LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1971, Page 186

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186 RESOLUTIONS

by Christ. The Christian leans on this daily, loving
presence of God and the good He brings.

“Let the heathen rage... ” — Jet the troublesome
symptoms of man’s inability to manage his world press
in on every side — let war, hunger, and hatred stalk
the lands — Jet the church struggle with her false sons
and view with concern her tumbling steeples — let it all
happen! We will yet trust in His proven promise, “Lo,
I am with you always... .” The One who moves with
a purpose seeking the lost, reclaiming the kidnapped,
and rescuing His children in bondage is busily doing
His work in and through creation, in and through his-
tory, in and through the church, and in and through
His redeemed. This we believe.

Il. In Christ He offers the only final relief for man’s
sinfulness.

Sin is not a narrow Puritan concept, hung about
man’s neck by neurotic clerics or guilt-ridden laymen.
It is the awesome reality which permeates every nook
and cranny of human exchange. In its crudest form sin
is raw rebellion. This rebellion, understood in the broad
terms of Scripture, includes our refusal to let God reign
in our lives and our yen to replace Him with more
manageable deities of our own making. Sin involves our
open admission that to err is human. Human it is! And
not all the limp explanations that “no one is perfect”
can compensate for the grim consequences of our mul-
titudinous mistakes. Sin includes our constant inability
to do the right and our equally constant problem of
not even knowing by ourselves what is right. In every
expression, sin is an awesome and destroying reality
beyond our power to neutralize, correct, or ignore.

Because there is sin and because man is the carrier
of this disease, there can be no peace nor any sure
prospect of peace, whether between God and man or
between man and man, without divine intervention.
Sin sows seeds of war, hatred, racism, cruelty, insensi-
tivity, selfishness, pride, greed, lust, anger, and deceit.
Sin stifles faith, trust, hope, love, and acceptance of
God. In any direction man turns, in every expression of
man’s relationship to others, even himself, the painful
presence of sin with all its consequences scars our life
and renders us incomplete. It leads to death.

But God does not want it that way! In His wisdom
and by His will, He has offered the antidote to sin’s
universal effects in the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus
Christ. In and through Christ, sin’s daily expressions
are significantly abated and its eternal consequences
potentially neutralized. We are offered in the Savior
One who brings forgiveness and, with forgiveness, those
gifts, of divine origin, needed to accept His offer. In
time, through forgiveness, we are strengthened to live
the life in Christ, with all that this means. In eternity
we will live with Christ, with all that this promises.
This we believe.

HI. Our acceptance of forgiveness leads to recon-
ciliation and the promised changes His presence brings.

A man, in Christ, is new! His thoughts are new.

His hopes are new. His actions are new. His under-~
standing is new. His power to live is new. All that he
is flies under the “newness” banner. The walls between
a man and God and between a man and his fellowmen
begin to crumble and then collapse. Separating dif.
ferences grow dim and fade away. Ancient rivalries
and old struggles for supremacy disappear. A new re-
lationship, based on love shown, begins to grow. Rec-
onciliation flowers into full bloom. With reconciliation,
man changes.

The world calmly assures us that the leopard is
spotted to his dying day and insists on this same change-
lessness for man. In Christ, we cry out our contra-
diction to this frightening and horribly imprisoning
logic. Though in nature leopards do not change their
spots, with man it can be different! The future offers
more than a dominating, monotonous repetition of past
hopelessness. It takes on the promise of the new crea-
tion and the brighter day with our Lord. Death, our
oldest enemy — fathered by sin—is no longer an end
but a transition point as we move from life to life. We
become a people with possibilities, and we proclaim a
message of all the new possibilities Christ has earned
and offers to mankind. Defenseless lambs can safely
bed down with the ravenous lions of life. Every tense
relationship now contains the expectation of positive
resolution. When men are made new by a new birth,
in and through the Spirit, everything about them is
touched with the opportunity of newness. Deaf ears
hear. Blind eyes see. Dull senses brightly respond.
Man learns to live confidently with himself; he also
learns to live constructively with his brother. Most
important, he learns to live joyfully with his God. He is
changed. Through the Spirit he is new. This we believe.

IV. God has changed me and has placed me in this
world, at this time, that I may proclaim His power to
redeem and effect reconciling change.

All that God desires to do for mankind He has done
for and to those who, by faith in Christ, call Him Father.
It certainly begins as a private experience when, through
His means of grace, Baptism and the Word, God makes
the Christian’s heart His home. But this is not intended
to remain an exclusively private relationship, initiated
and then maintained in secrecy. God’s people have
never been able to conceal the enormity of what has
happened to them. We are compelled to tell all, Having
first received the redeeming grace, we proclaim its
power to affect all people.

It is no accident that this year of God’s reign is,
individually, our moment for living the new life. In
His wisdom, we have been chosen for this time and
this place. While there is a place in the Christian life
for private meditation and quiet, inner rejoicing, there
must also be a place for bold, public profession and
positive proclamation so that all who sit in their dark-
ened individuality may know of and be led to accept
the brightness of His coming. As Christians individually
witness to what has happened in their lives because of
Christ, they become the bearers of Good News. This