Last week, I shared how Lutherans don’t buy into the whole “make a choice for Jesus” rhetoric that we hear in other Christian traditions. We believe in something called “the bondage of the will,” meaning that we believe that, in an unsaved individual, sin makes it impossible for us to…
Last week, we talked about how, for Lutherans, grace is foundational for everything. Grace is what saves us, not anything that I do. There’s nothing that I can contribute to my salvation. It’s all completely up to God, something that He accomplishes because of His grace. I brought up the…
One of the hardest Bible passages for a Lutheran like me to hear comes from the book of James: What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without…
In Romans, Paul encourages us to confess and believe so that we might be saved. Over the last two weeks, we looked a little at what it means to confess. But Paul says that when we’re Christian, we believe as well as confess. Sounds simple enough, right? But what, exactly,…
So for the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at a pattern of mountaintop experiences that God’s people experienced in the past. The pattern, which we saw with Moses, Elijah, and Peter, goes something like this: The primary experience – Whoever it is goes up on a mountain and has…