LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1971, Page 47

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS

It is often said that the more things change the
more they stay the same, and this is certainly true
of the world in which we live. The text which forms
the basis for our convention theme is recorded in
Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 5, but
this text is only a portion of two long letters written
by the apostle in the mid-’50s of the first century A. D.
Yet as one reads these letters and the accompanying
background material recorded in the Book of Acts, he
might very well think that he was looking at the world
of the 1970s and our own Lutheran Church — Missouri
Synod.

The world of Paul in the first century A.D. was
a world in which half of the people lived in slavery.
Today about one third of the population of the world
lives under a totalitarian form of government.

It was a world in which war was a way of life.
We often complain about the fact that our men have
been stationed in Europe ever since the end of World
War II and that we have been mired down in a war
in Vietnam for a decade. There is on record the ac-
count of a Roman legion which was stationed in England
for 440 years. War was incessant. Those captured in
war were not made prisoners of war but were sold as
slaves to finance more wars. As the empire grew, more
soldiers were obtained from the conquered nations to
fight more wars to conquer more nations.

Poverty was also rampant. Half of the people were
slaves, the other half, the so-called free men, were
divided into a small class of very rich and a large class
of very poor. Many people, as in our own day, spent
their entire life on welfare. The great theme, “Bread
and Circuses,” was not a campaign slogan, but rather
a description of the way in which the Roman govern-
ment entertained its unemployed, its displaced farmers,
its military veterans, all crowded into stinking tene-
ments with streets so narrow that the wagons could
roll only at night for fear the pedestrians would be
run down.

It was an age in which women were held in low
esteem. Divorce was even more common than in our
own day. They did not practice abortion but disposed
of their children by leaving them out in forests or
other wild places where they would die of exposure or
be devoured by animals. Homosexuality was public
and unashamed.

We talk of the “new morality,” but the so-called
new morality of licentiousness, free love, and all the
rest was more common in antiquity than in Copenhagen
or San Francisco today. Even religion was debauched
with the practice of temple prostitution and the wor-
ship of that which was corrupt. The drug culture is
nothing new. Drunkenness and the effects of drugs
were worshiped by the ancients as a “spirit” which
had entered into the minds and bodies of those pos-
sessed.

Superstition, astrology, witchcraft, idolatry, and all

47

the other things we think so modern were very much
the order of the day into which the Gospel of Jesus
Christ came.

All these evils flourished in the city of Corinth,
many of them even in the congregation at Corinth.
“To sin like a Corinthian” was a common way of de-
scribing total wickedness. The Corinthian letters are
so relevant for us today because the church at Corinth
was so much like our modern churches. Yet Paul
points out in 1Corinthians1:2 that the church was
made up of “them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus,
called to be saints,” that they were the “temple of
God,” that the “Spirit of God” dwelled in them (3:16),
that they had “received not the spirit of the world but
the Spirit which is of God.” (2:12)

Yet, despite all this, they were also extremely
worldly, ridden by factions, torn by doctrinal disputes,
guilty of gross sins, abusing their Christian liberty,
misusing the spiritual gifts God had given them, show-
ing lovelessness, lacking in good stewardship, carrying
on personal vendettas, enamored of worldly wisdom,
conducting law suits against one another, and indulging
in all kinds of disgraceful practices. The Corinthian
church was certainly human and familiar to modern
eyes.

And yet, how does the apostle approach those Co-
rinthian Christians? True, he admonishes them, but
he does not engage in mercilessly berating them. But
he does not praise them in empty pious phrases either.
He doesn’t spend his time defending himself or lording
it over them. Rather in chapter after chapter, after
discussing a problem, he proposes a glorious and won-
derful solution. He calls on these Corinthians to unite
in Christian love. As an example of the reconciling
power of the Gospel he includes in his greeting a man
named Sosthenes who, according to Acts 18, at the
time of Paul’s first visit to Corinth, had been the man
who had brought Paul into the law court and accused
him of stirring up the people. By the time of the writ-
ing of the First Epistle, he could speak of “Sosthenes
our brother,” a marvelous instance of the unifying and
uniting power of the Gospel. He called attention to
the blessing they had received: “Church of God...
them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be
saints” (1Cor.1:2). He brings to them God’s grace
and peace (1:3). He thanks God for them and for
the grace that is given to them (1:4), that they have
been enriched in all utterance and in all knowledge
(1:5) so that they “come behind in no gift, waiting
for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:7), that
they may be “blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” (1:8)

And on the basis of all this he then says: “Now
I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ that ye all speak the same thing and that
there be no divisions among you, but that ye be per-