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...
View ArticleJoining 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,...
View ArticleAdapting 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...
View ArticleLiving 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,...
View ArticlePeddling 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...
View ArticleChurch 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...
View ArticleVocation 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...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleDecomposing 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...
View ArticleDreaming 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....
View ArticleGod 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...
View ArticleParadoxical 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...
View ArticleHe 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...
View ArticlePrepare 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...
View ArticleOnly 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...
View ArticleChrist 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...
View ArticleGod 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...
View ArticleMaking 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...
View ArticlePaying 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...
View ArticleContempt 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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