# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S556
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

556 INTERSYNODICAL AND DOCTRINAL MATTERS

3. Order of Redemption is employed to denote the relationship
of man to God in the new life established by God the Redeemer
and Sanctifier.

4. The believing Christian, in his horizontal, earthly relations,
must gladly take his place in the order established by the Creator,
while at the same time he exults in his exalted position as a
redeemed child of God through Jesus Christ. The affirmation of
both the Order of Creation and the Order of Redemption is a con-
fession to the Triune God, who is at one and the same time Creator,
Redeemer, and Sanctifier. The God of the Second and the Third
Article is also the God of the First Article of the Apostles’ Creed.
(Compare Zerbst, pp. 109—114.)

B. Galatians 3:26-29: “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God,
through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ
have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is
neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you
are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are
Abrahams’ offspring, heirs according to promise.” (RSV.)

1. This grand text on the Order of Redemption is frequently
absolutized by writers on the subject of woman in the church,
as if this were the only passage in the New Testament dealing with
the subject. It, indeed, stresses a very important aspect of the
question (cf. also the similar statements in 1 Cor. 12:13 and
Col. 3:11).

2. As Christians contemplate this passage, they catch the
vision of that one body into which they have been incorporated
as living members together with all baptized believers, that body
of Christ, in which He is the Head and where racial and social
and sexual distinctions have no validity: men and women of every
race and rank and age, all equally share in all the spiritual bless-
ings of Christ’s redemption, all alike are “Abraham’s offspring,
heirs according to promise”; all are one in Christ now and for-
ever, “one heart beating in all; one mind guiding all; one life lived
by all.” (The whole chapter must be kept in mind to understand
this seetion properly.)

3. We must note, however, that only in Christ have the dis-
tinctions of race, rank, and sex—at least for the present age —
been bridged over and welded into the new unity of God’s family,
the body of Christ. This does not imply that individual characteris-
tics of believers have been obliterated by the Order of Redemption:
each member of Christ’s body, like a facet of a diamond, in his
own way reflects the beauty of life in Christ. Even so the Gospel
of Redemption does not cancel, however, much it may modify, as it