LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1965, Page 48

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48 DOCTRINAL-DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS

The benedictions we enjoy in our victorious living
are not the result of an aggressive leadership in Synod.
Our benedictions are not the result of the depth of the
scholarship of our schoolmen. Our benedictions are not
the result of the work of a laity with backbone. The
benedictions we enjoy in our victorious living have
come from above. These benedictions have come to us
solely and alone by the grace of God, unmerited by any
of us. God alone could thus have blessed us. Let us
look at the various elements in our victorious living.

Victory over Unbelief

I would point out first of all that the victorious Lord
who determines the destiny of the church has granted
us the victory over unbelief. Notice the text and the
context. It was a cold day in winter. The Lord Jesus
was in Jerusalem. He went to the temple and was walk-
ing about the corridors of Solomon’s porch. The Jews
had been watching Him. As they spy Him in one of
the corridors, they rush in on Him and say, “Jesus,
give! Why do you make us wait so long for an answer
to our question? Are you the Messiah? Tell us plainly.
What do you say about yourself?” The Lord answers:
“T told you. And you wouldn’t believe Me, because
you are not My sheep.”

Did you hear that? “Not My sheep!” Oh, the trag-
edy of their unbelief! He loved them, He invited them
to come to Him, but they would not. Therefore He tells
them that they are not His. There are no two ways
into the glorious eternity of heaven, one way for Jew
and another way for Gentile. It is obviously not true
that the Lord has chosen one pathway for the descend-
ants of Abraham and another pathway for the descend-
ants of the non-Abrahamitic tribes of the world. To
His own fellow countrymen the Lord would say: “There
is only one way for you to reach heaven. I am the Way.
I told you that I am the Messiah, and you refused to
believe Me. Therefore because of your unbelief you
are not My sheep. You shall not share in My victory.”

How come that you and I became His sheep? By
nature you and I, too, were unbelievers. That victory
over unbelief did not come through you or me. My faith
in Jesus Christ as the Redeemer is not the result of my
research work. It is only the gracious operation of the
Holy Spirit upon my dead and foolish and corrupted
heart that reshaped it by the Sacrament of Holy Bap-
tism. By Baptism I have “put on Christ,” I have be-
come His own. My heart, like a sponge, has absorbed
Jesus Christ as my Redeemer. This faith is the victory
over unbelief.

How come that you and I after many years since
our Baptism are still His sheep? “My sheep hear My
voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” It was
the voice of Jesus we heard during the many years in
which we were being instructed in the Word. This voice
alone kept us faithful, for by it God’s Spirit continued
to strengthen us. If we have been victorious and have
been able to sail our ship of faith over the waves of
unbelief of our age, it is not because we had strong

arms to hold rubber and oars. Our Savior by His voice
in the Word was our Helmsman. He directed our ship.
And if we land safely in the haven of eternity in our
victory over unbelief, it is not because of us but only
because of the grace of God. “Not unto us, but unto
Thy name be glory, O Lord!”

Victory over Falsehood and Error

Furthermore, if our victorious living is a reality,
then it is a victory over falsehood and error. In verse
eight of this chapter the Lord speaks about the thieves
and robbers who had entered the corral of the sheep.
He calls them “hirelings.” They were the false teach-
ers, the false prophets, the errorists of His day. But
note what He says in connection with these interlopers.
“My sheep did not hear them.” His sheep were faith-
ful. They refused to follow others into the fields of
falsehood. By the voice of the Good Shepherd the sheep
were protected against all the insinuations of the false
teachers that only they had the truth. “The voice of
the thieves and robbers who violated God’s Word has
no effect on My sheep,” says Jesus. “My sheep did not
hear them.”

That’s victorious living, to live so, with the help of
God, that all error and falsehood of our age makes no
inroads into our thinking. It is only by His grace that
we retain an unchanged and unchanging faith in His
redeeming love. The history of the church is replete
with the evidences of such victorious living.

The Apostles’ Creed

Take for example the Apostles’ Creed, found on
page 12 in your hymnbook. Isn’t it strange that in an-
cient times there were dozens of versions of that creed?
Some people seem to think that this creed came down
to us in toto from heaven. It didn’t. Corinth may have
had one version, Ephesus another, Derbe another, Lys-
tra another. But nobody pointed the finger of suspicion
at another because he had an altogether different ver-
sion of the Apostles’ Creed. Tertullian, who lived early
in the history of the Christian church (died about 240),
says that in this creed we have “one, immovable, and
irreformable rule of faith.” “Rule of faith,” he calls it.
Tertullian said this in spite of the fact that he knew
that there was no common way of saying the Apostles’
Creed. “The wording of it was not absolutely identical
in all Christian congregations,” says the Triglot. Each
church sought to gain the victory over falsehood by
condensing the Gospel into a short form that could
easily be remembered by the faithful. The creed united
the church under one banner, though the words of the
creed were different in different localities.

If we followed suit, Detroit could accept one version
of the Apostles’ Creed, St. Louis another, Cleveland an-
other, and we would still look at each other and say,
“You are my brother in the faith.” Let us make sure
we understand the history of our creeds. They are the
evidences of the battles with and the victory over false-
hood. :