# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_2023_S98
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Shame is a relational issue, and the solution must be
relational. The king liberated the servant from the place of
disgrace and exclusion and granted him a new identity by
taking the form of a servant. The king exchanged his
righteousness and goodness with the servant’s shame. By such
a joyful exchange the servant received honor and acceptance
from the king and went back as a full citizen of the royal
kingdom.
In his letters to the Corinthians and Romans, Paul explains that
if we are members of Christ, we are implicated in what
happened to Him; that means we, who are alive in Christ, are
also dead with Him. “Do you not know that all of us who have
been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”
(Rom. 6:3). “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have
concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died”
(2 Cor. 5: 14). Robert Kolb summarizes Martin Luther thus:
No one has seen God, but Jesus of Nazareth, God in the
flesh, has made Him known: a God with holes in his
hands, feet, and side; the God who has come near to
humankind, into the midst of its twisted and ruined
existence. … [This] God on the cross reveals the fullness
of God’s love as well as the inadequacy of all human
efforts to patch up life to please [God]. 5
The message of the cross speaks about a new identity and
reconciliation. This is also connected to the term justification.
To be justified means to be made right with God. Some other
interpretations explain it as brought into a right covenantal
standing. In this perspective, to be justified is to be placed in a
proper relationship with God and to be a full participant in the
community of God’s people. To be justified does not simply
mean to be declared innocent, but also to belong within God’s
community.

by Luther in simple terms: We need to learn how to receive faith and
how to give love.
The love of God encourages believers to live out the moral
implication of God as a self-emptying God, who loves us and
gave Himself for our salvation. Jesus calls us to imitate His own
submission, and participate with Him, by taking up the cross
daily.
That is what the servant did in the parable. The writer of the
disguised king presents a changed servant who, after his
liberation, walks around, wearing the chains and the filthy
clothes that his righteous king put on in order to save him,
proclaiming to everyone the favor and goodness of his master
toward him.
The suffering king transformed the servant’s life from selfish
behavior to a new person who walks around carrying the filthy
clothes and the chains as a proclamation of his freedom. That is
what the text of the convention theme invites us to do:
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. … 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. (1 Cor. 1:18, 23–25)
The bearing of the cross means faithful witness to people
despite rejection. The message of the cross inspires believers to
respond to critics with patience and love. Paul calls Christians
to crucify their selfish and sinful nature (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 5:24)
because God has crucified the world to us (Gal. 6:14). The cross
is not only part of the Bible story and the Gospel story; it must
be also part of our story. We must deal with our sins and expose
them. We must follow the obedience and meekness of Christ.
We must show in our lives that God who is involved in human
affairs, who does not overlook sins, who accepts the effect of sin
but does it with forgiveness, who is not ashamed to be
associated with sinful people, and who triumphs through
death.

The closest Bible story to what we have been discussing is the
Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32). 6 The central figure
in the parable is the father who reaches in love to both sons: the
one lost in a foreign land, and the other lost at home. By inviting
his sons to come together and eat at one table again as a family,
the father pursues restoration and harmony. The father willingly
suffered shame to communicate love and forgiveness in order to
restore relationships with each son personally and together with Let us then “lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim, Till
the family.
all the world adore His sacred name” (Lutheran Service Book
837).
The Task of the Baptized Believers
The Christian perspective of the cross is an invitation of a
relational model for Christians. This relational model is explained

Robert Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological
Method: From Martin Luther to the Formula of Concord (Lutheran
Quarterly / Fortress, 2017), 36.
6
Jayson Georges and Mark D. Baker retell an expanded version of
the parable from the perspective of honor and shame culture.
5

98 | PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2023 (68TH) LCMS CONVENTION

Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures: Biblical Foundations and Practical
Essentials (IVP Academic, 2016), 102–5.

Convention Essays