Martin Luther challenged the authorities of the church to debate his Ninety-Five Theses, which he nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517. The first was “our Lord and Master Jesus Christ . . . willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”319 At first glance this appears to be saying that Christians never make any progress, that they are always asking forgiveness for repeated failures. Actually, he was saying the opposite, namely that repentance is the way we make progress in the Christian life. It is the key to growing deeply and steadily into
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