The Gospel-Driven Life

Quoting Dr. Mike Horton, co-host of The White Horse Inn, on his October 26, 2009 appearance on Issues, Etc.:

Every one of us is going to have to give an account of our lives. We are going to be judged by works. Now the question is, whether we are going to cling to Christ and His works, or whether we are going to say “You know, I’m going to be my own lawyer here. I’m going to argue in my own defense. I’m gonna go ahead and wear those filthy rags to the courtroom.” The news on judgment day has already been delivered to those who have faith in Christ - we’ve already heard the verdict. Not only that we’re not guilty, but that we are perfectly holy, righteous, and acceptable in God’s sight because Jesus Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. There is therefore now, no condemnation, for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Recoiling at the Thought

Quoting from Dr. Glenn E. Heubel's paper "A Forgotten Paradigm: The Theology of the Cross":

No theologian of the cross expects outward success to be a necessary fruit of his faithful labors in the Word. He knows very well that the outward results may well have been just the opposite. He knows that the Spirit works faith when and where He wills in those who hear the Gospel" (Augsburg Confession, Article V). The humble theologian of the cross knows how foolish it is to compare one ministry of the Word with [another], as if the results depended upon the preachers (2 Cor. 10:12), and he recoils at the thought of being regarded as faithful simply because he has impressive stats. In fact, outward success may cause a faithful pastor to do a soul searching evaluation of his ministry! He may well ask himself such questions as: Am I watering down or compromising the Word in order to be liked? Am I calling all people to repentance or am I preaching a cheap grace? Am I dealing with the specific sins of my people or am I dealing with the world's sin or only with sin in general? Am I preaching the whole counsel of God's Word or am I evading difficult doctrines which may cause me problems? Am I holding high the cross of Jesus Christ or am I "caressing the devil"? Outward success is unusual for those who preach the cross of Christ.

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The Golden Thread

Quoting from Rev. Rolf Preus's paper "Luther Revisited: The Doctrine of Justification Is Still the Issue":

The doctrine of church fellowship is not a matter of submitting to rules determined by the democratic processes of the synod to which we belong. It is a matter of confessing the pure gospel by which we sinners are saved from hell. The unionistic spirit is utterly incompatible with the Christian gospel. It holds the righteousness of Christ in contempt. We condemn religious unionism because we love the gospel of justification by faith alone. Why do Lutheran pastors promote participation in the Promise Keepers or similar organizations? Because they don't have enough rules on how to apply the doctrine of church fellowship? Of course not. They do it because they don't value the righteousness of Christ. If they did, they would teach their members to mark and avoid such gatherings.

Find a preacher who preaches Christ, His person, His work, His atonement, His righteousness reckoned to us, the forgiveness of sins, all within the context of preaching the law without any compromise, and you'll find someone opposed to religious unionism. The same faith which receives the righteousness of Jesus with which God clothes us is the faith which rejects the unionistic spirit of doctrinal indifference. The reason a Lutheran marks and avoids false doctrine and refuses to worship with those who don't is not because he has been sufficiently indoctrinated in his church's rules. Rather, it's a simple matter of love and hate. If you hate something, you don't express fellowship with it. If you love the pure teaching by which God has saved you, you hate the false teaching which can damn you.

And it is just this love for the gospel of justification that will find in every other article of Christian teaching the same golden thread of the righteousness of the God-man which covers us and renders us fit to enter into eternal life. Nothing is worth teaching, preaching, defending, or confessing, except for the sake of this truth which glorifies God as it reveals his mercy to poor, lost, undeserving sinners like you and me and thus saves us eternally.

Reviews of the 2010 LCMS National Youth Gathering

It’s nice that the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) thinks it’s important enough to minister to the youth of our Synod that we have the National Youth Gathering (NYG) every three years. There’s a lot of good things offered at the Gathering, but yet there were things this year that strayed from the teaching of Christ. The average congregant doesn’t know that there are theological problems with the NYG, and, given the chance, might not recognize those problems. We did not send our son to the NYG because of these problems, though he had the opportunity to attend. Instead, he taught Vacation Bible School to the First Nations people of central British Columbia. I don’t want my son being taught even a little generic Evangelical moralism or being taught that the Holy Spirit works through the rhythmic banging of a drum while in the care of the LCMS.

It’s not unreasonable to assume that those in charge of the NYG would see to it that proper doctrine is taught at this event in all of its venues, as Scripture tells us to do, yet that’s not always the case. Who is responsible for determining if our children are being properly taught? Ultimately, it is we, the parents. For those of you who might not recognize all of the error being taught and are concerned about the spiritual well-being of your kids, assembled below are blog posts, a podcast, and a video which review some of the problems at the 2010 NYG. As an alternative to the NYG I would suggest Higher Things, a Recognized Service Organization of the LCMS which will properly catechize your children, offering yearly events and much more.

Timotheos, who is one of the authors of the blog Balaam’s Ass, offers a decent summary in his comment on a speaker at one of the mass events:

But the worst of it was that when she talked about her daughter being in heaven, she said it was because she had given her life to the Lord. (Could it be that Baptist worship leads to a Baptist theology of conversion? Just asking.) Frankly, that’s simply not true. Her daughter is not in heaven because she gave her life to the Lord; she is in heaven because Jesus gave His life for her. That’s not just semantics; it’s the difference between heaven and hell, comfort and despair, life and death. It matters how we talk, and if we do not recognize how foreign the thought of “giving our life to Jesus” is to ”grace alone,” then we have ceased to be Lutheran. And that’s fine–if you don’t want to be Lutheran. But how is it acceptable for a Lutheran woman, married to a Lutheran pastor, to say things like that to teenagers who have friends who believe that salvation happens exactly how she worded it? It matters how we talk, because, ultimately, we will think and believe the same as what we say. Ask a liturgical scholar how many times the liturgy changed before the doctrine. It’s not my personal bias, it’s a fact.

Balaam’s Ass: An Open Letter on the LCMS National Youth Gathering

Click HERE to continue reading >>

I Still Have Issues

Lutheran Piety?

A mighty fortress is our God!

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Church Growth and Persecution: Like Two Peas in a Pod

“The enmity of the world in his [St. Paul’s] estimation augurs well for the success and growth of the Church, which fares best in times of persecution.”

The following quote comes from Luther’s Commentary on Galatians, Chapter 5, verse 11, gleaned from Project Wittenberg:

VERSE 11. And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offense of the cross ceased.

In his great desire to recall the Galatians, Paul draws himself into the argument. He says: "Because I refuse to recognize circumcision as a factor in our salvation, I have brought upon myself the hatred and persecution of my whole nation. If I were to acknowledge circumcision the Jews would cease to persecute me; in fact they would love and praise me. But because I preach the Gospel of Christ and the righteousness of faith I must suffer persecution. The false apostles know how to avoid the Cross and the deadly hatred of the Jewish nation. They preach circumcision and thus retain the favor of the Jews. If they had their way they would ignore all differences in doctrine and preserve unity at all cost. But their unionistic dreams cannot be realized without loss to the pure doctrine of the Cross. It would be too bad if the offense of the Cross were to cease." To the Corinthians he expressed the same conviction: "Christ sent me. . .to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect." (I Cor. 1:17.)

Here someone may be tempted to call the Christians crazy. Deliberately to court danger by preaching and confessing the truth, and thus to bring upon ourselves the hatred and enmity of the whole world, is this not madness? But Paul does not mind the enmity of the world. It made him all the bolder to confess Christ. The enmity of the world in his estimation augurs well for the success and growth of the Church, which fares best in times of persecution. When the offense of the Cross ceases, when the rage of the enemies of the Cross abates, when everything is quiet, it is a sign that the devil is the door-keeper of the Church and that the pure doctrine of God's Word has been lost.

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Evangelism the Lutheran Way

Quoting from Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller's article "A Lutheran Theology of Evangelism, Some Theses," posted on the Hope Lutheran Church website:

..."Evangelism Training" will be nothing more than continued study and meditation on the proper distinction between law and Gospel.

...the central act of Evangelism is not asking the unbeliever to come to Jesus, but rather, in the name of Jesus, forgiving their sins. Evangelism is the Church speaking the Absolution to the World.

What, not How

I love the note for Article X of the Augsburg Confession in A Reader's Edition of the Book of Concord. It pretty much says it all:

Note: By the time the Augsburg Confession was written, deep divisions had arisen among the various reformers concerning the Lord’s Supper. The Lutherans were very careful to distance themselves from those who reject that the body and blood of Christ are in fact truly present in His Supper and distributed to all those who eat and drink. Transubstantiation, consubstantiation, or any other human speculation asks the wrong question: how is Christ present? Lutheranism has no theory or philosophical explanation of how Christ is present. Rather, Lutherans insist on answering the what of the Lord’s Supper. We believe, teach, and confess that of the bread, Christ said, “This is My body,” and of the wine, “This is My blood.” These are given and shed “for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:26–28). We reject any teaching that is contrary to our Lord’s Word.

Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions. 2005 (Edited by Paul Timothy McCain) (35). St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House.

Are You Fully Devoted?

It seems that you won’t be taken seriously as a congregation any more unless you have a mission statement – the Holy Spirit can’t possibly act without your mission statement. I bumped into this one not long ago on an LCMS church’s website:

Our mission statement is: Sharing God’s Hope by doing whatever it takes for God to transform people into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

For the sake of the parishioners of this particular congregation, I sure hope that none of them are my neighbors, or their gonna be in for a miserable experience. I can assure you that no matter what they do, up to and including “whatever it takes,” I’m never going to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ. I’m a poor miserable sinner, and until I’m dead, my status will remain a poor miserable sinner. I’ve discovered that the “miserable sinner” in me always gets in the way of the “fully devoted” idea. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’m too enthused about the whole “fully devoted” program – that sure sounds like a two-tiered Christianity to me, an idea with zero Biblical support. I must report that I’ll always remain, this side of heaven, in the “fully forgiven sinner” category. But that’s something I can deal with, because I know I already have eternal life, since Christ’s atoning work on the cross is in the bank and I’m declared righteous even while in my current “miserable sinner” state.

While we’re on the topic, are they really going to do whatever it takes? Will they lie to make sure you’re transformed, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses? Will they try flirty fishing? Or will it just be puppets in the Divine Service? And who’s doing the transformation, them or God? It seems like it’s a little of both.

The other thought that comes to mind is the fully devoted Christ follower might be devoted to environmentalism and social justice, following the politically correct Jesus rather than the Jesus who is prophet, priest, and king. This confusion is what makes mission statements a dicey proposition. You can bet they were well-intentioned when they wrote their statement, yet it falls well short of a suitable Lutheran ideal. A little like testimonials, the mission statement often turns the words inward on the Christian rather than focusing on the redemption found at the cross.

I’ll close this post out with Paul’s mission statement. While not as succinct as the one above, it still seems like a decent roadmap to follow:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 ESV

Or if that's too long for you, Acts 2:42 works nicely as well:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

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