LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 63

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

THE DOCTRINAL ESSAY 63

is the Head of the body, the church; He is the Beginning,
the Firstborn from the dead, that in everything He
might be preeminent. For in Him all the fullness of
God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile
to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of His cross” (Col. 1:18-20).
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of
grace and truth; we have beheld His glory, glory as of
the only Son from the Father.” (John 1:14)

Our day is much impressed with the first of these
actions. The world of nature is giving up its secrets to
man more rapidly than in any other period of history,
and that is good. What is not so good is that the world
can’t see that all of this is under the control and for the
purposes of God through Christ. Therefore Christ, the
saving Word, has to come to men just as much as Christ
the creating or procreating or enlightening Word.

The apostle John said that even though all things
had been made by Jesus, it was still important for Him
to come into the world so that people might have light
and see the purposes of God in their lives. (John 1:9-13)

Church people become impatient at times with their
work in a day of big business, big government, big
science. Our talk about God seems to involve so much
that can’t be seen and makes little sense to people out-
side of the church and sometimes not enough to our-
selves.

But don’t be fooled. We are one of the very few
institutions on earth that deals with the earth’s most
precious .commodity: people. The business of the
church is always the business by and for the people of
God and the people of the world. As we spend our
time here in business and sociability and parliamentary
procedures, let’s not get our mind off the main track:
As members of the church of God we are in the business
of sustaining our fellow Christians in their life with
God and from God, for God, through the edifying Word.

Church people reproach themselves because in their
concern for people they sometimes talk more about the
heaven that is to come than face up to needs that people
have right now. Our Synod has sometimes been labeled
a middle-class church, bent inward upon itself away
from the people of wealth and influence at one end of the
spectrum of life and from the working classes and the
poor at the other end.

This is biting criticism indeed. But we don’t solve
our problem by going out of business. If we are to be
people to whom the Word and through whom the Word
of Christ comes, we have to be at work sounding it to
one another, never as the end of the job but always as
the beginning of it. The Word has to send us marching
one with another out into the responsibilities and the
perils of life. Our Lord prayed to the Father before
His death not to remove us from the trials of life but to
keep us mindful of the cheer that comes in knowing
that He overcame the world. The way that He Himself
designed for keeping that supply of cheer going is you
and I, members of the church and body of Christ, so
closely attached to each other that we can provide and
pass on the great good Word of power that Jesus Christ

Himself is and has for us as members of His body.
(John 16:33)

Our time tends to sneer at the old words which the
church uses. It isn’t only youth which gets impatient
with the old words and the old ways. Sophisticated
churchmen shake their heads over the impotence and
weakness of the old words of worship, the old Gospel of
God, the old words of the Bible.

Don’t let it worry you. For Christ the Word is al-
ways more than the words through which we bring
Him to one another. This doesn’t mean that we give up
using the words. The words of the Bible, and all the
ways in speech and acts by which we translate their
language into our own, are precious. But they are that
because they are the way by which Jesus Christ Him-
self stands up before the mind’s eye as Lord and
Savior, one who died on the cross for our sins and rose
again so that we might have strength, courage, per-
sistence in faith right out until death.

That means that the words that we use toward one
another as we try to buoy up each other’s spirits or give
each other counsel have to be more than words of good
cheer in general or good advice. But they have to be
words that make us think of Jesus Christ as God’s gift
to us, the gift by which our sins are forgiven and the
Holy Spirit can put us on the track again of doing what
God places us in the world to do. They are the same
words which did the job in us first (Col. 3:12-17). This
is what the Holy Spirit does, Jesus says, that He helps us
to remember everything that Jesus said and did. (John
14: 26; 15:26; 16:14)

What are the thoughts that brace you up in a moment
of worry or anxiety or grief? What are the thoughts
that you found so rich with meaning as you worshiped
with fellow Christians in your church or home? Per-
haps you say that there haven’t been very many of
them? Well, keep on thinking; when did the light shine
in your mind through the darkness, when did you re-
alize that God was talking to you for your courage and
your faith? And when you say, “It was when I remem-
bered that God loves me because of Jesus Christ,” then
you have the words that are going to be what you and
your associates say today in this convention and in the
years to come out in the work of God’s church.

Even as we use the Bible, we are going to have to
follow the same rule, the method which Jesus Himself
advised (John 5:37-39), namely to look for what the
Bible says about Jesus, to view the Bible as powerful
because it makes wise to salvation by faith which is in
Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:14-17). Then we can recommend
the precious words of the Bible to each other because
we ourselves have discovered that they bring Christ to
us. This is what our Lord called proclaiming the Good
News right out of Scripture and His death and resurrec-
tion, not just as repeaters or as sound systems but as
witnesses, as people who ourselves have discovered that
Jesus Christ is God’s Word to us for this world and for
the life to come. (Luke 24: 44-48)

Do you hear those keys jingling? Fifteen hundred
men are pulling them out of their pockets, ready to un-