The Psalm now is this: as Christ suffered and then was exalted, so we are also in him.
No matter how stringent one's "regulations" — "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" (Col. 2:21) — the sinful nature that resides in everyone's heart is untamable by self-effort alone.
Kleinig continually directs the reader's attention to Christ and his gifts.

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The pain of God’s silence strikes Jesus harsher than any nail ever could. “For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you rejected me?
It is an ineffable mystery that God suffers, and our preaching must bear out that mystery. One can only emphasize that God is truly man and that God suffers and dies on account of the personal union. But we do not emphasize the suffering apart from the divine nature, or as if the divine nature was not fully His at particular moments. The personal union causes us to deal with the whole Christ.
It’s the following that caught my attention this week. It seems especially appropriate to consider this Sunday, for Holy Week is designed to help Christians follow Jesus through his last and consequential days.
“That can’t be right”, I thought to myself as I flipped back and forth between two verses in my Bible.
Every misty road and agonizing moment of indecision reminds us that life is not about becoming—or finding—perfection. Life is the One who is perfect.
When we preach Jesus crucified for the sin of the world, Jesus crucified to put away God’s harsh judgment, that good news creates faith
If sin is not “imputed” or “reckoned to” the sinner then who is it reckoned to? The good news is that it’s reckoned to God
The texts compel us to deal with the “new thing” (Isa.43:18) that God is doing, namely, preaching the righteousness of faith to all nations. God’s judgment of justification is now for all. It has nothing to do with the flesh and everything to do with faith.
What he says in this parable has significance for us today, and needs to be preached. But the application is not direct and therefore should be done carefully.
Pelagianism is the ancient heresy that says that if you work hard enough and will something strongly enough, you can prevent sin
All the piety, rigor, and discipline presented to the world by the believers, the General knew, was done out of fear and the denial of God’s grace
Lenten meditation is the one time Luther might advise us to be turning in on ourselves--and taking a cold, honest glance. For only in the shadow of the Cross can we look honsetly into the cause of the death of the man from Nazareth, the second person of the Trinity.