LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 142

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142 RESOLUTIONS

13 to 9-18, Committee 9 asks the Synod to approve the
following statement of principle.

When the church becomes involved in social ministry
and action, it needs to understand not only the principle
of love but also “the distinction between Christ’s king-
dom and a political kingdom” as defined in the Lutheran
Confessions, especially AC XVI, Apol. XVI, XV 43,
LC I 274-275, FC XII 17-22. For example, Apol. XVI
2-3 states:

The writings of our theologians have profitably illumined
this whole question of the distinction between Christ’s
kingdom and a political kingdom. Christ’s kingdom is
spiritual; it is the knowledge of God in the heart, the fear
of God and faith, the beginning of eternal righteousness
and eternal life. At the same time it lets us make outward
use of the legitimate political ordinances of the nation in
which we live, just as it lets us make use of medicine or
architecture, food or drink or air. The Gospel does not
introduce any new laws about the civil estate, but com-
mands us to obey the existing laws, whether they were
formulated by heathen or by others, and in this obedience
to practice love.

This distinction affirms everything the Confessions
say about Christ and faith, namely that God in the
Gospel has declared us sinners to be His sons and heirs
and that we are justified by nothing more than the
faith that clings to this Word of promise. We believe
in Jesus Christ our Lord and come to Him, not by our
own reason or strength but by the Gospel in which the
Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps us
in the one faith as one church. In this kingdom we
possess the freedom that comes by knowing the truth,
the peace which the world cannot give, and the hope
and life which overcomes even death. Because God our
Father has not only created and redeemed us but also
sustains, protects, and directs us until the day He com-
pletes our life in glory, we are free to trust and obey
Him and thus to extend His love to every neighbor with-
out fear of loss or desire for profit. The mark of this
kingdom is the Word of God, the bread of life on which
Christians feed in worship and sacrament. The church
must never be ashamed of that Gospel or permit the
scorn of the world to rob it of its luster. For it 1s our
life and the ground of our true and eternal dignity,
worth, and power. Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but that Word and that Kingdom shall not pass away.

When the Confessions now speak of the political
(secular) kingdom, they affirm that even the world of
fallen humanity is God’s. God does not wish to destroy
that world, even though its ultimate destiny is wrath.
On the contrary, God manifests to that world, even in
its enmity against Him, a remarkable mercy, for He
“makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good and
sends rain on the just and the unjust.” It is His king-
dom. The power of God is manifest in every force that
works in this world, including not only forces of nature
but also government and social pressures which serve to
restrain the lusts of men and thus make peace and civ-
ilization possible. In the secular kingdom God makes
men serve His purposes even though they do not know
Him. The very wisdom by which men pursue their de-
sires and avoid what they fear becomes a God-ordained
force to curb anarchy, to enforce a degree of justice,

and sometimes even to inflict God’s judgments. Yet the
ultinnate hope of man does not lie in this kingdom. For
in their common desire to achieve what they judge to
be good for them and to avoid whatever seems evil,
men violate one another. God decrees in wrath that
the good they pursue shall leave them hungry even
wher: they attain it, and that the evil they flee shall
finally catch up with them. He exposes the futility of
the fallen world and signals its final destruction when-
ever men find themselves enmeshed in conflict, crime,
frustration, injustice, guilt, famine, disaster, war, and

death.

According to his sinful nature the Christian knows
only the earthly kingdom, is fully sympathetic to it, and
sets all his hopes upon it. As a saint, however, he is
both delivered from that kingdom and yet called right
back into it. He is not to seek a higher form of holiness
by withdrawing from it. It is the arena in which he
is to love and serve his neighbor, even his enemy. In
it he is to proclaim God’s judgment against every ar-
rogance and independence of man and to offer the world
a new dignity, life, hope, and community in Christ. But
he is also to participate in its government and economics
and in every aspect of secular society, employing all the
resources of judgment and common sense, in order that
even this fallen world may experience, as a gift of divine
mercy, the greatest possible measure of secular freedom,
dignity, justice, peace, and joy.

When the Synod concerns itself with the Word of
God and the call to proclaim it, it is dealing with what
the Confessions call “the kingdom of Christ.” When the
Synod directs its attention to questions of social min-
istry and social action, it is responding not only to the
call to love but to the call to Christians to participate
fully in the “secular” or “political kingdom.” These two
types of response cannot really be separated, for the
Christian remains one person, and his ministry must be
to the whole man and even to the whole society of men,
as the Mission Affirmations state. Nevertheless, if our
Synod is to avoid the tragic confusion into which many
churches have fallen, it must also be aware of and main-
tain a fundamental distinction. Words such as freedom,
peace, joy, dignity, life, justice, hope, and love have ap-
plicability and meaning in both kingdoms and are in-
deed gifts of God in both. But the meanings are never
equivalent. The history of Jesus Christ crucified drama-
tizes the difference. For when Jesus died, everything
this world treasures as freedom, peace, joy, dignity, life,
justice, hope, and love was taken away from Him. And
yet as the Son of His heavenly Father, trusting and
obeying even to the death, all of these were His, and all
the forces of devils, death, and hell could not take them
from Him. His resurrection reveals which kingdom is
eternally true and triumphant.

B. The Resolution

Wuereas, The overtures here listed raise the ques-
tion as to whether it is proper for the Synod in conven-
tion to adopt resolutions which imply taking a corpor-