No matter how many times we hear this good news, it never stops being good news.
Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
Just as trick-or-treaters arrive at doorsteps as beggars, we come to the Lord’s table with nothing to offer but our sin and need for forgiveness.

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What do Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac, the place where David built an altar to stop a plague, and the temple of Solomon all have in common? All three were on the same mountain. On this mountaintop, you can see the whole story of salvation.
This is an excerpt from “A Lutheran Toolkit” written by Ken Sundet Jones (1517 Publishing, 2021), pgs. 23-25.
Our anxiety about the future is a consequence of our old self’s attempts to achieve freedom for himself apart from Christ Jesus.
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.
Out of great pain and suffering often comes goodness, beauty, and truth. John Donne, born on the 22nd of January in 1573, is an excellent example of that for us in his masterful work, Death Be Not Proud.
The accent of Scripture emphasized that Christ is for you. Yes, you. He’s not for the perfect people of our imaginations. He’s not just for Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, or Paul. Christ is also for you.
Jesus knows you and everybody else come from a long line of life wasters going all the way back to Adam. Jesus died for life wasters! Let go of your bootstraps. Stand back up. Your Father loves you.
What more could God do to prove to us that he is for us and not against us than to give his own Son into this fallen world to take the cross in our place, exchanging his righteousness for our many sins.
The church does well to remind the world that God is unmasked, indeed, that God has unmasked himself in the person of Jesus.
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 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.