant reminder of what a friend of mine once said, “Jesus is the reason. Period.”
The man was Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556). He would be instrumental in bringing the Reformation to England and making justification by faith alone the official teaching of the newly founded Church of England, which incidentally, took place on January 15, 1535.
In the Northern Hemisphere December and January are months of darkness. Shadows lengthen. Light wains. Darkness deepens. But the night of the world is pierced by the birth of Jesus who is God of God and Light of Light. As John proclaims, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
The reality is, we're weak. We're not the smartest people in the room. We get emotional over stupid things. We eat the wrong foods. We waste time. We care too much about meaningless things, and not enough about meaningful things. Some days we win, but most days we don't. We run from the fight, flee the struggle, and are driven by fear.
The heart of the Christian faith can be expressed in one phrase: God justifies the ungodly. If someone were to ask us, “who says?” we can answer boldly, “God does!” How can we be so sure? Isn’t such a bold assertion about God out of place in the modern world? Today, we do not often look to the church for matters of truth, for that we trust science.
There are few things more frightening than the loss of memory. I have cried with many spouses who watch as their loved one slowly fails to remember important times in their lives, the names of their precious children, or even the identity of the one they’ve spent years with building these memories.
Most traditional children’s Christmas plays present the first and the twelfth day of Christmas together. The Epiphany account of the Magi in Matthew 2 is blended into the Christmas Story in Luke 3. This is not a recent religious novelty. It follows a long iconographic tradition that has portrayed the Star of Bethlehem and the Wise Men joining the shepherds at the Nativity of Jesus.
On Thursday, January 4, 1934, a few hundred pastors and church-office holders congregated in the German town of Barmen. Together, they formed the Pastor’s Emergency League: an underground resistance group who opposed the Nazi movement.
There are two lies we must be wary of, two that we must fight. These two lies are saboteurs. They want to bring us down. The first lie is that we deserve pity. We've done so much, doing the best we could, but nobody really appreciates how much we do for the church.
Can you answer the most basic of all questions, one that will set the pattern for your life, your beliefs, your actions, and your choices? Answer this one, simple question and your inner fighting and turmoil will be put to rest. Answer this tiny little question and the path set before you will come into focus. Can you answer it? Can you answer this single question: Who am I?
Since today is New Year’s Day, you’ve probably already decided whether or not you were making any New Year’s resolutions. That you thought about it at all points to the powerful desire we fallen humans have for fresh starts and second chances. Nothing makes us feel more hopeful or optimistic than the opportunity to take a mulligan in the new year.
‘Tis the season to make promises, that you may or may not keep. We call them New Year’s Resolutions. These are traditions in which people resolve to change an undesired trait or behavior in order to accomplish a personal goal or otherwise improve their lives.
This blog is a part of our Advent series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ. Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture.
Under the cold snow, life is hiding. Even though the black ice of winter seals in the colors of spring, we almost forget the roots that bear such beauty when the sun shines. Even in the deep, dark, death of the night, there is more than we can see right below our very own feet.
When we think of Advent, we probably don’t think about whether or not we have a free will in spiritual matters. Actually, most Christians really don’t wrestle with that question at all, whatever the season of the church year.
Matthew’s account of the birth of Christ differs considerably from the more popular version in Luke. As we read through the Advent tale in Matthew’s gospel, it takes a little reading to reach the point where Christmas is upon us (Matt. 1:18-25).
On Christmas Day, 800 B.C., Charles I, King of the Franks, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and thus became “Charles the Great”, or “Carolus Magnus” and thus “Charlemagne: the father of the Carolingian Renaissance.”
This blog is a part of our Advent series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ. Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture.
The mass of worshipers gather. Small oil lamps lead the wise and unsoiled down cobbled streets and into the hall. The moon washes the marble loggias lining the way with a bluish glow. Frozen divinities crowned in the night sky by constellations, stars and planets bearing their names and rehearsing their legends. Athena's dogs fight for scrap in the city's slum as servants of the huntress sleep off the exhaustion of wine, women, and song pursued till the wee hours with lost abandon.
“God’s up there.” The Sheriff of Nottingham gestured vaguely towards the sky. “I’m down here.” Dirty light flickered off the stained glass window. Other than the Sheriff and the friar (and possibly the lurking Cardinal), the cathedral was empty—not a sacred solitude, but a cinematic accentuation of the vacancy of the deity Friar Tuck claimed to serve.
In an interesting twist, the Advent readings often include a selection from Matthew’s Gospel telling the story of John the Baptist. In these readings, we see that John’s fate is linked to his Lord’s. So, having heard John’s first sounding forth in the desert the radical freedom of detachment as he prepares the way of the Lord, we find him now doubly attached—in prison, yet held even more firmly by the One whom he has proclaimed (Matt. 11:2-11).
Most often, what Jesus says is simple, but the simplest things are difficult. What Jesus says is simple, but difficult, and that causes a kind of friction. For example, "Be alert at all times. Don't get bogged down by life's many worries and cares. Pay attention. Watch, all the time, for me to come" (Luke 21:36).
This blog is a part of our Advent series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ. Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture.
We may not know what Mary's opinion was about Elvis or horses, but we know that she was a good girl who loved Jesus, and her boyfriend (or her betrothed, Joseph) too. We might call him a fiancé even if by our standards she was way too young to have such a thing.
Have you ever been in some much trouble with your parents that they called you by your full name? How many of you have been in so much trouble you were accidentally called by one of your sibling’s names? What about the dog’s name? You know you’re in real trouble when the dog’s name gets thrown into the mix.
The “end times” are rarely thought of in close connection to preaching. Preaching, one might imagine, concerns the announcement of what has already occurred in the narrative of salvation. At its best, preaching is the application of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross to sinners in the present day, especially as His work is set forth or illuminated in a particular passage of Holy Scripture. But preaching is rarely associated with the last things.
On the afternoon of December 10, 1520, a number of faculty from the University of Wittenberg and a batch of students gathered outside the Elster gate on the east end of the city. A notice that had been posted in a nearby chapel inviting anyone who thought the Roman church’s teaching stank to join to together at the city’s rankest spot: the town carrion pit. There they could witness the burning of the church’s foulest books of Scholastic theology and papal laws, all of it organized by Martin Luther’s friend and colleague Johann Agricola.
This blog is a part of our Advent series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ. Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture.
In Catalonia, children usher in the Christmas season, with all its trimmings, lights, packages and treats, by celebrating with the poop log which defecates candy in front of the fire. Yes. The poop log might not be the grandest of traditions or held in the same esteem as say, a midnight mass or the care given to making Christmas dinner, but the poop log, or Tio de Nadal, is a tradition nonetheless.
As one who has served with (and benefited from) evangelical institutions for over thirty years, it is becoming increasingly clear that Luther’s Reformation has unique gifts to share with the world (though the other branches of Protestantism also have gifts to give). What are these gifts? How might they be a boon to Christ’s Church? The following is a partial list of six gifts, with a brief description of each.
The season of Advent is absurd when we pause to think about it. Advent declares to a world hell-bent on bookkeeping that God's salvation comes with no price tag. Advent declares to people who are arrogant, materialistic, and short-sighted that eternal salvation comes as a free gift. The God of justice, the God who punishes evil, comes as beggar-king to die at the hands of the evil, and the malicious, and the hateful so that they may see the kingdom of God.
As we enter into another Advent Season, it is good to be reminded that doing the unlikely and unreasonable is standard procedure for our God when He dramatically advances His redemptive plan. Perhaps, however, that description is too weak. When poised to accomplish work central to His plan of salvation, the Lord God usually chooses methods that border on the outlandish and impossible.
When we hope in Christ, we are no longer yearning for a particular event to happen, but rather stand firm in the one who brought about our life by delivering us from the uncertainty of death.
Who doesn't want to take a shortcut? Who isn't looking for a new life hack? Who wouldn't want directions that help to navigate the hard path? Who doesn't want to be the best possible version of themselves? Who doesn't want someone to show them how to reach the goal, develop good qualities, achieve true happiness, and avoid getting on God's bad side?
The essence of God defies reason. Through the revealed Word of God, the mystery can be revealed, but never fully comprehended. And a person really has to ask themselves, is a god that can be grasped by sinful flesh, a god fully understandable and explainable according to the finite logic and world we inhabit, is that a god one can trust and truly believe? Or does such a god actually demand that we dismiss him or her?
One of my favorite bands is Band of Horses. They are not a Christian band. I don’t think they’re Christian at all. To be honest, it doesn’t determine whether I appreciate their music or not. Non-Christians can write some great music. Christians have produced some duds. The opposite is also true. There’s one song from Band of Horses that especially sticks out to me—well, there’s more than one, but this one came to mind most recently. It’s called “Compliments.”
The following is an excerpt from Handing Over the Goods: Determined to Proclaim Nothing But Christ Jesus & Him Crucified - (A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. James A. Nestingen), edited by Steven Paulson and Scott Keith (1517 Publishing, 2018). Edited and used with permission.
As we enter into this year’s Advent season, this blog is a part of our series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ, Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture.
Like many famous photographs, the existence of “Grace” can be chalked up to randomness. Photographer Eric Enstrom had set up a photo studio on the Iron Range in Minnesota, a region located up north and surrounded by big woods and glacial lakes, and chock full of open-pit iron ore mines and mountains of rust-colored mine tailings.
We live in a world full of fear and anxiety. When we turn on the news, we are greeted by suffering, tragedy, and disaster. Our politicians are determined to destroy one another’s reputations, and so they take turns dragging each other through the mud and making more and more outrageous accusations against one another all for the sake of being elected or keeping their position.
How do we deal with death? How do we find a way to deal with each death? How do we wrap our heart around death each time it happens? Is there a coping method that relieves our grief? Is there a remembering that eases our sorrow? Do some take death harder than others? Do some seek therapy? Do we draw strength from others who seem so strong? Do we go home and sit by ourselves, emotionally overwhelmed by the moment? Do we even want to talk about it, or are we just stuck with the cruel grip of death on our heart, and no talking will relieve the pain?
Galatia was a region, not a city. Paul knew the congregations there well. Galatians is one of the earliest epistles, or letters. It shows something, then, that already in this, one of the earliest epistles, Paul begins with a furious defense of the Gospel. This is how quickly things can go wrong, how prone we are to turn back to the Law for what it can’t give, not because it isn’t good and salutary, but because we aren’t.
Galatia was a region, not a city. Paul knew the congregations there well. Galatians is one of the earliest epistles, or letters. It shows something, then, that already in this, one of the earliest epistles, Paul begins with a furious defense of the Gospel. This is how quickly things can go wrong, how prone we are to turn back to the Law for what it can’t give, not because it isn’t good and salutary, but because we aren’t.
As we approach the Advent season, we are happy to introduce a special blog series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ. Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13).
God can hardly wait to fix the problems in your life.
God can hardly wait to fix your sore throat. God can hardly wait to fix your cancer. God can hardly wait to fix your achy back.
God can hardly wait to fix your relationship with your child and bring them back to you. God can hardly wait to fix your relationship with your parents, even if they are dead.
God can hardly wait to fix your sexuality. Your frigidity. Your wandering eye. Your same-sex attraction. Your pornography addiction.
No matter what "doing our best" means to us, we all know from experience that our best isn't good enough. It's never good enough, because no matter how much we love, or argue, or worry, or laugh, and as much as we treat each other as if we are permanent, death comes for us all.
When we think of the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Christ alone, the book of James isn’t the first to come to mind. James is no Galatians or Romans when it comes to that. But James does have something to teach us. James holds up a mirror, and we do well not to look away.
I woke up a few days ago with the gnawing feeling that I was forgetting something. It was an important date, I knew, but why? I checked multiple calendars, thinking that maybe I had forgotten a friend’s birthday. I checked my appointments schedule—perhaps it was a doctor’s visit I had overlooked.
The following is an excerpt from Scandalous Stories: A Sort of Commentary on Parables written by Daniel Emery Price and Erick Sorenson (1517 Publishing, 2018).
Yet what is true about all self-made credos is also true about theirs and mine and yours: They can sound good in the moment, but given enough time, if they are false or lacking, they will be shown for the shams that they are. In the case of these three young people, when one of their number was in trouble the other two very quickly set aside wishful thinking that true life isn’t about responsibilities and hard choices.
Like Luther, the radical reformers recognized the corruption of 16th-century church doctrine and practice, but the manner in which they brought about reform meant leaving behind core Biblical teachings and intentionally exiling faithful believers.
Like Luther, the radical reformers recognized the corruption of 16th-century church doctrine and practice, but the manner in which they brought about reform meant leaving behind core Biblical teachings and intentionally exiling faithful believers.
For Martin Luther, the question of the church’s identity was all about election. Instead of voting for future office-holders, God is the one who chooses.
As creatures enshrouded in the concept of time, we tend to like the idea of clearly delineated dates. We mark our years and our lives through important events that happen to us or have happened to our forebearers throughout history. In this act of remembering, nothing makes us happier than celebrating a nice, even-numbered anniversary; one that shows how far we’ve come and turns us toward reflection, celebration or both. Yet on the 501st anniversary of Reformation Day, the observed day where the Catholic friar Martin Luther probably nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church and in turn set off one of the largest schisms in church history, what is left to celebrate?
Recovery, escape, and consolation. These are the essential elements of a good fairy story, writes J.R.R. Tolkien. As air, water, and food are to humanity, so are recovery, escape, and consolation to the fairy tale.
He came in thinking he would be locked up and eventually deported. But when he walked out of the courtroom, the man was met by his wife and three little girls who could not stop hugging him. However, his status before the law in other matters had not changed: he was still an illegal resident, deportable at any time for violating immigration laws. The joy and celebration could be very short lived.
Most of us know the satisfaction of crossing something off the to-do list. We look back on a neatly mown lawn, freshly folded laundry, finally filed paperwork, or some other completed task and contentedly sigh. It’s done. We’ve done it. Now we can rest or move on to the next thing.
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea” (Mark 9:42). To get a good visual image of what millstones can do, watch the film, Amistad. In this movie, hundreds of pounds of stones are tied around passengers and then thrown off the ship dragging the people overboard and into the ocean.
Recently, Francis Chan made headlines for stepping down from leading his very large church. To explain his decision he wrote a book, A Letter to the Churches, where he makes some very good critiques of American Christianity. Perhaps a driving critique can be summed up with his comment to an interviewer, "Too often we add in our own voices, thinking that if we just offer just the right services or package the gospel in just the right way so no one gets offended, we can convince people to stay. By catering our worship to the worshipers and not to the Object of our worship, I fear we have created human-centered churches.
When we walk into a church, what do we think? Do we think we deserve to be here? Do we deserve what's about to come at us? Do we comprehend what the Church is all about? Or are we humbled by the reality that we don't deserve to be here?
Suffering and sin are realities of life. By rightly understanding these realities in light of God’s word, we can come to hear the most joyous and comforting good news. The good news that our sure and certain hope, our salvation from suffering and sin, is Jesus and His work for us.
First, the reality of suffering. One struggle in understanding suffering begins with the misconception that the words pain and suffering are interchangeable and mean essentially the same thing.
The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Theology of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation written by Steve Paulson and edited by Kelsi Klembara and Caleb Keith (1517 Publishing, 2018).
Someone once called patience “the beggar’s virtue.” A beggar waits. He waits and waits until some kind soul comes along. Sure, he can try to look pathetic and come up with creative lines to win compassion, but, ultimately, his fate lies with the philanthropist, the kind soul who takes note of his need. As Luther commented just before his death, “We’re all beggars.” We approach God as men, women, and children with nothing to offer Him. We come only to receive, pleading His kindness and not our worthiness.
For in Berry’s estimation, individuals are interesting, important, and even worthy of recording in story; but it is only when individuals are bound together in community that they become fully human. The man who belongs to others and to a world bigger than himself is a rich man - a man truly alive in the midst of a people truly alive.
Since they grumble about Him healing a man on the Sabbath, Jesus asks the religious leaders, "Is it easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?" (Matt. 9:5) He asks these men who find it easier to physically walk than walk in forgiveness, whether it's easier to walk in forgiveness or to walk physically.
One of the great questions occupying the minds of theologians and pastors alike is how the Church can respond to an increasingly pluralistic, diverse, global world where the Church is no longer in control of the dominant narrative. This emerging world is often called “postmodern,” a term that is steeped in undecidability, a term that resists any single definition.
We like to think there’s something in us, something we have or do or think or inherit that sets us apart, that contributes in some way to God’s love for us. God’s love, however, is perfect love, undeserved love, true charity, and we dare not want it any other way.
No matter how you spin it, regret is cyclical. Recurring guilt, brooding, and introspection can push us in at least two directions. We can become so despondent over our sins that we fall in on ourselves and decide that we have thoroughly wrecked God’s plan for our lives. If only I hadn’t lost my temper, I might have been promoted in my career. If only I had studied harder, I might have gotten into my dream college. If only I had seen the warning signs, I might have been able to identify the illness that devastated my loved one. At its heart, regret often whispers, “If only I hadn’t fallen into that stupid sin, I might have received the temporal blessing I crave.”
Ask a Law question, get a Law answer. For example, a religious leader asks Jesus a Law question: "Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in Moses' teachings?" Jesus gives a Law answer: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and most important commandment.
They say girls in our society should have nothing to worry about. They should have the opportunity for education and choices far beyond generations before. They should have the attention and protection of public agencies and groups. They should be free to live whatever definition of the American dream they hope to be true. Yet, our daughters are just as vulnerable as they always were.
Popular efforts to rehabilitate a positive function of the Law do indeed reveal a fear that the Gospel––if it is preached too aggressively and offered too freely––will authorize the license to sin. Those who are secure in their sins will be encouraged simply to sin all the more because Jesus, like an enabling parent, is oh-so-willing to forgive them; or at least this is the typical characterization.
Thesis 25 of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation is the final turn of it. It is nothing other than the first light of hope: justification before the Holy God by faith [in Christ] sola–that is, without works!
Aside from Luther's famous tract, On the Freedom of a Christian, almost every article I read on Christian freedom is written as a warning against exercising one’s Christian freedom at the expense of the weaker brother. This bothers me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I do not think sufficient time is given to defining the identity of the weaker brother. Second, few ever take a minute to understand the original issue Paul addresses and if such issues could bring another person into perdition and cause them to lose their faith. Has anyone ever lost their faith because a Christian showed up at a high school dance? Has anyone lost their faith because they saw a pastor smoking, or drinking a glass of wine? And if so, what exactly was their faith in?
The grace of Christ is the business of getting saved, doing nothing. Some simple language and grammar distinctions are important to get this right. Sometimes we hear the grace of Christ expressed as an offer of forgiveness requiring us to ponder and hopefully decide to have it. However, the Word grace means gift; it does not mean offer. We are saved by grace, and strictly speaking, not by an offer. Gifts must already exist, and whoever possesses them makes the decision and is responsible for conveying them to others.
But, Jesus uses kings and kingdoms to explain the reality of our life (Matt. 6:24). We are caught up in a battle between two kings and two kingdoms. And, whether we like it or not, we are ruled by one king or the other. We live in one kingdom or the other. King Money or, Mammon, is a war-monger, cruel and vicious. He rules by force. He makes laws about which emotions are good and which are a crime. He taxes everyone and everything. He sends our sons and daughters to fight and die to expand his kingdom.
My mom’s never gonna forgive me!” She was right. Her mom never forgave her. I was translating for the 15-year-old minor the words of the defense attorney. He wanted to convince her that if she behaved well in the foster home, she could go back home.
Why did God put that tree in the Garden of Eden? Many have pondered this question through the ages. This is the tree from which Eve took the fruit, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the tree upon which the fate of the human race depended. Why would God allow such a tree to exist in His beautiful garden?
Ten lepers obey Jesus' command. As they go to the temple, they are cleansed. Nine go to see the priests. They follow Jesus' commands to the letter. Their obedience is remarkable. But, one turns back. He is a Samaritan, a foreigner, an outsider. He is a leper and a Samaritan. That means he is a duck twice dead. Worse yet, he ignores Jesus' command. Instead, he finds Jesus, falls on his knees and worships Jesus. But, the one who turns back, Jesus says, is saved by his faith. So what are we supposed to learn from this parable? Is this lesson about obedience? Maybe it is about miraculous healing? Maybe it is supposed to direct us to thankfulness?
We may feel righteous indignation against the drunk driver in court, but before God, we are no different. God looks into the DNA of our hearts and measures our extremely high level of lust, envy, pious pride, even intellectual, religious pride. We may hide it well, but inside we get irritated over trivialities, and in our heads, we are constantly suing someone for some minor or large grievances. We always want to save face, even at the expense of others. We are drunk on our own pride and selfishness – and what’s worse, we are not even aware of it.
But what exactly do we mean by the word “believe”? Is it enough to feel something deeply, or is action necessary? If so, what sort of action must be taken to bolster the object of our belief? Many of the greatest atrocities in human history have been committed by humans who firmly believed that they were doing the right thing. Is the worth of our beliefs judged by the glories (or horrors) we may experience because we adhere to something—or is there another way to measure belief? And who gets to judge whether the results of our beliefs are right or wrong?
We are all theologians of glory. We all believe that we have something precious to offer God. Maybe it is our good works; mission trips, teaching Sunday School, helping the poor and downtrodden. Maybe that thing we believe God needs from us is subtler. Perhaps, we imagine, He simply needs our good intentions or our desire to be better. Perhaps, we think, what God needs from us is our faith. And if our faith is not enough, perhaps what He needs is our piety, our complete reverence, religiosity, and desire to follow His will come what may.
Adam has left an unworthy theologian in all of us: a theologian on a quest to know what God has not given us to know, a theologian of glory. We are all still striving to be God. Still eating the forbidden fruit of wanting to ascend to Him. This unworthy theologian doesn't seek to know God to worship Him, but rather to displace Him. The old Adam in us wants to kill God. We believe God is holding out on us, and that He has kept the best things from us. We associate divine glory with spiritual power. And if glory means power, we will gladly become theologians of the former.
On the cross, Christ took our place. With His plea, He cried out, “I will not divorce you, I will not let you divorce me, I love you, I love you way too much, I love you forever. I love you so much I have died for you.” Our senseless divorce plea is drowned out by the voice of our groom Jesus Christ who cries out, “I will never forsake you or abandon you… Do not fear: I am with you; do not be anxious: I am your God, I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Heb. 13:5; Is. 41:10 NABRE).
I was recently asked, "Does Jesus ever just get fed up with how much time I need to spend each day taking care of myself? I have so many aches and pains, and so many things I need to do so I can function. I just wondered, does He ever get irritated that I spend so much time taking care of myself and so little time paying attention to Him?"
This morning, while watching the news I saw an elected official from Hurricane Florence-ravaged North Carolina plead for neighbors to keep an eye out for each other, and to help whomever they were able to. It was a pretty benign request in the face of possible disaster. My initial response, however, startled me. I thought “technically, no one is legally obliged to help one another." And I was right. Of course, our “musts” and “shoulds,” do not always compliment each other.
This year I have been trying to understand the cultural phenomenon that is Jordan B. Peterson. Peterson, the Canadian psychologist turned pop-self-help-guru, has been making some waves since 2016. He certainly says some amazingly positive things (as well as some not-so-positive), and has profoundly impacted young men all over the world by telling them to “clean your room.”
This is the eighth installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Translation of Theses 16, 17 and 18 by Caleb Keith.
Striving for good habits is not an affront to salvation by grace alone, in fact, it is the very consequence of living out the new reality of grace. The new reality and destiny of creation is grace. Grace is the new way of being for the world since, in Christ, God has reconciled the world to Himself and makes all things new through the work of His Son. To say that the new reality is grace is to say that Christ has died for the sins of the whole world and relates to the world as one from that world, the New Adam, giving propitiation to God through the sacrifice of his own self for his people. God becomes man, forever enfleshed, so that God can offer up to God the payment necessary to bridge the eternal distancing of God from His beloved. In defeating sin, the God-Man stands in our place, paying our ransom, not as an outsider but as an insider. Only because He is an outsider can he afford the costly fee insiders could never afford no matter how hard they work.
Sooner or later, most drivers will receive an invitation to traffic court. They must answer guilty or not guilty to an infraction of one or more traffic laws. But it is the judge who sets the fine. Depending on the presiding judge of that particular day, the fine may vary, even if it is for the same infraction. One judge may make a guilty driver pay as much as $425 for running a light, whereas another judge may impose a fine as low as $125. Rolling through a stop sign could be as high as $280, or as low as $100.
Where we see the rubber of ideology meet the road of Christianity is in the way we Christians have distinguished ourselves from one another for the majority of the last 100 years. Most distinctively along the political spectrum of right, left, and center; as either conservative, liberal, or moderate in ideology.
I am not going to give an apology for evolution as a scientific theory. Rather, I am wondering if the normal way of discussing evolutionary science within conservative Christianity has blinded us to certain fruitful uses of the theory.
Law and Gospel preaching has the same structural and improvisational aspects to it. It’s not an activity that comes easily to an untrained hand. But it’s possible to become an adept by learning “the cycle.” There are a melody and rhythm that begin to seep into a preacher’s being by shaping tongue, teeth, and lips to the announcement of mercy for sinners on account of Christ crucified.
In pastoral care, I'm often drawn back into the parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector. When someone comes to me because they are troubled, they don't come looking for a quick fix, a pick-me-up, or some plan we concoct together that will hopefully pull them out of their funk. What they crave more than anything is comfort. They want me as their pastor to say God's baptismal promise still holds true for them, despite the accusation of their own heart or the judgment of family and friends. They are still a Christian, still a beloved child of God, and still justified for Christ's sake. When this conversation occurs I direct their attention to the parables, especially to Luke 19:13: And the tax collector, standing far away, would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast instead, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me the sinner!’
This is the sixth installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Translation of Theses 11 and 12 by Caleb Keith.
Sehnsucht is the German word often translated as a “yearning” or “longing.” Psychologists have suggested that it is a multifaceted concept that involves ideas such as bittersweet emotions, utopian ideals, and an introspective lifestyle. We see this theme repeated again and again in myths, music, and stories: something is missing, and humans will try most anything to alleviate—or address—this longing.
Did Jesus ever marry? Yes, He married you! He did not marry a single woman because He came to make each of us His bride. In Baptism, He makes a vow to you, and He is faithful. No one has ever seen such a husband. For even though we trespass our vow, He remains vigilant. He wipes our tears of regret and shame with words and meal, “Take and eat, take and drink the blood of the new covenant for the forgiveness of your sins.”
After many years of serving as a certified court interpreter, the matter before me in a criminal sentencing was nothing new. A jury had found the defendant guilty of domestic violence with aggravated assault, and he was now before the judge for sentencing. As I expected, the judged handed him a stiff sentence. Seven years in the State penitentiary, of which he would serve two-thirds time with good behavior. I remained at his side in case the defense attorney would need my services to further explain the sentencing. But the unexpected happened. As we waited, the man opened his heart to me.
This is the fourth installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Translation of Theses 7 and 8 by Caleb Keith.
Luther establishes the human condition in two, and only two realities; the Christian (Thesis 7) and the unbeliever (Thesis 8). There is no third purgatorial state of “figuring out if one is a Christian.” There are no levels of Christian holiness based on one’s avoidance of sin or one’s success at good works. The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is not based on works or sins, but on where they place their security.
The Christian faith is like no other. We do not give to God. God gives to us. We do not get right with Him. He declares us righteous, for the sake of His Son, dead on a tree, victorious from the grave. The Law is not a vehicle. It is a death trap for the sinner. We need something more, something else, and not of our creation.
he last line of Psalm 137 is about as awful a Bible passage as you could find. Most church hymnals include all the psalms along with church services and hymns, but some leave this one out because it seems so inappropriate for worship. Although Psalm 137 stands out like a thumb struck by a five-pound sledgehammer, the attention it draws to itself also reveals a God who’s not afraid of dealing with what it means to be human.
If we’re re-discovering anything about ourselves in the 21st century, it may be this: We are all storytellers at heart. A relevant story told by an authentic voice captures our attention and can move our hearts, change our minds, and even redirect our behavior. Emotional and aesthetic appeal are important factors in the modern man’s decision-making process. That, we’ve seen, is rooted in a long history of storytelling.
At times, we treat the Holy Spirit like the red-headed step-child of the Trinity. Why is that? It is the Spirit who sends His preachers armed with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Spirit calls, gathers, and enlightens people with His gifts handed out through earthly words, water, bread, and wine. He is the One who daily and at all times forgives our sin. He will raise us from death on the Last Day. When we look closer at what Scripture says about God's Spirit, there is not a single aspect of our salvation that is not overseen by the Holy Spirit. But, that is why we downplay the work of the Spirit.
This is the third installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation.
Hard truth works both ways. As the apostle Paul declared, “If Christ be not raised from the dead, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). Should this be hard truth, it means that we also will not be raised from the dead. In which case, Paul advised believers to eat and drink, for tomorrow we die (v. 32). However, this is not the case. Our faith and God-talk are grounded in the corroborated multi-sensual testimony of the women, the Apostles, and over 500 witnesses. Their testimony provides overwhelming evidence of the hard truth that Jesus did rise from the dead, and therefore so will we (1 Cor. 15:3-8, 20-22).
The last prayer I’d ever want to pray is, “Lord, lay me down helpless.” Yet isn’t that the same as “Lord, I believe. Help, thou, my unbelief”? True preaching of the Gospel allows me to be a pew-sitter who can speak such a terrifying prayer. True preaching has an answer to such a prayer. “You ask who can save you from that body of death? Christ the Lord, the first-born of the dead, can and does.
Jesus is faithful, loving, and kind. He gladly helps everybody and is good to everyone. This is what it means that He’s God and Savior. So, we look to Him for everything good. In this way, we learn to trust Him and depend on Him for every spiritual good too. Jesus feeds our stomach so that we can trust Him to feed and clothe our soul too.
Unfortunately, too many Christians in the world today have a “Turn or Burn” theology. If you read it in the wrong context and have a poor definition of words, the Bible can appear to be full of that sort of thing. “Repent” seems to be one of the problem words in the vocabulary of many Christians. We often compare its use to a scolding mother who slaps your fingers and shouts, “You stop that right now, or else!” Too often, we equate “repent” as the final warning to stop a particular sin before God ceases to love you and sends you to hell for your evil deeds. This is a terrible misuse of a completely lovely word.
So what does that word “repent” really mean? Let’s take a look at the word through the eyes of our fathers in the faith.
This is the second installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. You can read the first post here. Translation of Theses 3 and 4 done by Caleb Keith.
“All the lonely people, where do they all come from?” the Beatles sing in their well-known song, “Eleanor Rigby.” We might not have any lost Amazon tribes hidden from us in our overly civilized and connected society, but we have plenty of lonely people. Not far from your doors is a woman who screwed up her life so bad, her family and friends left her to herself. Not far from your church building is a boy who has been abused by the world, feels confused about his sexuality, and doesn’t think anyone would understand. In our schools and workplaces, at Walmart and the doctor’s offices, lonely people are going about their day. They live hidden behind their sins, shame, and past. They assume that this life is all there is before we all turn to worm food. They don’t know anyone cares for them, let alone that the God of the universe loves them.
The red in our ledgers is the blood of Christ, fully atoning for our sins, fully paying our debt. Because God the Father chose to forsake His Son, we will not be forgotten. “Their sins I will remember no more,” our God promises (Jeremiah 31:34), and for the sake of Christ, the omnipotent Ruler of the universe chooses to forget our sins of thought, word, and deed—not because they never existed, but because the wages of death has been paid in full to our Mediator, Jesus.
The Heidelberg Disputation is one of the earliest reformational writings from Luther with its presentation occurring just six months after the famous posting of the 95 theses. Where the 95 theses is a pointed attack on a handful of misdeeds from the Roman church, Heidelberg is a sweeping offensive meant to restore the foundation of all Christian doctrine. The presentation of doctrine found within its theses is referred to as the “Theology of the Cross,” named after Thesis 21 where Luther states, “A theology of glory declares evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross declares the thing to be what it truly is.” Luther argues that the cross is the lens through which we can understand all Christian doctrine because the cross alone stands as a corrective to the ideas and philosophies we try to force on the Word of God. To celebrate the 500th anniversary of Luther’s Theology of the Cross, we are happy to introduce this special series of reflections on the theses and proofs of the Heidelberg Disputation. Each week, we will reflect on a few of the theses leading up to this year’s Here We Still Stand Conference in October. Each post will also include a new translation completed by Caleb Keith.
What our heart wants our mind justifies. We want what we want when we want it. There's not a whole lot we can do to curb the wanting either. This may not seem like much of a problem until we ask what our wanting does to effect God's relation to us. How does our unending need for personal freedom to choose effect salvation? The answer is simple, just not easy for us to accept. What we want in relation to God is captive to sin, death, and the devil. In relation to each other we may have some small amount of freedom to choose, but in relation to God’s saving work for us at Golgotha, we always choose sin and resistance. That's what it means that our will is in bondage.
Sometimes the hardest part of the day is the time just before sleep. At that time, if struggles or stresses abound, we can be kept up by racing thoughts. This fretting and over-analyzation, the frantic search for options, can leave us exhausted and depleted, feeding the cycle of stress that is already at work in us.
“Walk the walk.” When I hear that phrase, I know there’s something for me to do. Get it together girl. There is a way you should be acting and things you should be doing. Generally, I’m a pretty good person, and I think I do what I’m supposed to.
Both Marys and Marthas abound in the church, and there is often tension between them. Sometimes this tension is expressed by exhausted Marthas spouting off the 80/20 rule: twenty percent of the people are doing eighty percent of the work. As a pastor, Martha-like curriculums often bombard me with promises to help eliminate apathy in the pews or motivate my people for more service. Much of this type of teaching comes down to guilt-tripping people until they feel forced to do more, serve more, be better. In turn, I too am guilt-tripped about not getting my people to jump on to the latest craze, join a short-term mission trip, or something to that effect.
Jesus loves in the way of selfless, self-giving. His sacrificial love covers sin. His love does not seek its own good, but only the good of the beloved. Jesus doesn't ask, "What are going to do for me?" He doesn’t ask us, “What will I get out of this?” He asks, "What do you need?" What's the result? The question hits its tipping point at Calvary.
Writer's Block, like the law as a mirror, shows me the need for a Savior. I've hurt someone by my words again. I've wounded someone by not speaking up again. No matter how hard I try, no matter how many hours I spend writing, rewriting, and editing, I can't be perfect. When I focus on myself – as a writer, in my other vocations, or simply as a human being – I will always be found wanting.
Nietzsche was right when he said God is dead. Social Darwinism and Progressivism have taught us that we no longer need a sky deity - we are too smart for Him, and so we’ve done away with Him. He has ceased to be the way our world measures goodness, truth, and beauty and thus, the way we measure our worth. We tell ourselves this "lack of God" is better: no more condemnation from above, no more thunder, lightning and hailstorms, no way anyone any longer can use God as ammunition to oppress the weak or steal from the poor.
What should be the friendly response to each of these individuals’ doubts and ignorances? Tell them the Gospel again! Put them into this YOU, as Luther says. Again, again and again! The “You” mentioned by Luther is Christ’s forgiveness, won on the cross for the entire world and thus for you.
We pray that God may enlighten and use parents, Servants of the Word, and Christian friends as His instruments to help our children deepen their understanding and appreciation of these realities or, as with Jennifer, recover them for a Happy Forever.
The truth is, we love God in spite of ourselves. That does not mean we are incapable of love. All people love someone or something. But regardless of who or what we love, we are called by Selfless Jesus to go further. Selfless, Loving Jesus invites us to make the radical claim that we love God and neighbor "because He first loved us.” But, to love as God wants us to love is so difficult.
As James lays out the Christian life, his directives become far richer and more profound when read in light of the Gospel: we have been purchased with the divine blood of Christ, made His with no merit of our own, and we have been raised with Christ to live in freedom.
But is he preaching the social gospel?
The history of Christianity is marked by these confessions or creeds. The word creed is derived from the Latin word credo, which simply means “I believe.” Thus, all the historic Christian creeds––confessions of faith––begin with this simple line: “I believe…” But why is confession so integral to belief? Because we live in community with God and with one another, yet we don’t always agree with God or with one another. When we believe something important, maybe even something life-changing, an explanation is often required to provide lines of demarcation between where we once were and where we now are.
Have you ever considered your devotional life? I’m sure most Christians have at least thought about this or have even attempted to read through some sort of book dedicated to focusing their hearts and minds on the things of God. There are selections of daily devotionals to fit into your every routine - short snippets or lengthy meditations. They appear at all times of the year, before Christmas and Easter, and always in January when you are ready to turn over a new devoted, leaf. They may speak to your unique station in life: for men, women, and children, young and old. Even if you have never encountered these little nuggets of inspiration, I wonder, are they worth your devoted mediation?
Religion demands transactions between man and gods, but the one true God, in His timing, short-circuited all of our notions of transactions.
Somehow we have accepted the idea that struggling, searching, and digging to find spiritual answers implies a dangerous lack of faith. We hide behind the safety of a belief that cannot be disproven, the security blanket of a worldview that can never be questioned or falsified. We don’t have to pay attention to any competing claims. We already know in advance that we’re right, so there’s no need to entertain any questions.
The end times and eschatology can get sublimely confusing and if you aren’t careful you can soon lose the forest for the trees and the Gospel for the “signs of the time.” So what’s the Gospel take on the End Times? How do I find comfort in this doctrine while remaining faithful to the historical, Christian witness?
Believing is to trust that the promise of forgiveness is addressed to you and for you through the proclamation (preached Word), water, bread, and wine, and not due to anything good or evil in you, before or after conversion. The promise is dependent on God’s faithfulness to it. This is the Christian faith once delivered to all the saints. It points us outside of ourselves.
God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. The thrust of a spear plunging upward piercing the side of God, perforating his bowls, puncturing his heart, collapsing his lungs: this becomes the message of God. The nastiest bit is the Gospel, the good news, your salvation. It’s the foolishness that God could die that our sins could be forgiven by another man’s blood, that salvation is found in the death of a criminal. No glory, just a cross, bowels, blood and bone, the suffocating stench of death, and your salvation where God becomes the propitiation of man.
The thing is though, compared to Jesus, nobody's love burns as hot. Compared to Jesus, our love seems depressingly uninspired. But there must be some sort of way we can work ourselves up to Jesus levels of love. There must be some sort of way we can open ourselves to become conduits that God's love can flow through.
This is an excerpt from Martin Luther’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535), translated by Haraldo Camacho (1517 Publishing, 2018), 109-111, Used by permission.
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The story told in Luke 24:13-35 happens weekly in our church services. Listen to how two disciples' 7 mile journey and meeting with the resurrected Jesus sets a pattern for Christian activity from that time until the present
What happened at the first council of Nicea and why is it historically important? Listen to learn more about the events that lead up to the council and the controversy that was discussed.
When guilt becomes our totem, it dictates our idea of right and wrong and enslaves us to the fear of what happens when we open our eyes tomorrow morning. Will we make the same mistakes? Will we make worse mistakes? How much more guilt can we possibly bear?
Yet thanks be to Jesus Christ, He is our light, our salvation, and our totem. This is our reality—whether we wake or sleep, we will live with Him forever.
This post takes up the second insight Mordor has for Christians engaging in evangelism and apologetics. The insight is the effect that follows from battle with Mordor because no one recovers from a descent into Mordor this side of Valinor, and no one can fruitfully engage with non-believers without experiencing cognitive dissonance and altered views of the self, the church, and society this side of Eden.
There's nothing that needs to be improved as far as God's relation to us. Listen to His Word and watch what He does; He waters, feeds, loves, and strengthens us. We will be humbled by this, so why not sit back, relax, and enjoy being humbled? There's joy, freedom, and peace in being humbled by God.
God doesn’t believe in atheists. As they reject His existence, so He rejects their rejection. But God also doesn’t believe in monotheists. We may confess that there is one God—and there is—but in fact, the church is full of religiously observant polytheists. But for us, who are so prone to trust in all things more than God, God has already paid the price. His blood covers our idolatry.