For All It's Worth

The Messiah in the Passover , Edited by Darrell Bock and Mitch Glaser Why should Christians celebrate and remember the Passover?   This is a striking question that needs to be understood as well as the historical and theological context of the Passover.   However obscure we sometimes view the Old Testament, there is some significant reasons why we should reach back and study the Passover.   Mitch Glaser in the Introduction states, “When Christians celebrate the Passover, they grow in their understanding of the Old Testament, affirm the Jewishness of the Gospel, deepen our understanding of the Lord’s Supper, and build community with fellow Christians…” (20).   This book is answer to why celebrate the Passover but even more importantly an answer to what the Passover is and what it signifies to us today.   The various contributors of this book, Messiah in the Passover, bring a wealth of ministry experience in relating the Jewishness of both Jesus a...

“Since Brother Martin was so troubled by his sin and unworthiness, Staupitz first advised that he seek forgiveness in the sacrament of penance.   Going to confession helped Luther, but only to a point.   Luther began to confess his sins frequently, often on a daily basis, and sometimes in great detail.   He analyzed every sin, every motive, every circumstance, scrupulously.   His fellow priests grew tired of hearing his obsessive confessions.   Some began to avoid him on purpose.   Johann van Staupitz, a very patient man, exploded one day: “Look here”, he said to Luther, “if you expect Christ to forgive you, come in with something to forgive – patricide, blasphemy, adultery – instead of all these small faults.”   But this advice was useless to Luther.   His anxiety was not over the magnitude of his sins, or their sheer number, but over whether they had been correctly confessed.   What about unrecognized sins?   Or forgotten sins? ...