If the church is going to speak to people weary of religion, it will not be by offering better techniques or louder certainty, but by daring to say what Paul so plainly said: Christ is enough.
Surveying Scripture, it is an immense comfort to know we’re not alone in our sinfulness.
Christian faith is never a solitary possession. When the congregation confesses, the old speak for the young, the strong for the weak, and the clear-voiced for the trembling.

All Articles

Neither the disciples nor Paul expected a resurrected Messiah, so something has to account for their dramatic transition from faithless to fearless in the days/years following Jesus’ crucifixion.
Paul says Christian faith means confessing Jesus is Lord, beginning at the Cross, and owning the historical fact that God raised Him from the dead.
The Church becomes anti-church when the new world order Christ inaugurated by eliminating demographic division through the commonality of Baptism is exploded by allegiance to cults of personality.
One name repeatedly emerges from the heart and mind of Paul: Jesus. Jesus is Messiah, Jesus is Savior, Jesus is the world’s rightful and reigning King.
Every verse rings with the Gospel, declaring the giving of God the Father consisting of the Son and the Spirit and we, contrary to what we deserve for our sins, the recipients of His “lavish” love and grace.
The lavish nature of God’s love is indicated by the fact that He, as Father, is the author of our being adopted as sons and daughters through Holy Baptism.
We expect the world to shoot its wounded. But not even the world expects Christians to shoot their wounded.
Are people so different today? Is justification really irrelevant now? Is the preacher’s only point of contact with the life-giving Gospel a by-product of Microsoft’s word processor? I do not think so.
Far too many Christians read the Bible as if a dam has been built between the waters of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Jesus and the New Testament—good. Yahweh and the Old Testament—not really so good. So goes the popular, but largely whispered, dichotomy.
The gelded Gospel is shiny and attractive and compelling, and we can perform the procedure in any number of ways.
The communion service is a sermon in and of itself. The communion sermon is that which most expressly tells us of the sinless One who stands in the sinner’s stead.