LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1983, Page 99

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100 DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS

I

God’s Word is a creative and life-giving Word. Ten
times in Genesis 1 our Creator God speaks—“God said,”
we are told—and what He says comes true, all things
come into being, everything into place, everything. In
six days He finished that creation out of nothing. But
God still creates and sustains all things and gives life
through His Word.

Jesus, the Son of God, shows us this. To the centurion
who believed in His Word Jesus spoke the Word, “As
thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee” (Matt. 8:13).
And his servant for whom the centurion prayed was
healed in that selfsame hour. Jairus comes to Jesus and
prays that He will come and save his dying 12-year-old
daughter. Butit is too late. Jesus is delayed in coming to
the child, and she dies. “Thy daughter is dead,” Jairus’
servants report to him, “trouble not the Master” (Luke
8:49). And she was dead, alright. The friends and
mourners had come. They saw her pass away. They felt
her pulse. She was dead! But Jesus speaks the Word,
“Young girl, arise.” And she is alive! To Lazarus, three
days dead in the tomb, Jesus says, “Come forth!” “And
he that was dead came forth,” alive (John 11:43-44).
Jesus stands at the coffin of the only son of the widow of
Nain and speaks the Word, “Young man, I say unto
thee, arise” (Luke 7:14). “And he that was dead sat up,
and began to speak” (Luke 7:15).

Yes, the Word of Jesus, the Son of the living God, isa
life-giving Word. And if He doesn’t raise the dead today
and perform such dramatic miracles through His Word,
He nevertheless works powerfully through it, giving life
and sustaining life and making us new creatures,
creating in us a new spiritual life through His Word. The
evangelist John tells us not only that Christ, whom he
significantly calls “the Word,” created all things, but
that “in Him was life, and the life was the light of men”

(John 1:4). We become a new creation through the Word
of Baptism, and our life in Christ is sustained by the
Word of the Scriptural Gospel. Luther said that when
God works faith in the heart of one lost sinner, He does
something as great as when He created heaven and
earth. We are captives of the Word because it has given
us life.

II

God’s Word has taken us captive because it is a
pardoning Word. Through His Word God reveals every-
thing He wishes us to know about Him. He tells us of His
almighty power and wisdom, of His holiness and hatred
of sin, of His love for our ruined world and His redeem-
ing grace, of His Son and the forgiveness He has
procured for us through His holy life and awful suffer-
ings and death, of His Holy Spirit the Comforter. If God
were notan acting, speaking God, we would never know
any of this.

And, of course, the most important revelation God
makes in His Word is the revelation of His grace and
forgiveness for Christ’s sake. Luther says: “What does it
matter to know that God created heaven and earth, if I
do not know that God is my Savior and forgives me?”

And again Luther says: “The one gift which embraces
and contains all others is God’s gift of the Word which .
proclaims that God is merciful and promises forgive:
ness of sins” (St. Louis Ed. IV, 1806). . .
God’s Word which has taken us captive not only -
reveals that God wishes to forgive us, but it declares -
mightily that God has forgiven us. And God’s declar
tion is according to fact. It is the truth, whether people:
believe it or not and however they might think. Pauli
says in Rom. 3:3-4: “For what if some did not believe?
Shall their unbelief make the faith of God wit
effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man
liar.” We might say, in fact, that God’s Word creat
what it reveals and declares. God declares: that,
daughter of Jairus is only asleep, and lo and behold:
true. She.is not dead but only asleep, all empi
evidenceto the contrary notwithstanding. Christ’s
declares His forgiveness, and we are forgiven, re
and truly! In the Sacrament Jesus says, “This is
body, given for you,” and itis true. We eat His body-a

drink His blood and receive the salvation and forgi'
ness procured by His body and blood. ce
The truthfulness and reality underlying every decla:
ration of God is brought out most clearly in the story 9
the paralytic who was brought by his friends to Jesti
and let down through the roof of the house where Jesu
was preaching. We are told that when Jesus saw
faith He said to the man, “Thy sins are forgiven the
(Luke 5:20). A simple declarative statement! But | i
Pharisees present did not believe it. And so, Je
healed the man with His Word to prove that whate
He says, also to this paralytic about divine forgiveness
is true and according to fact. What a blessing for w
today to know this! What a blessing to know the
Christ’s Word of pardon—which was not only tha
paralytic’s greatest need, but is our greatest nee
today—that Word, in whatever form it may come to

in the promises of Scripture, in Gospel preaching, i
Sacrament of the Altar, or however—that Word declé
not an empty hope or desire or unfulfilled divine plat
but an irrefutable fact: God, the living God, has saved
and forgiven us all our sins for Christ’s sake. Lu’
says: “God’s Word matters more than all the world
Louis Ed. III, 536). And again he says: “Our treas
the Word through which we have come to know God

Q

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