When We Love

[Below you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, earlier today, as well as video of both worship services.] 

John 14:15-21

Do Jesus’ words at the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson make you uncomfortable? He says “If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15) 

Does Jesus seem to be contradicting Himself and the rest of the Bible?

Elsewhere, He famously says, for example, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

And also: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29)

The apostle Paul summarizes all this teaching from Jesus by saying, “For we maintain that a person is justified [that is, declared innocent of their sins] by faith [in Christ] apart from the works of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

The distillation of these passages of Scripture and many more is that we who are born sinners cannot and are not saved from death, the condemnation for our sin, by anything we do; we are saved solely by Christ Who died and rose for all sinners through the faith in Christ we receive through the Gospel Word about Jesus.

So, what is up with Jesus’ words at the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson: “If you love me, keep my commands”? It sounds as if Jesus is saying that our relationship with Him and our eternal salvation from Him depend on how much we love Him and on our obedience to His commands.

There are schools of thought within Christianity that teach this is exactly what Jesus is saying here. They think their salvation depends on what they do and the depths of their love for Jesus. People taught this way are constantly turned in on themselves, trying to police themselves of doubt or sin.

But, friends, this kind of thinking can only lead us to one of two endpoints: Either false pride when we think that we really are obeying and loving Jesus perfectly or despair, even unbelief, at the realization that we cannot obey or love Jesus perfectly.

Jesus and the whole Bible are clear though that we won’t find life with God by diving more deeply into our personal sewers of sin and self-obsession.

Freedom from sin and death only come from outside ourselves through Jesus Christ!

So, what is Jesus telling us in the first verse of our Gospel lesson? There are two words in the verse that say much more than we might realize and will help us understand what Jesus is saying.

The first word is if, “If you love Me,” Jesus says.

The word in the Greek in which John wrote his gospel is ἐάν, a conjunction that usually means if. But there is an irregular use of the word and almost every time it appears in John’s writings, this irregular use is meant. Let me give you a few examples of this use.

In John 12:32, Jesus says, “And I, when [that’s our word, ean] I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Another example, 1 John 2:28 : “And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when [there’s our word again] he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.” (1 John 2:28)

One more, 1 John 3:2: “...we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

So, Jesus isn’t telling us, “If you get yourself convinced that you love Me.” He’s saying, “When, by the power of my Word, given in Scripture, preaching, teaching, and the Sacraments, that all your sins are forgiven and that you have been justified by grace through faith in Me…”

Jesus is assuring you: “When you have been told, ‘I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,’ you will love Jesus.”

That’s the power of His forgiving, loving Word; it incites love for Him within us.

“This is love,” the apostle John writes elsewhere, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

We love Jesus when His Gospel Word allows us to experience the love He has given to us from the cross. It was this very love that the disciples who betrayed Jesus would experience after His resurrection: forgiveness and love despite their sin.

The second word is keep. “If you love me,” Jesus says, “keep my commands.” The word here in the original Greek is τηρέω. It means to watch over, to guard, to observe. To keep the commands of Jesus, of God, is to acknowledge their authority over us. It doesn’t mean perfect obedience to God’s Law, which God’s Word tells us no sinful human being can muster.

Jesus, you’ll remember, used words from the Old Testament to summarize God’s commandments for the human race.

He summarized commandments one through three–that we have no other gods, that we not take His name in vain, that we hold His Word at the center of our lives–by telling us to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37).

He summarized commandments four through ten–that we honor our parents, not murder, not commit adultery, not steal, not bear false witness, and not covet–by commanding us, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39)

Honesty compels each of us to acknowledge that we do not obey God’s law of love. We are worthy of condemnation.

But, friends, we keep these commands of Jesus every time we come to Him and acknowledge, formally or informally, together or on our own, “We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” We keep His commands whenever we respond to His Word and take up our crosses daily and follow Him. (Luke 9:23)

We love Jesus and we keep His commands, acknowledging His grace and authority, whenever He comes to us with His Word assuring us that through Him, all our sins are forgiven. This is what Jesus explains to us in the rest of today’s gospel lesson. Jesus sends His Holy Spirit Who comes to us in the word of forgiveness and rebirth we receive at Holy Baptism, in the preaching of His Gospel Word, and in the forgiveness and power for living we receive in Holy Communion.

When Jesus tells us today, “If you love me, keep my commands,” Jesus isn’t turning us in on ourselves to engage in a morbid inventory of our sinful selves. He’s freeing us from both the sewers of self-congratulation and self-condemnation.

He calls us to look to Him, the One Who died and rose to set us free from sin and death.

It’s good and right for us to confess our sins to God. But when Jesus’ words of forgiveness come to us, our old sinful self is crucified and, with the words of absolution, we rise to newness of life!

Pastor David Schmitt talks about a friend who, as she puts on a coat to go outside, says with a smile of her deceased dad, “My father always told me to wear a coat.” These are the words of a woman who knew how deeply her earthly father loved her, that his “command” wasn’t arbitrary but came from love, and so, even now, out of his immediate presence–even when she forgets to put on her coat, she “keeps” her father’s “command.”

When the Holy Spirit–the Spirit of truth–turns our attention to Jesus and we know that He has already paid the price for our sin and already given eternal life to all who believe in Him, we are filled with the love of children who know they are deeply loved by God and, from love, reverence, and respect, will always gladly acknowledge His authority over us.

Receive the forgiving love of Jesus and you will love.

That is Jesus’ Word for us today.

Amen

Ruth and Jonah (Midweek Lenten Worship, Part 2)

[Here's video from the live stream of this evening's midweek Lenten worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Also, you'll find the text of tonight's message.]

Ruth 3-4

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus creates a word picture of the final judgment of humanity. In this parabolic rendering, the goats are those condemned to eternal separation from God. The sheep are those invited to claim their inheritance in God’s Kingdom.

Jesus commends the sheep for all the wonderful things they’ve done. But the sheep spend three verses saying, “We don’t remember doing any of that stuff!” Had the sheep in Jesus’ account of the judgment thought their good works had something to do with their eternal salvation, they wouldn’t say that. They would have been keeping score. In essence though, they ask Jesus,“Good works? What good works?”

Good works are not the ticket to life with God. Jesus says, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) But something happens in the lives of those who believe in God. When we receive the gift of faith in the God now revealed to everyone in Jesus, faith being a gift that comes to us not by our works but by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God, we become, in a new way, “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10) Even our good works are things God has set up and we just walk in them.

All of which brings us to our Bible lesson for tonight, Ruth 3-4. We ended the message last week with two widows: Ruth and Naomi. Ruth is a Moabite who insists on going with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem, in Israel. Ruth does this both out of devotion to the God of Israel in Whom she has come to believe and to care for her mother-in-law.

In chapter two of Ruth, which we’re skipping tonight, Ruth finds work helping with the barley harvest on the farm of a man named Boaz. Boaz is  a distant relative of Naomi’s late husband, Elimelech. Boaz notices Ruth is a hard-worker and knowing that she’s devoted to God and devoted to Naomi, her mother-in-law, takes care to ensure that Ruth has food she can share with Naomi and that she isn’t harmed while working for him. (More on that in a moment.)

The harvesting of barley involved taking the grain to a threshing floor. A threshing floor sat on top of a hill, composed of an area about thirty-feet wide, the floor made up of soil ground down flat. West winds, the prevailing winds, were strong during the day. But at sunset, the winds, still going, would die down enough to allow for the threshing to begin. The first step was to lead animal-drawn wagons over the grain set on the threshing floor. This would burst the grain open and allow for the second step. In this step, men used shovels to scoop up grain and toss it in the air. The unwanted chaff was blown away, while the usable grain remained. This work went on late into the night. It involved only men, the women being sent away for their safety. And there was a reason for that. Threshing floors were notorious settings of men who took advantage of women. When the crop has been picked, Ruth tells Naomi how well she’s been treated. Naomi is delighted because she knows and respects the older Boaz, an honorable man.

That brings us to chapter three. “My daughter,” Naomi tells her daughter-in-law, Ruth, “I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for.” (Ruth 3:1)

Under God’s Law, Ruth was under no obligation to play the matchmaker for Ruth or to concern herself with Ruth’s future. No more than Ruth was obligated under God’s Law to commit herself to following the God of Israel, Yahweh, or caring for Naomi. But when God has gifted you with faith and, by grace, made you one of his saints, the question is no longer, “What do I have to do to please God?” but “What do I get to do as I interact each day with my neighbors, including the neighbors under my own roof?” According to Saint Paul, we can have the same mind in us that Christ Jesus had. Although He was God, Jesus didn’t exploit His deity, but became a servant for our good. When, through faith, we know we belong to God forever, we can make the business of others–their needs and interests–our business. I love what Martin Luther says: “God doesn’t need your good works. But your neighbor does.”

So, Naomi concocts a plan, drawing on two interrelated civil laws of the Jews.

One is that of the guardian-redeemer. When a man died without heirs, the nearest male relative could act as guardian-redeemer, ensuring that the deceased man’s birthright will remain with the extended family and tribe as originally assigned by God.

The other law was levirate marriage. This required that the next available bachelor son marry his brother’s widow and that the first son born to that union would become heir to the dead man’s property.

Naomi has Ruth bathe, perfume, and clothe herself like a woman no longer in mourning, like one, in fact, dressed as a bride. Ruth is to go silently to the threshing floor, waiting for Boaz to complete the harvesting and have his dinner and then, entering after all the men have gone to sleep, uncover his feet so that the by-now gentle breeze of the night would soon wake him. In the meantime, Ruth is to lie down at his feet, dressed as a bride.

If this all sounds a little racy, you should know that, in the original Hebrew, this chapter of Ruth is filled with innuendo and double-entendres. That’s because threshing floors, where men spent the night working, many got drunk, and all fell asleep to guard the crops from theft, were notorious for seduction and rape. But here, we’re to compare and contrast because Ruth and Boaz, despite all of the opportunities, behave honorably.

So Ruth follows Naomi’s instructions and when the startled Boaz awakens, she says, “I am your servant Ruth. Spread the corner of your garment over me [a phrase that means, ‘Be my husband.’], since you are a guardian-redeemer of our family.” (Ruth 3:9) Ruth is asking Boaz both to be her husband (which is pretty forward in that culture) and to act as guardian-deemer to care for Naomi. Like Ruth and Naomi, Boaz didn’t have to do what he does next; but he too, is a person of faith, for whom the love of others isn’t odious.

Boaz goes to the village gate, where judicial and civil proceedings are hammered out by the men of the community, establishing that the next-in-line male who had first-dibs on redeeming Elimelech’s property isn’t interested in buying the property if it means he also has to marry Ruth. He’s, afraid that his property would go to Elimelech’s heir if he marries Ruth. You know how the story ends. Boaz marries Ruth and takes care of Naomi. Later, Ruth and Boaz have their first child, Obed, the father of Jesse, and the grandfather of David, Israel’s greatest king. It’s into David’s family line that eleven centuries later, according to the plan and the promise of God, the Savior of the world, Jesus is born in Bethlehem.

From the beginning, God has had a plan and He uses grief-stricken people, imperfect people, people just looking ahead to the next step, to do His work in the world.

There are three main things to mention about what we see in this remarkable book.

First, of course, is that Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz do way more than God or anyone would require of them. They act with what the Hebrew of the Old Testament calls hesed, a word is often translated as mercy or covenantal steadfastness. But it might better be rendered as merciful fidelity. God is the initiator of His merciful covenants with Israel and the Church and believers and that same attitude of merciful fidelity is played out in the lives of those who trust in Him. Faithful to God, living in His grace, Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz are set free to love God as they know God has loved them. They knew that by God’s grace through faith, they were part of God’s people and were free to live lives of unstinting love. “​​This is love,” the New Testament teaches, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

The second thing to mention is that God welcomes outsiders into His kingdom. He even uses outsiders to accomplish His purposes. Boaz was the son of Salmon and Rahab. Rahab, you’ll remember, was the Canaanite prostitute from Jericho, who, like Ruth, came to believe in the God of the ancient Israelites and helped them take that city when God gave them the land. Ruth was a descendant of Lot and his daughters who got their father drunk and tricked him into getting them pregnant. It was into the family descending from these two imperfect “foreigners” that the King of the Jews and the Savior of the world was born. If Jesus could be entrusted to such an unpromising lineage, He can also give us the gift of saving faith in God the Son, Jesus. No matter how far we have wandered from God. No matter how imperfect we are. No matter how much we may feel like an outsider.

The third thing to notice is that Boaz, the guardian-redeemer, foreshadows the guardian-redeemer God provides to all of us born with no claim on life with God. Like Boaz, who took Ruth as His bride, Jesus has come into this world to take His Church, the fellowship of repentant believers in Him, as His bride. Jesus died and rose to make us heirs of His grace. Infinitely and eternally more than Boaz, Jesus redeems us, not with money, but with His own sinless life offered on a cross. The faith and lives of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, empowered to love by the God of love, help us see what kind of God we worship. But, if we want to know where their love came from, we look to Jesus, God the Son, the God Who empowers us to live, confident in His grace and forgiveness, and to love others as God loved us when He went to the cross. Amen

Grace, discipline, and wrath (from today's Quiet Time)

Here are my reflections on Revelation 16 from this morning's Quiet Time with God.

Look: “They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.” (Revelation 16:9)

“People gnawed their tongues in agony 11 and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.” (Revelation 16:10c-11)

“From the sky huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds,[a] fell on people. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.” (Revelation 16:21)

The people who have spurned God are cursing God because they’re experiencing the wrath their faithlessness has brought into their lives.

As I understand it, when the Bible talks about wrath, it’s not talking about an arbitrary God Who punishes from anger. Whenever God does punish, or better yet, disciplines us, it’s out of fatherly love. Citing Proverbs 3:11-12, the preacher of the New Testament book of Hebrews says: “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” (Hebrews 12:4-6)

Wrath is the consequence of a life turned away from God. It’s like the electricity that can come through a wall receptacle. It will in no way hurt you. But if you poke your finger into one of the holes or stick a piece of metal into one of them, the electricity conducted to your body will hurt you.

Wrath is the consequence of breaching the boundaries of the good life--the shalom life of peace, of love for God and for neighbor--that God has in mind for us.

We incur the wrath of God, eventually if not immediately, whenever we step outside the bounds of the good life. That is, whenever we sin. The recognition of God’s disapproval of sin--whenever we see that our behaviors violate the law of God as expressed in the Ten Commandments, should bring us to repentance.

Repentance is more that being sorry for our sin. It’s more too than asking for forgiveness in Jesus’ name. It’s characterized by the joyful recognition that because of God’s great grace--literally, God’s charity toward us--I’m not just forgiven. I’m also God’s friend. God and I are one.

Christians are called upon to repent daily, not out of fear for wrath, but from fear of disrupting or destroying the living, eternal relationship God gives to us through Jesus. No relationship is so important to the Christian than our relationship with God in Christ. Not just because of the promise of eternity or the promise of God’s presence in our everyday lives here and now, but also because we know how much God loves us and so, we want to love and please Him in return. First John 4:10 says: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Listen: In the passages from Revelation 16, the people experiencing the wrath of God are so certain that they have a right to live like gods, deciding what’s right and wrong for themselves with no consideration of the will of God, that they’re incensed at what they see as God’s effrontery in letting them experience the consequence of turning from Him. They’re offended that God would be upset or offended by their rebellion against His will that we obey the Ten Commandments, that we love God and love neighbor, and trust in Jesus for our lives. “Who is God to rain on my parade?” they think.

And so, they refuse to repent. They refuse to honor Him as God. They even curse God.

I know that in my own subtle ways*, I too have blamed God for the protective walls of wrath He has sometimes erected to protect me from my bad behavior and my bad judgments, to cause me to “come to my senses” (Luke 15:17), to repent and be reconciled to Him. These are times when I have--and I feel stupid that it’s something I must confess to be true--refused His grace and, instead, incurred the wrath of God by insisting on getting my own way. How dumb is that?

When I consider Your grace, Lord, I’m filled with sorrow for disappointing You and harming Your gracious plan for shalom by my insistence on being my own god. Lord, please forgive me.

Respond: Forgive me for blaming You, Lord, when things don’t go my way when often “my way” has nothing to do with Your way for human beings to live.

When You confront me with my sins, help not to make excuses or rationalizations. Help me to repent. Help me to return to You, be embraced by Your grace, my life built once more on You and not on the shaky ground of my faulty judgment. In Jesus’ name.

*Subtle to me, but not to God, Who can see right through me even better than I can see through my own smoke screens and rationalizations. "You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely." (Psalm 139:2-4)

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Is love more important than faith and hope? Yes and no

Most people in western culture have probably heard the famous "love chapter" from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 13. Although not originally addressed by the apostle Paul to marriage, but rather to the relationships of disciples in Christ's Church to each other, it's often read at weddings. The "love chapter" ends in this way:

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

A friend recently mentioned this passage and opined that love trumps faith.

I responded:

I always have viewed [the verse as representing]...a progression: Without faith in Christ, there is no hope and you can't...love. On the other hand, it's God's love that makes it possible for us to have faith and hope.

The three attributes are related to one another. And love is the greatest because it's from His infinite storehouse of love for the human race that God sent His Son Jesus to die and rise for us (see John 3:16-18).

It's also God, acting in love through Christ, Who gives us hope. (Psalm 62:5)

And it's only through the power of the Holy Spirit, God acting in love, that we can have faith. (1 Corinthians 12:3)

In the "love chapter," Paul is upbraiding a group of Christians committing unrepentant sin, including the sins of some who thought they were better or more worthy of God's and the world's favor than others. They were loveless.

They were loveless because they had more faith in the world and in external things than they had in Christ. They lacked hope because there is no hope apart from Christ. As Paul reminds the Corinthian church a few chapters later: "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15:9).

Love then, is the greatest and highest expression of our faith and hope in Christ.

Without faith and hope in Christ, we may love in the way the world "loves." But Jesus commends a higher form of love.

According to the Bible, faith and hope in Christ are equivalent to what Jesus speaks of in the gospel of John as remaining or abiding in Him. To have faith and to derive our hope from Jesus Christ alone is to draw every bit of our lives, aspirations, self-worth, unique self-identities, and capacity to love in the same self-giving, eternity-changind way in which Christ loved us on the cross.

So Jesus says in John 15:5: "If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

And it's why John himself confesses many years later: "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10).

God's love doesn't trump faith and hope. In His love, God creates love--true love, self-giving love--in those who put their faith and hope in Christ alone.

People will protest, of course, that they love their families and maybe their friends. Their love may be even more expansive, including countrymen or those with whom they agree politically. With all due respect, big deal! 

As Jesus puts it: "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:46-48).

The word translated as perfect there is, literally, complete, a form of which word uses on the cross as He dies and says, "It is finished." More literally, "It is completion." But I'm not sure that being complete as Jesus was, complete in fulfilling the will of the Father that He love His enemies and pray for those who persecuted Him, even as they killed him.

Whether you take Jesus to be saying perfect or prefer the more literal rendering of complete in this passage from Matthew 5, both leave us with a daunting command. And it's only through our faith and hope in Christ that we are capable of loving, not just our families and friends, but everyone...not just in our sentiments, but in our actions.

Why do I say and believe that?

In Matthew 25, we find Jesus' famous parable of the final judgment. In the parable, the goats are condemned to hell, eternity apart from God. The sheep are told to enter into the eternal joy of God made possible through Christ's death and resurrection.

But the sheep are mystified by Christ the King's reason for allowing them entrance into perfect eternal fellowship with God. He tells them that it's because they lived in love toward others the world ignored, dismissed, or harmed. Do you remember how Jesus' parable goes?

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’"

The moment we think things like, "I'm being loving," "I'm being forgiving," or "I'm acting like Jesus," we know that God still has work to do on us. Real love never refers to itself. (By the way, God has a lot of work to do on me in this regard!)

The "righteous" in Jesus' parable were unaware of the love that they had shown to Christ through the love that they had shown to others. They lived (and loved) unselfconsciously because their faith and hope weren't in themselves or their actions, but only in Christ.

Their acts of love weren't spiritual merit badges that entitled them to entry into eternity with God; they evidenced the presence of Jesus in their lives.

They evidenced that God had constructed faith and hope in them.

Love like this proves the existence of a faith and hope in Christ. And it is the love--authentic, self-giving, godly love--that the world most needs today.

In Revelation 3:20, the risen and ascended Jesus speaks to a first century church that is going through the religious motions, but hasn't really let Christ into the centers of their lives. They aren't letting the Holy Spirit, Who leads and speaks on behalf of Jesus today, to take control of their lives, individually or collectively.

But Jesus hasn't given up on them! "Here I am!" Jesus says. "I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me."

More than anything, being a Christian--a disciple of Jesus Christ--is about daily letting Jesus in.

We let Him in to show us our sins and what we need to confess.

We let Him in so that, through the Bible, He can speak His words of love, truth, wisdom, and guidance to us.

We let Him in so that the Holy Spirit can empower us to be more loving and Christlike today than we were yesterday.

We let Him in, too, so that He can help us to work for justice and peace in the world, so that we can love others as Christ has loved us.

And, as we pray, we let Him and His love explode onto the world; we ask for healing of others, for workers to go into the harvest, Christians who will share the good news of new life for all who believe in Jesus, and for wisdom for leaders.

In short, as we let Christ in, Christ springs forth from our words, actions, and prayers. We love.

Love is "the greatest of these." 

But we can only love when we let Christ in, when we have faith and hope in Him. 

Trust in Christ. Let Him love the world through you.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

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.