Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: June 2016

Thursday, June 30, 2016

1. Corinthians 1,18-25. 5. Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

1. Corinthians 1,18-25 3616

5. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 050

Jeremiah, Prophet, 629-580 bc

26. Juni 2016

1. О Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, who has given us Your Holy Word, and has bountifully provided for all our temporal wants, we confess that we are unworthy of all these mercies, and that we have rather deserved punishment: But we beseech You, forgive us our sins, and prosper and bless us in our several vocations, so that by Your strength we may be sustained and defended, now and forever, and so praise and glorify You eternally. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for the 5. Sn. n. Trinitatis)

2. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: »I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.« [Isaiah 29,14] Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

3. The Apostle Paul writes in his epistle: »The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.« Why is the word of the cross foolishness? To understand that question, we have to look back to before the cross became the identifiable symbol of the Christian faith. The Romans crucified Jesus, and this crucifixion was a means of execution in the Roman Empire. „The punishment of Roman crucifixion was chiefly inflicted on slaves and the worst kind of criminals. Crucifixion was considered a most shameful and disgraceful way to die and condemned Roman citizens were usually exempt from crucifixion“ (http://m.tribunesandtriumphs.org/roman-life/roman-crucifixion.htm). „Probably originating with the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was used systematically by the Persians in the 6th century BC. Alexander the Great brought it from there to the eastern Mediterranean countries in the 4th century BC, and the Phoenicians introduced it to Rome in the 3rd century BC. It was virtually never used in pre-Hellenic Greece. The Romans perfected crucifixion for 500 years until it was abolished by Constantine I in the 4. century ad“ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/14750495/). Furthermore, the Romans used crucifixion to curb the populace from committing serious crimes, like sedition against Roman authority. The Greeks generally opposed using crucifixion as a means of capital punishment.

4. The cross is foolishness to unbelievers because they merely see it as a form of capital punishment akin to lethal injection or the electric chair. In their minds, it’s unreasonable to glorify a method of execution as the symbol of one’s religion.

5. But the Christians co-opted something from their Greco-Roman culture. In ancient Greece and Rome, people would set up a trophy (τρόπαιον; tropaeum) as a monument to commemorate a victory over one’s foes (Wikipedia). Typically this took the shape of a tree, sometimes with a pair of arm-like branches (or, in later times, a pair of stakes set crosswise) upon which is hung the armor of a defeated and dead foe (Wikipedia). The τρόπαιον was then dedicated to a god in thanksgiving for the victory (Wikipedia). The Church made the cross and the crucifix her trophies, for the Church rightly saw the cross as Christ Jesus’ victory of sin, death and Satan. Moses had taught: »A body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God« (Deuteronomy 21,23), thus the Apostle Paul proclaimed: »Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree« (Galatians 3,13), and again: »The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved the word of the cross is the power of God.«

6. The Prophet Isaiah proclaimed: »There shall come forth a Shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of Yahweh shall rest upon Him. With righteousness He shall bring justice to the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. In that day the Root of Jesse shall stand as a signal for the peoples, and the nations shall inquire of Him and His resting place shall be glorious« (Isaiah 11,1-2.4.10). Jesus Christ is this promised Root of Jesse, and in Him the Gentiles hope (Romans 15,12). A root grows into a tree, and Jesus is the True Tree of Life that grants everlasting life. Christ our Lord was crucified on the cross whose beams were carved from a tree; He became the world’s τρόπαιον as the Victor who redeemed all mankind back to God the Father. Jesus won your hearts on this cross and His fruit is righteousness (Proverbs 11,30). The tree of life stood in the middle of the Garden, and Jesus is the Great Central Tree who stands in the middle of the universe as the True Yggdrasil. He is the Axis of the world, the World Tree who holds up the skies, and the Tree of Life. He unites and separates the heavenly realm where God dwells in His great hall and Middle Earth where we live in our smaller halls (Murphy 8). The cross stops stop the mouth of the dragon-snake Satan by providing for the resurrection of the dead (Murphy 15). The cross becomes a tree of life that extends its Fruit, Jesus Christ Himself, for us to partake and live forever. The curse of the tree of knowledge is overturned, death yields to life, sin yields to righteousness, and all this through Christ Jesus.

7. Christ now stands once again in the midst of the reign of God, and He bids you to go and partake of this Tree of Life. Do not be tempted by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for its fruit cannot give you righteousness. The wisdom of this world cannot grant you salvation. Your own merits cannot earn you forgiveness. Only Jesus the Tree of Life can give you the righteousness that He would have you receive. Seek Jesus and His righteousness, and you will have eternal life as He intends for you to have. His balm is for your healing. His Providence flows from His righteousness and He will satisfy all your earthly needs.

8. St. Paul proclaims: »Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.« God the Father gives the Jews their sign: it is their crucified Messiah. God the Father gives the Greeks their wisdom: it is God dying on the cross to redeem fallen mankind. Many will stumble over this sign and be turned off by its foolishness, but the cross is the sign and the wisdom of salvation.

9. „Crux sola est nostra theologia. The cross alone is our theology. These are the words of Doctor Luther and, too, of every Lutheran sermon. If the cross is not in the sermon, it is not a Lutheran sermon. Or if you take the cross out of the sermon, and it can get along just as well without it, it is not a Lutheran sermon. As Lutherans we preach Christ crucified: “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Still more Lutheran–“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:30)“ (Nagel 290-91).

10. The cross stood at the axis of the world, and on that cross Jesus, who is True God and true man, was crucified, suffered and died. Friedrich Nietzsche once philosophized in 1883: „Gott ist tot! God is dead! God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned had bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?“ (Nietzsche § 125). Nietzsche was not professing the crucified Christ in his statement. Rather, he was putting forth a view that the Christian God is no longer a credible source of absolute moral principles. To say God is dead is to say that human beings are no longer able to believe in any such cosmic order because they themselves no longer recognize it. The death of God will thus lead to the rejection of absolute values themselves. We are now living in a society and a culture that is making this the new philosophical reality in America.

11. We Christians had been saying Gott ist tot 1800 years before Nietzsche twisted that phrase around. We still confess it today in our Creed: I believe in Jesus Christ who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. That confession locates where God was when He saved the world, and it is at the cross and on the cross where we see the Glory of God manifested in power and wisdom. „The cross is the δοξα [glory] point, and it has time/location–“under Pontius Pilate,” we say. Jesus said, “The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified …. but for this cause came I unto this hour” (John 12:23-27). This is an enthronement word, and His throne is the cross. That is the δοξα point. “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other.” There is God. There for you, and not only for you but also for everyone. Or, better still, for everyone and also for you“ (Nagel 291).

12. The Church does not stop at saying Gott ist tot. There’s the second part of that phrase in the Creed: Gott ist auferstanden. God is risen. So we rightly confess: I believe in Jesus Christ, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, and the third day He rose again from the dead.

13. The crucified and risen Christ is the power and wisdom of God. It seems weak and foolish to human reason, but God’s weakness is stronger than man’s greatest strength and God’s foolishness is wiser than man’s most profound wisdom. The glory of God is manifested in His crucified and risen Son for us and our salvation. Amen.

14. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, You have made known Your salvation and have revealed Your righteousness in the sight of the nations so that we receive that gospel for our deliverance. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

✠

All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Romans 14,7-13. 4. Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum

Romans 14,7-13 3516

4. Sn. n. Trinitatis 049

Gervasius and Protasius, Martyrs in the 1^st c.

19. Juni 2016

1. О Lord God, Heavenly Father, who is merciful, and through Christ did promise us, that You will neither judge nor condemn us, but graciously forgive us all our sins, and abundantly provide for all our wants of body and soul: We pray, that by Your Holy Spirit You will establish in our hearts a confident faith in Your mercy, and teach us also to be merciful to our neighbor, so that we may not judge or condemn others, but willingly forgive all men, and, judging only ourselves, lead blessed lives in Your fear, through Your dear Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One True God, world without end. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for 4. Sn. n. Trinitatis).

2. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written: »As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confessto God.« [Numbers 14,21.28; Isaiah 45,23] So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.

3. As the Apostle Paul begins to draw his epistle to a close, he highlights another aspect from an important statement he made earlier in the letter. He wrote in Chapter 6: »Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life« (Romans 6,3-4). From this baptisms reality, Paul concludes in Chapter 14: »If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.« Holy Baptism makes us the Lord’s, and we are His in this life and also when we die.

4. After death comes judgment. St. Paul says of this: » For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written: As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confessto God. [Numbers 14,21.28; Isaiah 45,23] So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.« And again in his Epistle to the Corinthians: »For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what he has done in the body, whether good or evil« (2. Corinthians 5,9).

5. The Greek word Paul uses is βηματος which can be translated as judgment seat or court. The bema is the tribunal of the Roman magistrate, raised high above the level of the basilica, or hall, at the end of which it stood. (Comp. Matthew 27,19; Acts 12,21; Acts 18,12.) No one wants to stand before the judge, even with our Republic’s guarantee of innocent until proven guilty. How much more do we want to avoid standing before God knowing that we have not lived up to His law. Standing before the judgment seat of God often fills us with terror or uncomfortable uncertainty. Even the most hard-hearted atheist who has spent his or her entire life demanding that God simply does not exist has pangs of uncertainty and fear about death, for they cannot excise completely from their heart and conscience that deep-seated truth that God Himself placed in every human being that God truly does exist. Scripturally, Jews believe in the resurrection and eternal life for the righteous, but the common attitude of many modern Jews is to live life now because there is no afterlife. Muslims believe one must submit to God (i.e. Islam). Eternal life is obtained by obeying the Five Pillars of Islam: 1. Confess that only Allah is god and that Mohammed is his prophet; 2. Pray five times each day; 3. Give alms; 4. Fast during Ramadan; and 5. Complete the hajj at least one time in Mecca. They have no certainty that all this will guarantee salvation, so they hope that all these works done under the pillars will be enough to outweigh their wicked deeds on judgment day. To counter this uncertainty, Muslims believe that pursuing jihad guarantees entrance into eternal life, for jihad is the ultimate submission to Allah. This is why Muslims are willing to fight for Allah and die for him, because this is their certain guarantee of meriting His favor and eternal life. Christianity is the only religion that believes that eternal life is obtained by believing in Jesus and not by any works we perform. Christianity is a religion of the gospel, not the law. And yet, many Christians believe like the Jews and Muslims: that we must earn our way into heaven by adding works to faith to secure our good standing before God.

6. The Apostle Paul emphatically proclaims: »For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.« (Ephesians 2,8-9). When Christians stand before the judgment seat of God, we stand before our Lord Jesus Christ confident of His verdict upon us because we have already stood before His judgment seat and heard His decision.

7. The bema is the tribunal of the Roman magistrate, raised high above the level of the basilica, or hall, at the end of which it stood. When basilicas were turned into churches, the word was transferred refer to the throne of the bishop, and in classical Greek architecture this throne was not the judge’s seat, but the orator’s pulpit where bishops and ministers proclaim God’s Word to His people. What is preached from Christian pulpits is this: »Hear, O man, and give ear, O woman; for the Lord has spoken: „I have reared and brought you up, but you have rebelled against Me. Ah, sinful people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! You have forsaken and despised Me, you have despised the Holy One of Israel; you are utterly estranged from Me. So now draw near to Me, let us reason together: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool“« (Isaiah 1,2.4.18). Our rebellion is acquitted and our sins wiped clean through Jesus the Christ who took away the sin of all the world. Behold, this Savior is our Judge, and each Sunday we hear His verdict of „Not guilty.“, for we stand before Him as redeemed children of God the Father.

8. „Jesus is the Lamb who was slain (5:6). The victory is won by Christ the Lamb in his death on the cross and his resurrection. It is a victory that is shared with his faithful followers, the people of God (e.g., 12:11). It is a victory that guarantees life forever with God (2:26). And it is the victory that guarantees life forever with God (21:7)“ (Brighton 137). Amen.

9. Let us pray. O Christ Jesus, Thou Judge Most High, we give thanks to You and sing praises to You, for You have redeemed us and delivered us into everlasting life. 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, 4^th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27^th 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.

Monday, June 13, 2016

1. Timothy 1,12-17. 3. Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

1. Timothy 1,12-17 3416

3. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 048

The Council of Nicaea, 325

Onuphrius, hermit in the Thebais 404.
Basilides and companions, Martyrs at Rome 303

12. Juni 2016

1. О Lord God, Heavenly Father, we all like sheep have gone astray, having suffered ourselves to be led away from the right path by Satan and our own sinful flesh: We beseech You graciously to forgive us all our sins for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ; and quicken our hearts by Your Holy Spirit, so that we may abide in Your Word, and in true repentance and a steadfast faith continue in Your Church unto the end, and obtain eternal salvation. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for the 3. Sn. n. Trinitatis)

2. I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful, appointing me to His service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor and violent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus arrived into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life. To God alone, the Eternal King, who is immortal and invisible, be honor and glory forever and ever.Amen.

3. We don’t comprehend it like we should, but the confession of the Nicene Creed is a big deal in the Church. On 12. June 325 the Council of Nicea wrote and confessed this Creed for the first time. The 3. Article ends with the sentence: I believe in the Holy Spirit. The rest of that 3. Article was adopted and confessed for the first time at the Council of Constantinople in 381. The Nicene Creed is the first and only truly ecumenical creed that is confessed through the the world.

4. But why write and confess this Creed? The Creed was written to decide once and for all what the Scriptures taught about Jesus. For decades prior to 325, the Church had been grappling with this question: what exactly does it mean that Jesus is God? A pastor in Alexandria spread this question beyond a few localities and brought it to the attention of the entire Church. This pastor was named Arius, and his teaching about Jesus was this: There was a time when the Son was not. Arius and others believed that only God the Father was truly God. Jesus, the Son of God, was the first being created by the Father, and thus the Son cannot have the same Divine substance and nature of the Father.

5. The Trinitarian historian Socrates of Constantinople reports that Arius sparked the controversy that bears his name when St. Alexander of Alexandria, who had succeeded Achillas as the Bishop of Alexandria, gave a sermon stating the similarity of the Son to the Father. Arius interpreted Alexander’s speech as being a revival of Sabellianism, condemned it, and then argued that „if the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he [the Son] had his substance from nothing.“ [Socrates. The Dispute of Arius with Alexander, his Bishop. The Ecclesiastical Histories of Socrates Scholasticus. Retrieved 2 May 2012] This quote describes the essence of Arius’ doctrine.

6. This minority position was obviously contrary to the majority position in the Church. At Nicea, 23 bishops supported Arius, while 295 bishops moderately or strongly supported the Alexander who articulated that Jesus is co-eternal and of one substance (con-substantial) with the Father. Arius and his followers preferred to say Jesus is of similar, but not identical, substance of the Father (ὁμοιούσιον), while Alexander and his supporters preferred to say Jesus is the same and one substance of the Father (ὁμοούσιον). After months of Scriptural debate, the bishops at Nicea composed the Nicene Creed to confess the catholic and orthodox faith of the Church. The Creed made it clear that Arius and his teaching about Jesus was rejected. They professed that the Holy Scriptures proclaim that Jesus is:

The Son of God, begotten of the Father, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.

The confessional line had been drawn by the bishops as to what is and what is not the orthodox confession of the Church. 1691 years later we still confess this Creed as the orthodox faith of the Church.

7. Just to make sure Arius and the few bishops who supported him got the point, the Council of Nicea added this final paragraph to the Creed: „But those who say: ‘There was a time when he was not;’ and ‘He was not before he was made;’ and ‘He was made out of nothing,’ or ‘He is of another substance’ or ‘essence,’ or ‘The Son of God is created,’ or ‘changeable,’ or ‘alterable’— they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.“

8. The Nicene Creed we use today is different from the one the 318 bishops wrote at Nicea in 325. The Nicene Creed we confess today comes from the Council of Constantinople in 381. The 150 bishops at this council reworded the Creed by adding a few phrases and expanding the 3. Article to flesh out what we believe about the Holy Spirit, as the decades between Nicea and Constantinople had been fraught with false teachings regarding the Holy Spirit.

9. The history of the Church reveals that false doctrine and heresy can easily worm its way in among pastors and congregations. The Nicene Creed established the definitive confession of the Church draw from Holy Scripture. The Creed teaches that God is Triune: One God comprised of Three Persons. The Creed also proclaims that Jesus is the only way of salvation, and that He is both God and man in one person. The Creed merely echoes the words written by the Apostle Paul in his 1. Epistle to Timothy: »The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus arrived into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life. To God alone, the Eternal King, who is immortal and invisible, be honor and glory forever and ever.«

10. The Nicene Creed is concerned chiefly with Christ. It sets forth that salvation is through Christ alone. It proclaims that Jesus is fully God and fully man, one person with two natures, Divine and human, and that His Divine nature is equal to God the Father, so that what can be said of God the Father can be said of Jesus in regards to His Divinity. This is why the Church preaches Christ crucified, for He is the Lamb of God who has taken away the sin of the world.

11. The Apostle Paul writes in his Epistle to the Galatians: »There is not a different gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. For this is the gospel: God the Father gave the Lord Jesus Christ for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. Thus we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but is justified through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified« (Galatians 1,6-8.3-4; 2,16). The Nicene Creed proclaims this Christ and confesses this gospel; thus we confess it in the Church 1700 years later after it was first confessed in Nicea. And the 3. Ecumenical Council, the Council of Ephesus of 431, reaffirmed the original 325 version of the Nicene Creed and declared that: „it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, to write or to compose a different faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Spirit in Nicaea“. This is most certainly true. Amen.

12. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness, send forth the Holy Spirit so that we daily trust in Your mercy and seek Your grace for the redemption and salvation of our lives. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

✠

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Ephesians 2,17-22. 2. Sunday after Trinity

✠ 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 bythe 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 bythe 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

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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

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Thursday, June 30, 2016

1. Corinthians 1,18-25. 5. Sunday after Trinity

Monday, June 20, 2016

Romans 14,7-13. 4. Sunday after Trinity

Monday, June 13, 2016

1. Timothy 1,12-17. 3. Sunday after Trinity

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Ephesians 2,17-22. 2. Sunday after Trinity