What Is It About the Cross?

About three hours ago, I posted this picture, taken in our church's sanctuary after a meeting had just ended, on Facebook and in the time since, fifty-six people have "liked" it. Why is that?

Well, the image is pretty, I suppose, even in a sanctuary made from a school gym. The prettiness at sunset in a darkened sanctuary is part of what led me to snap the picture.

But the real reason, I think, is the cross.

For many--half the people of the world and growing, making Christianity the fastest growing religion in the world, the cross is the definitive symbol for our beliefs as followers of Jesus Christ.

For others, there is often a visceral, if unacknowledged, understanding of the cross. Or the stirrings of such an understanding.

Jesus, pure, sinless God and man, died on the cross, taking the punishment for sin that every human being deserves.

The cross demonstrates then how hopelessly lost and eternally dead we are unless we repent (turn from sin) and trust in Christ as our God, King, Lord, Savior. 

The cross demonstrates just how consequential our inborn sinfulness and our individual sins really are.

Sin isn't cute. God doesn't wink at it, though at times I wish--even pray--that He would. "The wages of sin is death..." (Romans 6:23)

In bearing our sin, Jesus experienced just how it alienates us from God. Has there ever been a more poignant prayer than that of Jesus, quoting Psalm 22 and asking the Father imploringly, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me"?

Sin' s power over our lives is only destroyed by what Jesus Christ voluntarily bore there and by our openness to the work of the Holy Spirit working the miracle of repentance and faith within us.

The cross demonstrates not just the depth of our alienation from God, it also demonstrates the height of God's love for us. 

As the apostle Paul put it in the first century:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless,Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)

The cross demonstrates that the only way to a life free of sin and of sin's consequence, death, which was bred into the human gene pool the moment that our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell into sin, is to acknowledge our sin and our need of the conqueror of sin, Jesus.

We must own the reality of our sin and to submit to the death of our sinful selves so that, like Jesus, we may rise to new life.

This is what Jesus is talking about when He says that anyone who would be His disciple (His follower, His student) must take up their cross and follow Him. Popular legend has reduced these words of Jesus in Luke 9:23-26 to referring to bearing life's difficulties. "Everyone has their cross to bear," people will say when speaking of their life's challenges.

But that is NOT what Jesus was talking about when He said that to be His disciple, we have to take up crosses and follow Him.

What He WAS saying is that, in order to have a share in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, we must also submit to the crucifixion of our old sinful selves.

We must be crucified through repentance--turning to God in sorrow for our sins and in the certain hope that He Who sent Jesus into the world for us, will forgive our sins and reconstruct us, make us new:

Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good - crucified. (Galatians 5:24, The Message)

The cross is also then the way to life with God.

It's a life we can enjoy in this world, though it's obscured by the reality of sin and death on this planet, including our own sinful and death-tinged ways and impulses, meaning that we must live in daily repentance and renewal until the days we die. And this is a new life we will enjoy fully and perfectly in eternity with all who have endured in trusting in Christ as their only hope.

And so, the cross is a symbol of life and hope for all who don't deserve life or hope, sinners like me. It's a symbol of God's grace--His undeserved favor and love.

God won't force life and hope on anyone. But if we will receive Christ by faith, acknowledging our need of Him and our surrender to Him, He will give us these gifts--and many more--now and in eternity.

Through the cross of Christ, God stands ready to give us what we need more than anything, a relationship with, a connection to Himself, the only giver of life that exists in the universe.

As the apostle Peter says of Jesus: "Salvation [from sin and death] is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven to mankind by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

And so...

• The cross demonstrates how hopeless human life is without God. 
• The cross demonstrates the height of God's love for us, sinners though we are.
• The cross demonstrates that in order to have new life with God, we must submit to the crucifixion of our old selves and all its selfishness and self-centered ambitions. 
• The cross is the way to life with God because when we trust in Jesus, the risen Savior, we have the life-giving promise that God can make us new today and finally, fully, totally new in the life to come.

The cross--the crucifixion of me, my selfishness, my arrogance, my insistence on being right, my insistence on being in control of my life--as the way to life is the most difficult thing to accept about Christianity.

It's also the most counterintuitive from the standpoint of human instinct and human ego.

The way of the cross is not the way to get ahead in the world. The New Testament calls Christianity's teaching about the need for each of us to take up our crosses and follow a crucified Savior, a "scandal" in the eyes of this world. It seems foolish.

It always has seemed foolish to a cynical, dying world. Take a look at this passage from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 1:20-25, written about 50-60 AD:

20 ...Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Twenty-one centuries after He died and rose, Jesus' cross is still a scandal. His way still seems foolish. But it's still the only way to life.

And somehow, deep down, we know it. That's why the cross stills fascinates us.

Here's a song about the cross from the Lutheran acoustic rock duo, Lost and Found. It's called Cling. Enjoy the explanation of the song from member George Baum that comes before the song. Lost and Found, with whom I have come to have some disagreements in recent years, have played an important part in my life as a Christian. They feature a sound they call "speedwood." Their quirky vocals remind some people of the band They Might Be Giants, although Lost and Found was around and had developed their signature stylings long before that band appeared on the musical scene. Lost and Found are currently on a farewell tour. On the Sunday morning after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the congregation I served at that time sang Cling without musical accompaniment. We knew then, as always must remember, that the only hope to be found in the world is in the Savior of the cross. We prayed that God would give us the faith to do that. (This video was recorded during the Lenten season two years ago.)

  

Loving the Church...and the People In It

[This was prepared for sharing during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, yesterday.]

John 13:34-35
During these weeks in Lent, we’re focusing on five building blocks for our personal Christian discipleship and for the life of the Church. They are:

• loving God,
• loving others,
• loving fellow believers,
• making disciples, and
• growing in our own discipleship

Today, our focus is on Jesus’ new commandment, John 13:34-35 (page 751 in the sanctuary Bible). Jesus is the speaker. He says:

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

What makes this commandment so new? And why does Jesus give it?

There are two main ways in which this commandment is different from Jesus’ command to love others as we love ourselves. That command does hold up an impossible standard for us to adhere to, to have the same regard for the needs, hopes, desires, loves, hurts, and difficulties of others that we have for our own needs, hopes, desires, loves, hurts, and difficulties. 

But Jesus’ new commandment holds us to a much higher standard: We are to love just as God in Jesus Christ has loved us!

In thinking about how God loved us, Paul writes in Romans 5:6-8: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That’s how Christ loves us!

Jesus says in Matthew 20:28: “...the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." That’s how Christ loves us!

2 Corinthians 5:1 says: “God made [Christ] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” And that’s how Christ loves us!

He willingly bore the condemnation for sin we deserve--death--so that, when He rose, He could claim new and everlasting life for all who repudiate sin as their way of life and trust in Him, believe in Him, as the only way to God, their only hope for this world and the next, their only Savior, God and Lord of their lives.

Jesus says that we are to love like that. To be willing to love even to the point of doing what He did for us, giving our lives for others.

As Paul says in Romans, we might do that for a righteous person.

Or we might do it for a family member or a friend.

But Christ did that for a world of people--including you and me--who really don’t want God over our lives, who nailed Him to a cross. “Love like that,” Jesus tells us.

If you’re not feeling a bit squeamish right now, you haven’t been paying attention.

So, the first thing that makes this a new commandment is that it dramatically ups the ante on the love that God requires of us as believers. We’re not just to love others as we love ourselves, we’re to willingly give our lives for them, no matter how they may feel about us, no matter what they do to us. (This doesn’t mean we should submit to abusive or co-dependent relationships, something we’ll talk about another time, I’m sure.)

Now, here’s the second thing that makes this a new commandment: The object of the love Jesus commands isn’t the ordinary neighbors in our lives.

The object of love in this commandment is our fellow believers, our fellow disciples, other Christians, the people who make up Christ’s Church, all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and God and Savior and King, inside and outside our congregation, inside and outside our denomination.

We are to love the Church--not an abstraction and not the sentimentality surrounding the scent of burning candles or stirring music or fellowship time, but the Church: the flesh and blood, imperfect people, saints by the grace of God who in this world remain sinners by birth and impulse, the people of the Church with whom we confess faith, worship God, receive the sacraments, study God’s Word, pray, serve in Christ’s Name, the people with whom we sometimes disagree or don’t understand or who drive us crazy...These are the people Jesus tells us to love and serve and live for to the point of death itself, if necessary.

Why? Why does Jesus make such a steep and daunting demand of us as His disciples? Jesus, of course, gives the most important reason for obeying the new commandment: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

When the world sees Christians loving and caring for each other, as I see happening so often in the life of Living Water, the world then knows that we truly are Christ’s disciples. They see Christ living in us and that makes following Christ--becoming disciples themselves--more compelling to an unbelieving world.

The book of Acts tells us that people saw how the early Christians loved each other and their neighbors and enjoyed “the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (By the way, notice that the Bible isn't squeamish about saying that some people are saved and some aren't. Those who reject faith in Christ, reject His salvation.)

When the Church is united in its commitment to Christ, to the authority of God’s Word over its life, and its love for God, the world, and one another, it is a powerful magnet for people who don’t yet know Jesus Christ or the freedom from sin and death only Christ can give.

We all know, by personal experience how destructive church fights can be.  The world sees Christians fighting and they figure the whole Christianity thing is a worthless delusion.

Church fights are nothing new. Paul wrote early in his first letter to the Church at Corinth, filled with conflict, back in the first century: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.”

So, does loving like Christ mean we paper over our differences?

Hardly! Jesus Himself confronted false teaching. He threw out the moneychangers who were using the faith of others to line their pockets. He called Peter a Satan.

Some church fights are stupid. I know of a church that split because people couldn't agree on the color of the carpeting in the sanctuary.

Some church fights are necessary. When the basics of the faith are called into question--when people deny Jesus' virgin birth or His resurrection from the dead or that He performed and still performs miracles or that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and things like that, then church fights are essential. God's truth is worth fighting for within His Church.

The New Testament makes clear that the Church should discipline or remove preachers who preach or teachers who teach false doctrine, that it should confront and deal with unrepentant sin. It should only call people to positions of leadership and service among them who have the gifts for particular ministries and have the courage to say when they don't.

Jesus Himself teaches that there will be fights in the Church, that sometimes those fights must happen, and, in Matthew 18:15-20, gives a whole process by which those fights should be fought cleanly, with love and grace. And even those fights, Jesus says, should be fought with the idea of restoring unity to the Church.

So why is the unity of the Church so important?

First, because it authenticates our faith.

Second, because we need each other! “People learn from one another, just as iron sharpens iron,” Proverbs 27:17 says. There is no such thing as a solo Christian because when you try a “Jesus and me” faith, there is no one to tell you that you’re full of it when you forget to get full of Christ or full of the Bible instead.

But the Church is so important to Jesus for another reason: It’s the only entity that will survive the end of this old creation, that is eternity.

In Revelation 19:7, we’re told about the rejoicing that will happen in the new heaven and the new earth after Jesus has returned to this world, the dead in Him rise, and this old creation has been destroyed. It describes the wedding between the groom, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, and His bride. “Let us rejoice and be glad and give [God] glory!” it says. “For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.”

The Church is the bride of Christ. The Church--the fellowship of those who turn from sin and trust in Jesus as God in the flesh for forgiveness, life, and eternity--will live forever. And Christ wants His bride to produce many newborn children of God. He wants His Church to be the safe harbor in which His bride, living in His grace and forgiveness, is made ready for its wedding day in heaven. It becomes that when those to whom we reach out with the Gospel, in our words and in our deeds, see that we love each other as Christ has loved us.

But, how do we do that? Only, as we’ve said the past few weeks about loving God and loving our neighbors, by letting Christ live within us. Only by becoming one with Christ and renewing our relationship with Him in daily repentance and renewal by the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells us how this works in John 15:5-8 (page 752 in the sanctuary Bible):

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

If we try to love Christ’s Church apart from a tight connection to Christ, we’ll give up. No one but God Himself is capable of loving with the passionate love Christ lived out and died for on the cross...unless, like the branches of a vine, we remain connected to Christ. That’s why the Church is here: to keep pumping us full of Christ’s love and God’s truth as we move through life, that we might flourish and grow in the love of God given in Christ. Then that love comes alive in us and among us and a world mired in sin wants what we have. “Jesus is what we’ve got. Do you want Him too?”

Christ’s love living in people is a magnet. It starts to exert its pull when we believe in Christ and as we submit to letting Christ grow our faith, we come to do what doesn’t come naturally to human beings: to love God, to love our neighbors, and to love each other. On these three building blocks and the two more we’ll be discussing in the next few weeks, Christ readies us as individual disciples and His the whole Church for eternity with Him.

The Reason for Christmas

[This was shared during the second Christmas Eve worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio earlier this evening.]

Luke 2:1-7
It’s striking that in his Gospel, Luke takes just seven verses to describe the birth of Jesus! It's so spare that, if we’re not attentive, we may miss the powerful message his narrative conveys.

“In those days,” Luke writes, “Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)”

Caesar Augustus was the first Roman emperor. The adopted son of Julius Caesar, in 31 AD, about three decades before Jesus’ birth, he became the uncontested ruler of Rome after a long civil war. After taking power, he named himself emperor. He labeled his adopted father and himself the “son of god.”

It was claimed that through Augustus’ kingship, he had brought God’s justice and peace to the world. The many poems and songs written in honor of Augustus claimed that he was the savior and lord of the world. And in much of his empire, during and after a long reign, Augustus came to be worshiped as a god. Augustus, a ruthless and bloodthirsty man, did nothing to dissuade people from worshiping him or from making all these claims about him.

Employing the coercive powers by which all governments--whether good or bad--must operate, Caesar Augustus ordered a census of his empire, which included most of the lands around the Mediterranean Basin, north into Europe, and even what we today know as the United Kingdom.

Augustus was a powerful man and when he issued an edict, an entire empire hopped-to. The purpose of the census Augustus ordered was to generate tax money. It takes a lot of money to run an earthly empire.

Affected by this decree were two impoverished young people, betrothed to be married, who lived in the often forgotten Galileean countryside of Palestine.

“And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Today, many scholars believe what Martin Luther preached in his Christmas sermons: That Joseph of Nazareth actually grew up in Bethlehem and moved to Nazareth in Galilee as a young man. Recent archeological finds indicate that there was a large migration of people from the Bethlehem countryside to the Galileean region. It’s possible that both Mary’s and Joseph’s families had migrated from Bethlehem to Nazareth, because both were descendants of David. Going to Bethlehem would have been required of Joseph because he still owned property there.

Augustus’ decree forced Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem. But, in fact, neither Augustus nor his empire were in control of events.

Nor were Mary or Joseph.

Decades later, as He stood trial before Pilate, the governor who oversaw Roman interests in Jesus’ homeland, Pilate asked Jesus why Jesus refused to answer Pilate’s questions. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” Pilate asked Jesus. But Jesus answered: “You would have no power over Me if it were not given to you from above...”

Despite outward appearances, Joseph and Mary and the Child in Mary's womb went to Bethlehem not because that’s where Caesar Augustus, who had never heard and never would hear of Joseph or Mary or Jesus, wanted them to go, but because that’s where God wanted them to go.

Those with earthly power may misuse or abuse their power. They may be selfish. They may act unjustly. They may treat other human beings like chess pieces to be manipulated at will. But the Biblical witness is clear that over the long haul, God is in charge. As I've been telling Catechism students for years, "Either God gets His way or God gets His way." There are no other options.

Old Testament prophecies had made it clear that when God’s Anointed King--the Messiah, the Christ-- came into the world, His birth would take place in Bethlehem.

He would be born into a family descended from David. God intended to enter our world and be our Lord at precisely the moment and in precisely the place He chose.

He would do it in order to live the perfect life, become the perfect human sacrifice for sin, then rise from the death promising that all who repent and believe in Him will share His victory over sin and death and meaningless living.

A Caesar might be willing to die to take or keep earthly power. Augustus had killed a thousand times over.

But he never would have died to give forgiveness and eternal life to people who, like us, only deserve condemnation and death for our sin. Jesus is a different King and Lord.

Please pull out a pew Bible and look at Romans 5:6-8 (page 785). It says: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

At the right time, the Savior Who was to die on a cross was born in a barn. 

There’s a simple reason why God doesn’t bludgeon us into submission with showy displays that evoke “shock and awe” the way the Caesars of this world do.

A reason why God the Father sends God the Son, Who totally takes on human flesh, a baby who cries and needs His mother, Who suffers and bleeds and dies.

There’s a reason God claims subjects for His kingdom not by brute force, but by love, by the gentle wooing of the Holy Spirit Who empowers ordinary people like you and me to keep telling the story of our crucified and risen Savior.

There’s a reason why by God’s plan, we become His subjects not by establishing residence in a religious institution, not by performing a set of tasks that lead to earning citizenship in the kingdom of God, but solely and simply by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

And the reason is simple: “God is love,” the New Testament teaches.

The Old Testament book of Genesis says that God made we human beings in His image.

God made us to love and to be loved by Him.

God made us for relationship with Him.

Sin has marred that relationship, separating us from God.

Jesus is the bridge back to God.

He is the manifestation of God’s love given on the cross.

The ultimate goal of a Caesar is to elicit obedience so that he can lord it over you.

The ultimate goal of Christ is to elicit faith and obedience so that He can set you free to live in a relationship of self-giving, fulfilling love with God and with others.

Jesus doesn’t want to judge you, though one day He will one day judge the living and the dead.

He wants to save you from your sin.

He wants to make us children of God.

There are lots of things that we do in the name of Christmas. But all that the God we meet in Jesus really wants us to do is repent and believe, turn from sin and trust in Him to guide us into life with God.

It's a life characterized by love, service, and selflessness.

It's a life of confidence that we are loved and approved by the only One Whose love and approval matters.This is the God Who came at Christmas.

The God Who demonstrates His power not by ordering people around as though they were worthless robots, but by becoming One of us so that, by His grace, we might be restored to Him again and forever.

Thank God He loves us and gives us Jesus.

May we take Him as God's great gift to us every day and learn to joyfully, voluntarily, without coercion, be loved by God and to love Him in return.

Merry Christmas! Amen

What is a Lutheran?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

John 8:31-36
It happened more than twenty-five years ago in New England, where Lutherans are about as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth. In his office, the pastor of a newly developing congregation received a telephone call. The caller had a simple question. “What is a Lutheranian?” she asked.

Overlooking that mispronunciation, the caller’s question is still a good and important one. Answering it isn’t some esoteric, theological head trip. After all, we are a Lutheran congregation, people who believe the Lutheran Confessions' understanding of Christian faith. If we can’t answer the question, “What is a Lutheran?” how Lutheran are we really?

On this Reformation Sunday, 2009, I want to talk with you about what a Lutheran is. For the historical background on Lutheranism and the Reformation, please take the red insert home with you today.*

But to answer our question, “What is a Lutheran?” I ask you to take a look at the bulletin cover. There, in addition to pictures of the Bible, of Martin Luther, and of Luther’s personal seal, you’ll also find three words printed over a single larger word. These convey what Lutherans see as the three foundational truths of Christian faith:

• Grace alone,
• Faith alone, and
• Scripture alone (or Word alone).

Lutherans are people who, first and foremost, believe in grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone. But, what does this mean?

When the thirty-three year old German monk and priest, Martin Luther accidentally began the Reformation movement, he found himself addressing both a religious elite that no longer cared about the Word of God, choosing to replace it with their own supposed wisdom, and Christian masses whose allegiance was to the Church as an institution, a habit, rather than a personal fellowship with the living God.

No wonder that the elites hated Luther.

No wonder that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a loose confederation of states supposedly bound together by their allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, put Luther under an imperial ban, meaning that any one was authorized to kill Luther on sight.

Luther’s faithful witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to the authority of the Bible undermined those who wanted to replace Jesus with other Lords and the authority of the Bible with traditions and customs that brought them comfort, control, or power.

But the experience of Luther and the other church reformers was nothing new. If you take time to read the Old Testament, you see a recurring pattern in the life of God’s chosen people, the Israelites or Jews. God would call them to repent, trust in Him for life, and follow Him, and the people, feeling weak or vulnerable or afraid, would do so. For a time. Then, once they got a little food in their bellies, a little tract of land to farm, a bit of wealth or power, they would mostly forget God.

Or, they would make God over into an indulgent Santa Claus who didn’t care if they repented, believed, or followed, so long as they had a good time.

Or, they would tinker with their faith, adding their own rules, intermingling the worship of other deities, maybe ensconcing wealth as a sign of God’s favor and love.

It was to God’s people in these latter circumstances that God would send prophets to call people back to God.

We see this rejection of God and of God’s Word in the people Jesus confronts in today’s Gospel lesson from John. Just before our lesson, Jesus once more foretells His crucifixion and resurrection. Then Jesus lifts up those three distinctives of Biblical faith, three distinctives that would become the three cornerstone principles of Lutheranism. "Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him,” our lesson begins, “’If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Lutherans don't claim to have a corner on the truth market. But the Lutheran Confessions hold up certain truths which, often it seems, the world would rather forget.

Lutheran Christians believe that we are free from sin, death, and futility in our daily lives, first of all, through God’s grace alone. Jesus didn’t come to us and say, “Perform these religious acts and I will set you free from sin, death, and futile living.” Jesus came to us and offered new and everlasting life as a free gift, an act of charity from God.

Paul writes in the New Testament book of Romans, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly [that’s all of us apart from a relationship with Christ]…God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” The Greek New Testament word that is translated in our Bibles as grace is charitas, from which we get our English word, charity, a gift we cannot earn. We are saved by God’s grace alone.

The apostle John gets at this same reality in his first epistle, where he says, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

For the Christian, we believe, all depends on God's grace. Not our works. Nor our feelings. Not our thoughts. Only on God's grace. A friend of mine has the perfect response for those who ask Lutherans, “When were you saved?” “That’s easy,” my friend says, “on a hill outside Jerusalem two-thousand years ago.” What is a Lutheran? First of all, someone who believes that their salvation has nothing to do with them, but is a result of God’s grace, given in Christ, alone.

Lutheran Christians also believe we are saved through faith alone. Jesus told His fellow Jews that they would only be free to be the people of God if they persisted in trusting in Him.

Throughout the Gospel of John, we see Jesus described as the foundational Truth of the universe, God-in-the-flesh Who spoke creation into being. Life outside of a relationship with the God made known in Christ is a lie, disconnected from the only One Who can give us life.

That’s why, just a few verses after our Gospel lesson in John, Jesus will tell the same people that because they are unwilling to accept His Lordship and authority, His call to turn from sin and follow Him, they are really following a different father, “…[Y]ou cannot accept my word…” Jesus says, “[because] you are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in Him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.”

But faith, the gift God gives to those willing to receive it, can overcome what Martin Luther marked as our enemies—the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.

That’s why Jesus says elsewhere, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…”

And to Martha, the sister of His friend Lazarus, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will live forever.”

What is a Lutheran? It’s someone who believes that God’s grace is taken in hand by those who dare to trust—to have faith in--Jesus Christ alone.

Finally, Lutherans believe that we come to know God through the Word alone. Above all, we know God through “the Word made flesh,” Jesus, and also through the definitive, authoritative, inspired Word of God, the Bible, a library of books inspired by God the Holy Spirit.

In Luther’s day, the Church added to and ignored the witness of God about Jesus and the will of God found in the Scriptures. Luther said that the Church dared not do or say anything contrary to the will of God revealed to us in the Bible.

Luther believed Paul’s words to the young pastor Timothy found in the New Testament, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…”

We may want to know much more, but everything you and I need to know about God, about ourselves, about how to live, and about who can be trusted, is found within the covers of the Bible. Knowing this truth will set us free.

That’s why the Lutheran Confessions say, “We believe, teach, and confess that the…writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged…”**

We live in an era in which the Bible is routinely snubbed, dismissed, or misused. People ignore how unique and different the Bible is from all the other books of other religions.

The Bible isn’t the writing of just one person claiming a hotline to God, as is true of the books of Islam or Mormonism.

The Bible doesn’t claim to give us a means by which we can work or claw our way to heaven or a state of spiritual enlightenment, as is the case with eastern religions.

The Bible is a spiritually consistent revelation given by God to many people inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is a library of books that tell us how God reaches out to us, God saves us, God loves us, and how God wants to be reconciled to us.

And thousands of years of living with the Bible’s revelations of God, of Christ, and of the will of God have shown repeatedly that the Bible is more than just a collection of sixty-six ancient books.

It’s a book whose words from God have the power to change the lives of those who stand under their authority.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit…able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

John ends the twentieth chapter of his Gospel by underscoring the life-giving power of the Bible, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

God saves through grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone.

It was true in 33AD, true in 1517, true today, and true for all time.

What is a Lutheran?

At the least, Lutherans are people who stake their lives on those truths.

And when the world rejects or demeans or tries to tell us to reject the Bible's witness to these three essential truths, we must say with Luther, “"Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason…I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God…I am neither able nor willing to [reject dependence on Scripture]…God help me.”

And may God help us. Amen

*You can read that here.

**This is from Part One of the Formula of Concord, one of the foundational confessional documents of Lutheranism.

Goal-Setting, A Christian Approach, Part 2

Yesterday, I noted successful people driven by the self-aggrandizing notions that inform the average self-help book or seminar, are unhappy, unfulfilled people. They’re typified by the extremely wealthy man who’d captured every dream he’d ever had who I overheard at a recent political fund-raiser. “How are you doing?” he was asked. “Oh, alright,” he said, “But really, nothing really changes in life. It’s just the same old boring stuff all the time.”

Here was a man who had achieved his goals in life. But because all his pursuits had been propelled by the desire to please self, he was supremely unhappy.

At the conclusion of yesterday’s installment, I wrote:

...the first thing we need to get straight when it comes to establishing goals for ourselves is what our ultimate desires are to be and from what sources we ultimately are going to derive meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.

Let me introduce you to someone who may or may not be a “success” by the world’s usual measurements, but who epitomizes success from a different perspective.

When I was a young guy in my twenties, I came to know a man named Charlie. Charlie was in his seventies back then, a semi-retired housepainter who for a time, still occasionally took on a job here and there.

Charlie’s wife suffered from a disease that ultimately rendered her bed-ridden, utterly dependent on Charlie and the family and friends he recruited to help him for a few sparse hours each week. Until his wife was very ill, Charlie was always in Sunday worship. It was one of the few times in any given week that he left his wife alone.

I saw Charlie sad at times. There was no denying the pain he underwent watching the love of his life suffer and die. Nor did he deny his grief when she died. But I never heard him complain of his lot in life, never heard him rue the hours spent caring for her.

In fact, if there is one word I would use to describe Charlie, it would be grateful. He seemed filled with a constant gratitude.

This impression was only strengthened by something he told me and another twenty-something guy from our church on the day of his wife’s funeral. The service had taken place, as had the committal and the luncheon in the church’s basement fellowship hall. Charlie was up in the sanctuary, making decisions about what to do with the flowers that had been sent in honor of his wife and we had gone to check on him.

Charlie seemed to sense that this was a teachable moment for two young bucks, each of us then married just a few short years.

“Whitey and Mark,” he said, “I’m so thankful to God today. God has always been good to me. He gave me a wonderful wife to share my life with all these years. And of course, because of Jesus, He’s given me the hope that I’ll see her again some day. Only when I do, she’ll be healthy again. I am very blessed!”

But what about all the “lost” years when he could have been doing something else?

If either of us had asked Charlie that question, he would have looked at us as though we were deranged...and for good reason.

Charlie was someone who had his priorities straight. Jesus says that the highest pursuits any of us have in this life are to love God and to love our neighbor, including the neighbors who live under our roofs. Everything else must take second place to that. [Matthew 22:34-40] Charlie believed that was true.

He obviously felt that it was important for all of us to love sacrificially, not to earn spiritual merit badges and not out of grim obligation, but because, through Jesus, Who died on a cross for us, we have been loved sacrificially by God. Sacrificial love is our sensible, appropriate, and difficult response to the God Who has loved us sacrificially, the God Who assures us that even if we lose our earthly lives in the giving of love, we still will have eternity with Him.

The New Testament book of Romans says:

“...while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly [that’s all of us who live with unforgiven sin]. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person...But God proves His love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us...” [Romans 5:6-8]

And a man named John, often called the apostle of love, puts it succinctly:

“In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another...” [First John 4:10-11]

The self-help books tell us to dig into ourselves, get a fix on our gifts and passions, and to adopt a life plan and subordinate goals based on that internal inventory.

The Bible commends a different way of going about our living, the way that Charlie adopted. It begins with gratitude for the love God has given to us through Christ and it makes the pursuit of God and His righteousness our number one priority. In setting our goals, we would do well to remember Jesus’ words:

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. ' [Matthew 6:25-34]

[Next installment: God and your future]