The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive.

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On Maundy Thursday, Christ explicitly gave his disciples the new command from which the day takes its name, for the Latin words novum mandatum are the Vulgate’s translation of “new command.”
Spy Wednesday asks us to look inward. It's the day the liturgical calendar acknowledges what we already know: we are not the best version of ourselves.
The Pharisee valued fasting and giving tithes, but could not find value in his fellow sinner.
We can willingly admit the fact that we're just like tax collectors and thieves.
Although the outcome has been decided by Jesus victory, the devil won’t give up without a fight.
Surveying Scripture, it is an immense comfort to know we’re not alone in our sinfulness.
When we despair of ourselves, we repent of these self-justifying schemes and allow ourselves to be shaped by God, covered in Christ’s righteousness, and reborn with a new heart.
We can’t remove our crosses or the reality of our deaths. Only Jesus can.
People everywhere, every day, feel God’s wrath—and not as merely an afterlife threat but as a present reality.
Baptism does not promise us chocolates or flowers, but something far greater: life in Christ.
Ultimately, Scripture does not confront fear with commands. It confronts fear with a promise.
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).