✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Ephesians 2,17-22 3316
2. Sn. n. Trinitatis 047
Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz and Apostle to the Germans, Martyr 755
5. Juni 2016
1. О Lord God, Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto You, that through Your Holy Word You have called us to Your great supper, and we beseech You: Enliven our hearts by Your Holy Spirit, so that we may not hear Your Word without fruit, but that we may prepare ourselves rightly for Your reign, and not allow ourselves to be hindered by any worldly care. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for 2. Sn. n. Trinitatis).
2. And Christ Jesus arrived and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the Cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
3. The Apostle Paul tells us: »You are members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the Cornerstone.« The preaching of the apostles and prophets is written in the Holy Scriptures, and the chief subject of their preaching is Christ crucified (1. Corinthians 2,2).
4. As the apostles were martyred one by one, their successors were appointed. The earliest of these are known as the Apostolic Fathers [1] who personally knew and were taught by one of the apostles, and five of them were very prolific in their Christian writings: Barnabas of Cyprus (associated with Paul; ✠ 61), Clement of Rome (Peter; ✠ 99), Ignatius of Antioch (John; ✠ 108), Papias of Hieropolis (John; ✠ 155) and Polycarp of Smyrna (John; ✠ 100). These bishops passed on to others what the apostles had passed on to them. „Authentic apostolic succession, then, is always and only the succession of doctrine. It may be known by its identity with the witness of the apostles in the New Testament“ (Sasse Vol. 3,94).
5. The apostles passed on several key doctrines among the many doctrines found in the Holy Scriptures. One is: »I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified« (1. Corinthians 2,2). Another is: »If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, then you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved« (Romans 10,9-10).
6. But having the Bible is not enough; the Church must rightly interpret the Scriptures she has received from the apostles and the prophets inspired by the Holy Spirit. „The true church is gathered not around Scripture but around the rightly understood, the purely and correctly interpreted Bible. It is the task of the church’s confession to express the right understanding of Scripture which the church has reached“ (Sasse Vol. 1,84). The ecumenical confession of the Church is a confession drawn from the Scriptures and professed in our Nicene Creed, a creed which teaches us about the One God in Three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; this God who creates, redeems and makes holy. This Creed passes on the basics of the apostolic doctrine given to us in Holy Scripture. Thus we confess in the Nicene Creed: I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. [2]
7. The Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse wrote a letter to Lutheran pastors in 1956: „Revelation does indeed have a chain of succession. The Father sends the Son, the Son sends the apostles. The apostles hand their commission (Auftrag) on to those who bear office (die Amtsträger) in the Church. That is Biblical“ (Sasse Vol. 3,96). So we have an apostolicity of origin, doctrine and succession [3] (Sasse Vol. 3,86). The origin is from the apostles themselves, and they passed on what they had heard from Christ Himself. The doctrine has been passed down to the Church in their Gospels and Epistles collected in the New Testament. The succession is found in those bishops and ministers who have been ordained to preach and teach in the Church what the apostles themselves had preached and proclaimed. Apostolic doctrine is less about an unbroken list of ministers traced back to Peter, Paul or another apostle, and more about the unbroken transmission of pure doctrine found in the New Testament.
8. The Apostle Paul charged Timothy: »Do not teach any different doctrine, nor devote yourselves to myths and endless genealogies« (1. Timothy 1,3-4). And again: »Preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke and exhort, with complete patience and teaching« (2. Timothy 4,2). Also to Titus, St. Paul said: »For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and Godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works. Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you« (Titus 2,11-15).
9. We are »built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself being the Cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him we also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.« The only authority for the unverifiable things the apostolic Church said was that Jesus Christ had sent them and that they were witnesses of His resurrection (Sasse Vol. 1,99). As the Church of the One who truly became man, was actually crucified and truly rose again, the Church is called apostolic (Sasse Vol. 1,99). She is the apostolic Church because she is the Church of Jesus Christ (Sasse Vol. 1,99). We are members of this Church and our foundation is Christ and His apostles and prophets. As we are built upon them in the teaching of pure doctrine, we are built upon a solid foundation. Jesus said: »Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because its foundation was on the rock« (Matthew 7,24-25). We are built on the Rock, Jesus Christ, who makes His Church a mighty structure that withstands even the howling winds of hades. When we stand firm upon His apostolic foundation, we will weather every and all storms that surge against us. Amen.
10. Let us pray. O Christ Jesus, our Strength and our Rock, defend and deliver us from all that would tempt us to reject Your heavenly invitation so that we may praise You as the Lord of lords at the banquet on the last day. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Nagel, Norman. Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel: From Valparaiso to St. Louis. Frederick W. Baue, Ed. Copyright © 2004 Concordia Publishing House.
Sasse, Hermann. We Confess The Church. Norman Nagel, tr. Copyright © 1986 Concordia Publishing House.
The Church and Her Fellowship, Ministry, and Governance. Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics Series, vol. IX, Robert Preus, ed. Copyright © 1990 The Luther Academy.
1. They were followed by the Apologists and the Church Fathers.
2. Speaking of the Church as apostolic does not begin until the first third of the 4. century and becomes popular in 381 with the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed (Sasse Vol. 1,92).
3. apostolicitas originis, doctrinae, successioni
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