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Channel: Theology – Esgetology
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A given righteousness

The Lutheran Symbols presuppose that the righteousness which God has a right to expect of man is something which man, because he lacks insight and power, is unable to produce. Left to himself, man can...

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Joining history to doctrine

“Christ died”–that is history; “Christ died for our sins”–that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity. J. Gresham Machen,...

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Adapting the local lifestyle

In a recent interview on Issues, Etc., LCMS President Matthew Harrison encouraged pastors to get to know their people, spend time in their homes, hospital rooms, lives. Only through this will the...

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Living documents

The Lutheran Confessions, John Pless writes, are “not relics of church history confined to their historical context, but living documents which call for either confession or denial.” In Herman Sasse,...

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Peddling live rattlesnakes

How sad it is, then, to reflect on what the world actually hears from the church in so many instances. We offer to sell them the mystery of the love of God in Jesus; but the way we talk about God and...

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Church as social corporation

A portion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s assessment of American churches in the 1930’s: So what stands in place of the Christian message? An ethical and social idealism borne by a faith in progress that— who...

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Vocation and Virtue

Vocation and Virtue: What’s the Purpose of a School? For Immanuel Lutheran School’s Back to School night; adapted from a longer essay written Spring 2014. Introduction Our culture pressures us to...

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A new and real human fellowship

Regarding “the question of truth,” Hermann Sasse observed that The American concept of the church basically avoids this question. It surrenders dogma and liturgy as something unessential—“ trifling...

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Decomposing bodies, living bread

A gem from St. Irenaeus: A cutting from the vine planted in the ground bears fruit in its season, or a kernel of wheat falling into the earth and becoming decomposed rises and is multiplied by the...

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Dreaming of a Christian community

Idealizing people, politicians, pastors, and churches leads to disillusionment. Some go from church to church searching for the perfect pastor or small group, then move on when they discover problems....

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God is closest to the powerless

Beautiful comfort from Luther: God often allows His children to be powerless and oppressed, so that everybody believes that they have no more hope and are going to perish, whilst it is in circumstances...

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Paradoxical Preaching

Adolf Köberle’s classic The Quest for Holiness contains much helpful material that addresses some of the modern aversion to sanctification. In the chapter “Sanctification as the Answer of the Justified...

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He abides in us physically

In his glorious work “This Is My Body,” Luther speaks about the forgiveness of sins being a great benefit of the Supper. In addition to this, there is what he calls the “bodily benefit,” a union with...

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Prepare for the storm

Luther comments on Peter’s sinking into the water because he lost the Word of Christ’s promise. The life of faith is nothing other than clinging to Christ’s Word. This is how it is when Christ comes...

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Only the Decalogue is eternal

Luther’s Study at his home in Wittenberg (Photo: Christopher Esget, November 2012) In the First Disputation Against the Antinomians, Luther addresses the antinomian argument that the Ten Commandments...

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Christ in us by nature and substance

In his great work That These Words of Christ, “This Is My Body,” etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics, the mature Luther speaks beautifully about the sacramental union effecting a real union...

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God of the grasshoppers

Isaiah pictures God sitting above the world, while we beneath Him appear like grasshoppers, small and numerous (Is. 40.22). Perhaps you’ve smashed a grasshopper before, an annoying creature who invaded...

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Making one what was broken

I love how Augustine finds the four corners of the world in ADAM, along with the hope that the first-formed is gathered in on the day of judgment: “For with righteousness shall He judge the world:” not...

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Paying lip-service to the gospel

In the following passage, Luther expounds on the words of 1 John 3:18, “My little children let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” The apostle is denouncing those false...

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Contempt for the Gospel

Doctor Luther on the misuse of the Gospel: It should be said and taught that the old leaven must be completely swept aside and that those who give into the whims of the flesh and deliberately and...

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