# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1959_S36
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 DOCTRINAL ESSAY

most holy faith”? (Jude 20). What is the “truth,” a term so often
used by John in his epistles, as when he writes: “I have no greater
joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth”? (3 John 4).
What is that “Word” of which Paul tells Timothy that he should
preach it in season and out of season, and that he should (surely
with that “Word”) reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering
and doctrine? (2 Tim. 4: 2). For it seems obvious that these terms,
“doctrine,” “faith,” “truth,” and even “Word,” are closely related
in meaning and that in the passages referred to they suggest
a specific and well-known content which must be preached, taught,
and guarded against error. Therefore we ask: What, then, is “the
doctrine,” or “the faith,” or “the truth,” or “the Word”? What is
its scope and extent, what is its goal and purpose?

Since “the doctrine” comes from God, it deals with matters
and events which reflect the greatness of God, who makes Himself
known in the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures. It deals with
matters which transcend and even defy human thought and under-
standing. It deals with matters that to the human mind are in-
credible and foolish. Scriptural doctrine reaches back to the time-
less ages of eternity before the foundation of the world, and it
reaches forward to the timeless ages when there will be a new
heaven and a new earth. It tells that the Father loved His Son
“before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). It tells that
the Lamb without blemish and without spot, by whose precious
blood we are redeemed, was foreordained, that is, destined “before
the foundation of the world” to become man’s Savior (1 Peter
1:19, 20). It tells that God “has chosen us in Him [in Christ]
before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and
blameless before Him” (Eph. 1:4). This doctrine tells us that God
created all things in heaven and on earth, all things visible and
invisible, the hugest mountain ranges and the tiniest particle
known to the physicist but not visible through the lens of the most
powerful microscope. It tells also of the existence of invisible
principalities and powers and leaderships and dominions which
surround man, but over which Christ triumphed and which He
will at last consign to eternal darkness. But Scriptural doctrine
tells, in particular, of God’s Son, whom the Father sent into the
world to redeem sinful mankind, and of the manner in which
God reconciled the world unto Himself and how He justifies sin-
ners. Scriptural doctrine, therefore, has as its heart and center
Jesus Christ come into the flesh, and the salvation wrought by
Him for man.

- We can never speak too often and too eloquently about Jesus
Christ. All we have to do when we think that we have exhausted
what might be said about Him is to reread and restudy the great

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