LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1986, Sheet 86

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84 BIBLE STUDY AND DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS

words as for the words of Moses when he told the Jews,
“If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote
of Me.”

The point is that while we affirm the authority of the
Scriptures as the inspired word that proceeds from the
mouth of God, it is the Christ, the living Word, who is the
life, the meaning, and the power of the Scriptures. Without
their fulfillment and meaning in Christ Jesus, the Scrip-
tures would be empty, meaningless, even dead words. For
that’s what the Scriptures claim for themselves—they are
alive and living only in the Christ of whom they testify.
The Word is God communicating with people. In former
times, the writer to the Hebrews declares, He communi-
cated through the prophets. In these latter times He has
communicated through His Son. And the message through
His Son is one of sin forgiven, of life created, of grace be-
stowed, of hope restored and of new lives empowered.

The opening words of John’s gospel are dear to our
hearts, and they are so clear. “In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. ... In Him was life,
and the life was the light of men. . - - And the Word became
flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory
as of the only Begotten from the Father, full of grace and
truth.”

And yet Jesus, who was Himself the living, the final,
the complete Word of God, never claimed to supercede or
replace the written Word. He came to fulfill it, to verify it,
to give it proof and eternal meaning. Indeed, the living
Word and the written Word can never be separated. To
claim belief in the written Word without faith in Christ is
to miss the whole point of what God is doing for us men
and for our salvation, and is indeed a lie which despises
the Word of God. On the other hand, to claim faith in Jesus
Christ apart from the revelation and the power of the writ-
ten Word would be impossible, for the whole purpose of
the Scripture is to reveal Christ as Lord and Savior. Peter
confessed that in his second epistle. Even though he had
been an eyewitness on the Mount of Transfiguration, he
did not hold that experience out as necessary to know the
truth of Jesus. The point he made was that in Christ they
had the word of the prophets made more sure. Jesus af-
firmed this, for example, when He joined those two disci-
ples on the road to Emmaus on Easter afternoon, as
recorded in Luke 24. Rather than dispelling their fear and
doubt and depression with a “Ta-da, here I am !”, St. Luke
reports that beginning with Moses and through all the
prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the
things concerning Himself. And even after their eyes were
opened and they knew Him, they said to one another, “Did
not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the
road, while He opened to us the Scriptures?”

Incidentally, one of the first things I hope to do when I
get to heaven is ask to see the video tape of that incident.
Imagine! What a Bible class that must have been. Begin-
ning with Moses—and all the prophets—all the things in
all the Scriptures concerning Himself. And all in the few
hours it took to stroll from Jerusalem to Emmaus. But the
point is: Only through the Scriptures can we see Christ,
and only if we see Christ can we understand the Scriptures.

Il. The Word of God is Alive in Christ. And the power

and purpose of the Word is to make sinful people Alive in
Christ as well. One of the time-honored phrases we use,
and one of the first things we teach about the Word in our
catechism classes is that the Word—together with the sac-
raments—is “the means of grace”. That’s the power of the
Word, and what a power it is. The greatest miracle in the
world is that which happens when the Holy Spirit creates
new life out of dead corpses, when He makes living stones
out of dead wood. That’s something that only God Himself
can do. And it’s a radical act. To become a child of God, a
Christian, is not simply to turn over a new leaf, to develop
some more pious emotions, or to correct some flaw in a
tarnished life. It means being newly created, born again,
without our worthiness and even without our cooperation.
It’s totally an act of God. And it’s an act which God does
through His means of grace. A person does not become a
Christian by being zapped out of the blue. Look at 2 Tim-
othy 3 again. “The Gospel is able to make you wise unto
salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” The
Gospel is the power of God unto salvation.It is by water
and the Spirit that one is born again, says Jesus in John
3. Or look at that beautiful passage in 1 Peter 1:22-23
“Love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been
born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,
through the Word of God which lives and abides forever.”

That’s why we call the Gospel a means of grace. It is
not simply the instrument which informs us of God’s grace,
or which describes it or explains it. But it is the very means
or method or vehicle by which the grace of God—His un-
deserved mercy and acceptance—comes to us and becomes
our personal blessing. It’s the very power by which we
become and remain the “graced” people of God, Alive in
Christ. “The words that I speak unto you” Jesus says, “they
are spirit and they are life.” And so we go back to our key
passage once more—2 Timothy 3:15-17. “All Scripture is
given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for
every good work.” There is a divine purpose, finally that
we might have eternal life as a free gift of God. And as
people waiting for the final fulfillment, we also must heed
God’s purpose for His Word in our “here and now” lives. i
cannot say it nearly as well as the sainted Dr. Martin
Franzmann said it in the Concordia Self-Study Commen-
tary. So let me read his brief comment on this passage. He
writes:

3-15-17. There is hardly another passage which sums up
so succinctly and powerfully the convictions of our Lord and
His apostles concerning the OT. These are: (1) The OT achieves
its true utterance (says what it means) only in living connec-
tion with the NT Gospel, as witness to the righteousness of
God manifested in Christ Jesus (Ro 3:21). Only the ear of faith
(faith in Christ Jesus) hears its true utterance, only the be-
liever in Christ Jesus experiences its power to effect God’s
radical deliverance of man from his desperate situation sal-
vation. (2) The Scriptures have this power because they are
the product and the instrument of the Spirit of God (inspired
by God; cf. 2 Peter 1:19-21). (3) As such they are profitable,
useful, performing a function. Being the work of the Spirit,
whose creative possibilities begin where man’s possibilities
end, they can give man what man cannot give himself: teach-
ing, knowledge of the will and ways of the God of illimitable
power, wisdom, and goodness: reproof, the exposure and con-
viction of sin which make a man cry out, “Woe is me! For I
am lost,” in the presence of his holy God (Is 6:5); correction,

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