What's the point?

I had a strange phone call from a former member of Bethany this morning. She wanted to know whether something she was considering doing was against the teachings of our Church.

That's a question for your Baptist preacher or your Roman Catholic priest, not your Lutheran pastor. The Lutheran Church is not principally about ethics, not about doing what's right. The Lutheran Church is about forgiveness.

That's what was most strange about this conversation. This long lost member hadn't been to church here (or anywhere else, presumably) for almost a decade. And yet she was worried about doing something that might be contrary to what Lutherans teach.

What Lutherans teach is Law and Gospel. What Lutherans preach is Christ crucified. We do, of course teach ethics or righteous works done for the good of one's neighbor. But those are not the core of who we are and what we believe. Those are at the periphery. And if you miss the center, it's pointless to dabble in the peripherals.

What's the core? The Divine Service.

On Sunday mornings, when God gathers His people together, He gives the gifts that we cannot live without. He gives sinners forgiveness that transforms them into saints. He gives dead people life. He gives people who cannot do anything good apart from His intervention the full righteousness of Jesus.

This former member is not alone in her thinking. Lots of people think this way. How many times have you thought about someone, “Sure he doesn't go to church, but at least he's not into really bad sins like others are.” “Sure my kids don't go to church, but at least they don't (do drugs/shack up without marriage/hit their wives/get too drunk too often/end up in the police blotter).”

That's not Christianity. That's not Lutheran. That's works righteousness. The point of the Church is not to keep you from sinning. The point of the Church is to deliver forgiveness. If you don't go to church where God gives us forgiveness, life, and salvation, no amount of avoiding “big” sins can help you. It's not sin that damns us. Jesus died for all sins. It's unbelief that damns. And rejecting God's gifts in the Divine Service by skipping church is unbelief. Telling God “no” is unbelief.

At the end of this odd phone conversation, I didn't care what she chose to do with her moral quandary. All I wanted was for her to be receiving the gifts of God again.

Beaten Before We Started

As I write this, news is breaking that the Supreme Court has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional.  So it goes.  It was bound to happen.  The redefinition of marriage has been going on for decades, and the Church has allowed it to happen.  Only recently, when the definition has been slightly expanded to include two people of the same gender, has the church raised her voice in protest.  And then only weakly.

What happened?  Before two people of the same gender who loved each other deeply argued for their right to get married, two people who used to love each other deeply but no longer do argued for their right to get divorced.  Before that, two people who love each other deeply with little or no desire to share that love or receive the natural fruit of their sexual union argued that they should be allowed to marry without also being expected to have children.

Marriage has already been redefined.  As God created marriage, it was a life-long union between a man and a woman, as the liturgy of Holy Matrimony teaches, “intended by God for the mutual companionship, help, and support that each person ought to receive from the other…so that man and woman may find delight in one another…for the procreation of children who are to be brought up in the fear and instruction of the Lord.”

Did you catch that?  We used to believe that marriage was about more than just love.  It was about the life-long companionship of a man and a woman, that they might have a God-pleasing outlet for their sexual desires, that God might bless their union with children. 

Then the culture embraced contraception, believing that sexual pleasure could be separated from God’s gift of children.  And the church went along with the culture.  Then the culture sold us no-fault divorce, supposing that if a couple is no longer “in love,” they should divorce in order to find happiness.  And the church bought what the culture was selling.

If you believe that marriage is simply about love, then children are optional and divorce is a good solution if you quit loving each other.

When the church protests against same-sex marriage, while making no fuss about the prevalence of divorce or contraception among Christian couples, she sounds exactly like advocates of homosexual marriage misrepresent her: whiny and narrow-minded.  God’s Word doesn’t prohibit same-sex marriage because homosexual behavior is sinful (which it is).  It prohibits same-sex marriage because marriage is a gift from God for the life-long, procreative union of a man and a woman.  The gift of marriage is much bigger than we’ve allowed it to be reduced to.

As long as the church is unrepentant for allowing contraception and no-fault divorce, she has already allowed marriage to be redefined.  Advocates of same-sex marriage are just using the new definition of marriage that we have permitted: two people who love each other.

Before we gripe and moan about the SCOTUS’s opinion on DOMA, we would do well to turn critical eyes toward ourselves.  If we begin in repentance for our past (and present) mistakes, for wanting to receive some of God’s gifts but not all of them, we’ve found better ground to stand on.  Then we can extol the beautiful gift of marriage, which is more than just the relationship between a man and a woman.  It’s an icon of the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church.  This is the only perfect marriage, the only perfectly eternal marriage, the only perfectly fruitful marriage. 

Let’s receive the gifts God desires to give as He desires to give them.  His gifts truly are good.

An Open Letter to Dave Roemer, Park President, Six Flags St. Louis

May 22, 2013

Dear Mr. Roemer,

I left a message for someone in your group sales office that I'm reasonably certain will go unreturned. As I did last year, I called to speak to someone there regarding the coupons we receive every year from Six Flags that you ask us to hand out to our captive audience of school children and VBS-goers. What I was calling to find out was how many fliers for Bethany Lutheran Church to mail to you to hand out to visitors to your park on one day. I figure if you expect me to advertise for Six Flags, the least you can do is return the favor. 

Believe me, I don't expect that to happen. But neither should you expect a congregation of the Lord's Church to be the instrument by which you do your marketing.

Maybe you've been duped by an entertainment-saturated culture into believing that the Church is just another place people go to get entertained, and so, “customers” of churches should be ripe customers for Six Flags. Maybe you've been tricked by the preachers who scratch where ears itch that the Church is little more than a social club of affluent (or wanna-be affluent) people who come to feel better about themselves so they can live better lives now. Maybe you blasphemously see the Church as a means to an end, whereby you can more easily disseminate admission coupons than by coughing up the cash for ads on Coca-Cola cans.

 The Bride of the Lord Jesus, the Church is none of those things. Well, not exactly. She is a means to an end, but not where the end is greater revenue for Six Flags (or any of the bazillion companies who want us to try to sell their stuff to the people in our congregations). The end for which the Church exists is the saving of people, the forgiveness of sinners, the reconciling of humanity to God. As such, the Church is the place where God accomplishes these miraculous events.

It is in the Church where God gathers His people to lavish upon them His gifts, where he collects them to preach His good news to them that Jesus has died to take away the penalty for their sinfulness. The Church is the place where God kills sinners in the waters of Holy Baptism and raises from those waters newborn saints. The Church is the place where Jesus sends pastors to speak words of forgiveness to sin-seared consciences. The Church is the place where those of us who know our great need for forgiveness find it in the meal of the Lord's Supper, where Jesus gives to those He gathers His real Body to eat and His real Blood to drink.

Those are holy things.
And they're all gifts.

Imagine how it would cheapen this message and trivialize the gifts of God the Church exists to give out if we coupled the message of forgiveness abundant and free to an advertisement for reduced admission to an amusement park.

Do I have anything against Six Flags? No. In fact, if we find enough discount coupons from Coke cans, I might even bring my family there this summer.

But I'll let your amusement park remain a place for amusement and entertainment, and I ask you to let the Lord's Church be the place for forgiveness and salvation.

Sincerely,
Rev. Jeff Hemmer, Pastor
Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church Fairview Heights, IL

A little teary eyed

Stories like this make me a little misty-eyed. A little.

Back from the dead

The blog at least. Jesus, too, of course, but it's Holy Week; don't get ahead of yourself.

Holy week greetings from the "presiding bishop" of the Missouri Synod

Compare that to the Easter greetings from the presiding "bishop" of the Episcopal Church, Katherine Schiori.

One you can listen to uncritically, simply receiving the Word as it's proclaimed to you and for you. They both will cause you to give thanks to God for faithful, pastoral church leadership of the Missouri Synod.

The LUTHERAN Witness

Does the Lutheran Witness set the paradigm for all things Lutheran? If so, the December issue normalizes for Missouri Lutherans things classically Lutheran like saints, crucifixes, rich church architecture, first communion prior to Confirmation, a pastor's study, repentance, and maintaining the distinction between Advent and Christmas. Gee whiz. Really? Those things are Lutheran? Who knew.

If you don't subscribe, you should.

Jolly Ol' St. Nick, reprise

This is from last year's St. Nick's Day.

And this article from World Mag in 2005 has been bouncing around the Internet today. In it, Dr. Veith calls for incorporating the St. Nicholas slap into our Christmas traditions. I think that's a fantastic idea.

This will take a little tweaking of the mythology. Santa and his elves live at the North Pole where they compile a list of who is naughty, who is nice, and who is Nicean. On Christmas Eve, flying reindeer pull his sleigh full of gifts. And after he comes down the chimney, he will steal into the rooms of people dreaming of sugarplums who think they can do without Christ and slap them awake.

And we'll need new songs and TV specials ("Santa Claus Is Coming to Slap," "Deck the Apollinarian with Bats of Holly," "Frosty the Gnostic," "How the Arian Stole Christmas," "Rudolph the Red Knows Jesus").

Department store Santas should ask the children on their laps if they have been good, what they want for Christmas, and whether they understand the Two Natures of Christ. The Santas should also roam the shopping aisles, and if they hear any clerks wish their customers a mere "Happy Holiday," give them a slap.

This addition to his job description will keep Santa busy. Teachers who forbid the singing of religious Christmas carols—SLAP! Office managers who erect Holiday Trees—SLAP! Judges who outlaw manger displays—SLAP! People who give The Da Vinci Code as a Christmas present—SLAP! Ministers who cancel Sunday church services that fall on Christmas day—SLAP! SLAP!

Don't be Effective

Be faithful.

Here's a fantastic article on How to Shrink Your Church.

For Reformation Day: A Lutheran Identity

What is a Lutheran, anyway?

Sometimes people define Lutherans by what we’re not: the most common being “We’re not Roman Catholics.” Well, that’s true. The Augsburg Confession still calls the Roman Catholic church to repent of her false doctrine and practice and return to the teachings of the apostles and fathers. But if the sum of a person’s Lutheran identity is simply what we’re not, that’s not a very robust identity.

For many whose Lutheran identity is little more than “not Roman Catholic,” there’s a fear of things that look a little too Roman Catholic. Because Lutherans and Roman Catholics share a common heritage, a common history, they will naturally have many things in common with one another, just like two siblings from the same parents may not only look alike but also act alike. Two such things that often ruffle peoples’ feathers and cause them to protest that things are “too Roman Catholic” are making the sign of the cross and having private Confession and Absolution.

If you had to think of one thing that all Lutherans have in common, one thing that defines what it means to be a Lutheran Christian, you’d be hard-pressed to find something better than Luther’s Small Catechism. Everyone has a catechism. Everyone had to learn it to be confirmed. It’s the layman’s summary of the Bible. It’s quintessentially Lutheran. And yet, right there in the catechism are these two “too Roman Catholic” things: the sign of the cross and private confession and absolution. So how did it come to be that these two things, among many others, featured prominently in the most Lutheran thing you can think of, are regarded as Roman Catholic practices?

Because we’ve been wasting our time defining ourselves by what we’re not.

Who cares what we’re not. Let’s be who we are: Lutherans. Let’s learn to speak the words Lutherans speak, sing the songs Lutherans sing, worship the way Lutherans worship, pray the way Lutherans pray, catechize our children the way Lutherans catechize their children. In short, let’s not be afraid to be Lutherans, with a robust Lutheran identity. Lutherans are people who trust completely in God’s work for salvation. They don’t believe they had to make a decision to be saved; they don’t believe their works earn them God’s mercy. They believe in a Triune God who works from outside of them to deliver to them His precious gift of faith. They believe faith comes by hearing, that God adopts them into His family in Holy Baptism, that the Lord Jesus sends pastors to forgive their sins, and that God feeds them with forgiveness through the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper.

This is a wonderful time to be a Lutheran Christian. We’re in the middle of something of a renaissance of classic Lutheranism. The greatest Lutheran publishing house in the world is turning out some of the best resources ever: The Lutheran Study Bible, Treasury of Daily Prayer, Lutheran Service Book, Concordia: the Lutheran Confessions, a newly redesigned Lutheran Witness, and more. More and more congregations are returning to the Lutheran practice of receiving the Lord’s Supper every Lord’s Day. Lutherans are rediscovering the Church’s historic vestments, covering their ordinary pastors in the extraordinary beauty of Christ’s Office.

It’s always a good time to be a Lutheran if you want rock-solid certainty of salvation. But today is a particularly invigorating day to be a Lutheran as we’re gradually growing in a robust, confident Lutheran identity.

St. Mary, Mother of Our Lord

Happy August 15, the Feast day of St. Mary. What to do with Mary? Confess with her: "Let it be unto me according to Your word." What to do with Mary? Learn from her: "Do whatever He tells you." What to do with Mary? Sing with her: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." What to do with Mary? Learn to respect the holy estate of motherhood. What to do with Mary? The same thing we do with the rest of the saints whose death days we commemorate in the Church's calendar: join them.

Here's the sermon from the LCMS International Center today.

Sorry, Chevy Fans

Hm, what to say about this:

When you deliberately eschew liturgy, you think ending prayers "boogity, boogity, boogity" is ok with Jesus?

Why not thank God for the Chevys? Toyotas but not Chevys? What's he got against the bowtie?

What has more advertisements? A Nascar car or a Nascar prayer?

Would he still give thanks if his wife were only smolderin' hot?

I'm so happy...

Michelle Bachman, in response to the hullabaloo surrounding her former membership in a church body that confessed that the office of the Papacy is antichrist (that's a Lutheran church, by the way), had this to say: "I'm a believer in Jesus Christ. I was born into a family where we were Lutherans. I'm sure that the Gospel was preached from the pulpit. I just didn't hear it." According to the NPR story, "Bachman then went on to describe how at 16 she gave her heart to Jesus Christ."

"I don't hear the Gospel," is a charge I've heard a couple times recently. And, according to other Lutheran preachers, it's a fairly common charge. But it's a very serious charge. If a Lutheran pastor is preaching and not preaching the Gospel, he should repent and preach the Gospel or he should be defrocked.

So why does the charge persist? I think, in part, because what the complainer means to say is not that he doesn't hear the proclamation of Jesus Christ the Crucified, who takes away the sins of the world, who comes in Word and Sacrament to deliver faith and forgiveness of sins. Instead, the complainer means to say, "I expect the Gospel to make me feel good, and sometimes church just doesn't give me that good feeling I want."

Well, that's different. The Gospel is not a guarantee of happiness. It's a guarantee of joy, but sometimes joy and sadness coexist. Sometimes an unfettered joy at having one's sins forgiven can coexist alongside the sadness of having to struggle every day against our old sinful flesh.

One professor at semonary called this the "backspin of the Gospel." The pure proclamation of the Gospel, that all sins are forgiven for the sake of Jesus, contains just a bit of sadness, that these sins existed in the first place, that you weren't able to free yourself from the mire of your sinfulness.

Sometimes there's heartache in beauty, sadness in joy, melancholy in forgiveness. All that aching is to point toward the future, toward the day of Christ's return, when our sinful selves will finally be put asunder.

In the meanwhile, if you're a little gloomy, enjoy this video from Hocus Pick (formerly Hocus Pick Manoeuver), a Canadian Christian rock/ska band from my boyhood:

Don't forget to take your medicine.

"Birth control is preventive medicine that should be fully covered by insurance companies, a panel advising the government recommended Tuesday," is the first like of a story in today's St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Preventive medicine? Preventive, yes. But medicine? Well, if you consider pregnancy a disease and fertility a sickness, then, yes, birth control is medicine for what ails ya.

Then again, pregnancy and children can have a cancerous effect on organs like independence, self-importance, financial well being, and immaturity.

Wow.

If the goal was to make me feel good, you failed, UCC.

Orate pro nobis

The people of Bethany Lutheran Church in Fairview Heights, IL have extended a call to me to serve as their pastor. Pray for us as we seek to discern the best place for us and the best situation for the people of Bethany and the people of Hope in Jerseyville.

ATP: What is Repentance?

On the question of repentance, the Lutheran reformers made a clean, decisive break with the teaching of the Pope, eschewing the Roman Catholic teaching that repentance has three parts (contrition, confession, & satisfaction), preferring instead the clear teaching of Scripture and the confession of the historic Christian church on repentance. In fact, the entire Reformation may be over-simplified into a question of repentance.

“Strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is, terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven” (Augsburg Confession, XII, 3-5).

Two parts. First, contrition, that is, sorrow over one’s sins. This comes from the preaching of the Law and the work of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8). Second, faith, that is trust in Jesus for forgiveness. This comes from the preaching of the Gospel, and is also the work of the Holy Spirit (Jn 15:26).

This is where Rome gets it horribly wrong. By adding a third part to repentance—satisfaction—all the comfort, all the reliance on Jesus’ full satisfaction for sins, is removed. Instead, removal of punishment and appeasement of God’s wrath comes from the works a person does to reverse the effects of his sins. Garbage. There’s no hope in that. With such a papist, false understand of repentance, we would see repentance as a once-and-done thing we do for each sin. Got a sin? Be sorry, confess it, make satisfaction for it; and you’re done. Not Scriptural; not Lutheran.

See how this plays out in a Roman Catholic understanding of confession. Why go to confession? Because you have sins that need to be taken care of. Compare that with a Lutheran understanding of confession. Why go to confession? Because you’re a sinner. Because you have full and complete trust that for Jesus’ sake, all your sin is removed. Because you love to hear the word of Absolution.

Repentance acknowledges your complete sinfulness and your utter inability to free yourself from your sinful condition. And at the same time, repentance relies completely and perfectly on Jesus for forgiveness. That’s why the first of Luther’s 95 Theses was, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ He willed the whole Christian life to be repentance.” Repentance—sorrow over sin and perfect faith in Jesus for forgiveness—is where a Christian lives. Like the water around a fish, or air around a bird, repentance is your habitat.

True repentance, therefore, comes through the work of the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the Word of God, properly divided Law and Gospel. Repentance is not your work; it is the work of the Holy Spirit within you. So, happy Pentecost. Thank God that you have received the Holy Spirit, who has worked repentance within you, who keeps you in that repentant faith by gathering you around God’s Word and Sacraments.

Personalized Pastoral Care

“One size does not fit all” is a popular marketing gimmick. And, for the most part, it’s true. How irritating is it to call a company—usually one with whom you do business—only to have the phone answered by a computer, with a “menu” of choices to direct your phone call to the right person (if you ever get to talk to a person at all). You want a more personalized response from your phone company (or your credit card company, your electric company, etc.). You’re not just an account number. Nevertheless, the bigger the company, the more impersonal it becomes.

During the recent recession, in response to the crisis at several investment banks, replete with multi-billion-dollar bailouts from the government, small, local banks tried to disassociate themselves from these behemoth banks. “We’re not like them,” they contended. “We’re in your hometown, and we know you by name.” A personalized approach to banking, was their sales pitch.

When you go to the doctor, you don’t want a general approach to your health. You want a doctor who will pay attention to you, who will consider your symptoms, your history, your family medical history, your lifestyle, your concerns, and more. In short, you want personalized treatment from your doctor. Colleges and private schools sell themselves with lower student-to-teacher ratios, which permit more interaction between the teacher and each student, thereby fostering a more personalized approach to education.

So also pastoral care.

When it comes to pastoral care, you don’t need a general approach. You need a pastor who takes into consideration your whole person, with your individual needs, your life’s situations, your particular circumstances. That’s not to say that the Word of God is relative to your personal needs, but how the Word gets applied to you should be done in as personalized a manner as possible.

This is the goal of private Absolution. When the Lutheran princes stood before Emperor Charles V at the Imperial Diet of Augsburg and declared to him that “our churches teach that private Absolution should be retained in the churches,” they did so because they knew the value of personalized pastoral care (Augsburg Confession, Article XI). It’s one thing to listen to a sermon and to hear the pastor proclaim the Gospel “for you.” It’s an altogether different thing to kneel at the rail and to hear him preach a personal sermon to you immediately after he has given Christ’s forgiveness to you individually. This time of individual confession and absolution, when you have confessed your personal sins, when the pastor, in the stead of Christ, has forgiven you personally, provides a special opportunity for very personalized pastoral care.

After the absolution in Individual Confession and Absolution, the rubrics for the rite specify, “The pastor may speak additional Scripture passages to comfort and strengthen the faith” of those who have confessed their sins and been forgiven (Lutheran Service Book, p. 293). This is a time for the pastor to preach the Gospel to you individually and personally. This is an opportunity for personalized pastoral care like no other.

Private Confession and Absolution is not meant to be a burden. Quite the opposite. It’s meant to be a particular, personal comfort. God loves you personally, individually, so He sends pastors to proclaim the Gospel, His Word of forgiveness to you, both corporately, as a member of the whole Body of Christ, His Church, and individually, as a unique sinner-saint who has a story and a history different from the guy in the pew next to him, who struggles with sins different from those around him, who has unique needs, who isn’t at the exact same place as anyone else in his personal life of faith. So God sends pastors to do highly specialized, personalized pastoral care, not because he needs to hear your individual confession, but because He wants to speak to you individually, privately, personally.

In what other part of your life do you have access to such a personalized gift? Your doctor may see you personally, but you’ll have to make an appointment weeks or months in advance. Your banker might meet with you privately, but he doesn’t have set hours to meet with bank customers personally. But your pastor keeps regular hours (Wednesdays between 6 and 6:45) and is available anytime by appointment to speak these most precious words of Christ to you personally: “I forgive you. Hear these words of Jesus for you.”

Note: HT: to Pr. Rick Stuckwisch for his insight at the CCA Symposium that private absolution is like a personal sermon

On Fatherhood, Boys to Men, and the Church

Here's a fascinating article about John Lasseter, the CEO at Pixar, on being a father, a man, and a boy.

This quotation was particularly insightful:

From cocky Lightning McQueen learning to win by not crossing the finish line in Cars, to grumpy old Carl Fredricksen living up to the promises he made his wife by letting them go in Up, to cowboy Woody giving up the prospect of immortality in Toy Story 2, Pixar characters always find fulfillment of their individual dreams by surrendering their individual dreams to the dictates of family and friends
.

That's where the Church comes in. Isn't that how she makes men from boys? By teaching them to surrender their individual dreams, for the benefit of family, congregation, and community, whereby their individual dreams are fulfilled.

I have as little tolerance for feminized Christianity as for emasculated men who stay away from Church. Selfishness is antithetical to masculinity, and the Church catechizes away from self-love (which isn't love) to self-giving love (which is the only kind of love). So, tomorrow, go to church with dad on Father's Day. It'll make him feel all manly and stuff.

Just in Time for Father's Day

Birth control for men.

Finally.

And--good news for the pro-choice crowd--you have choices. There are two male contraceptives coming to the market soon. The first is a gel that blocks passage of sperm (and physically disables those who pass through the gel), 100% effective for 10-15 years at keeping you from being a father. The other is a pill for men that stops production of sperm that has "aced tests in mouse testes" (try saying that five times fast).

My favorite part of these stories is what may become the effective marketing tagline for the BCP for men: "One company's toxin may be another person's contraceptive." There you have it, folks.

Sleep Well

Lutherans know what they believe. Many times, they know what other Christian confessions believe, too. And they believe that they are right where others are wrong. We don’t allow anyone to pastor our congregations who doesn’t confess that the Lutheran Confessions are a faithful and true exposition of Holy Scripture, and we don’t let anyone be a member of our congregations who doesn’t confess the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as taught in the Small Catechism, to be faithful and true. In short, we’re Lutherans because we believe Lutheran doctrine to be correct. Whoa. At face value, that seems a little bit offensive ridiculously and pompously arrogant.

Why do we care about doctrine? Why is right teaching—orthodoxy—so important to Missouri Synod Lutherans? In short, so you can sleep well.

We study Scripture, we learn from the Lutheran Confessions, we learn the Small Catechism by heart, we sing hymns with rather rigorous doctrinal content (and eschew the pithy and superficial), we have high expectations of young confirmands (and adult confirmands, too), and we confess that we will all be catechumens of the Word of God our whole lives long for one simple reason: so we can have rock-solid confidence in our salvation.

The goal of doctrine is not to be right for the sake of being right. The goal of doctrine is to give you full confidence in Jesus as your Savior. The beauty of Lutheran doctrine is not that it’s right as much as that it’s comforting. You are a sinner, sinful from birth and having sinned every day since. Your sins are not a small deal. They’re a huge deal. They’re heinously offensive to a holy God. You deserve to die forever because of them. And yet… (How beautiful is that word “yet”!) For the sake of Jesus, you do not get what you deserve. God gave your sin and your punishment to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He died for you. He rose for you. To this point most Christians agree.

But how do the benefits of Jesus death on the cross get delivered to you? In answering this question, Christians do not agree. A Roman Catholic would say that God gives us grace through His Sacraments in order that we might do good and thereby merit God’s mercy at the end of our lives. Most American Evangelicals would say that God completely does the work of salvation except He leaves it up to you to choose salvation (or ask Jesus into your heart, or pray the sinner’s prayer, or make Jesus the Lord of your life, etc.). Genuine Calvinists would say that God completely does the work of salvation, but He does not offer it to all people, only to His elect (that is, He creates some people whom He never intends to save), and you can never know with confidence that you’re among God’s elect until the end.

For both Roman Catholics and most Evangelicals, salvation is based on your works, either the works God enables you to do throughout your lifetime or that one work, that one exercise of your will, to choose Jesus. What if your works aren’t enough? What if you do some back-sliding? For Calvinists, the work of Jesus on the cross is limited only to those God eternally elects to salvation. None of that instills certain confidence in salvation. None of that makes for a good night’s sleep.

We do not believe only Lutherans are Christians. Absolutely not. Since we know and have confidence that we cannot save ourselves by any work, so also we know that a man cannot be saved by the precision of his confession. In the “life of the world to come,” there will be Christians of every stripe and every denomination.

But in nowhere but Confessional Lutheranism (the kind of Lutheranism that still believes in the Word of God and holds the Lutheran Confessions as true) is there this kind of confidence. You are saved solely and exclusively by the Word of God. He works through means (Word & Sacraments) to deliver saving faith to you, to preserve you in saving faith, to do absolutely everything you need for salvation. Nothing is required of you; God does it all. You can be (and should be) absolutely certain of your salvation because Lutheran doctrine calls you to look outside of yourself to God for confidence. Have this confidence. Sleep well.