LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 8

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8

OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS

His church. Life in this community is a gift that entails responsibility. We see this in Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians to bear with one
another in love, “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace” (Eph. 4:3), even as he is quick to add that we were called
into the one Body of Christ and faith in a singular Lord. We cannot
create the unity of the Body of Christ; that is given. But we are to be
on guard against teachings and practices that would tempt us away
from the one Lord, the one faith, and the one Baptism that keep us in
union with the one God and Father of us all.
10. Witness, Mercy, Life Together in the apostolic Church.
The apostles testified to Witness (martyria), Mercy (diakonia), Life
Together (koinonia) in the apostolic Church. An example of this can
be found in Gal. 2:7, 9–10. The apostles divided up the task of proclamation (witness) to the circumcised and the uncircumcised. The
apostles remembered the poor (mercy). The apostles extended the
right hand of fellowship (life together).
“Bearing witness,” says Luther, “is nothing but God’s Word spoken by angels or men, and it calls for faith.”7 In Acts 1:8, the risen
Lord says of His apostles that they will be His witnesses in Jerusalem
and in all Judea and Samaria and beyond those borders to the end of
the earth. It is the apostles who with their own eyes have seen the
Lord, touched Him with their own hands, and heard His voice with
their ears (see 1 John 1:1–4) who are designated witnesses. We are
witnesses only in the derived sense that our words echo the reliable
testimony of the apostles. To bear witness is to speak not of ourselves
but of another—Christ Jesus. The apostolic Church is sent to repeat
the witness of the apostles that Jesus Christ, true God and true man,
is the only Lord who saves.
“You notice,” said Luther, “that concern for the poor is the other
work of the apostles.”8 St. Paul exhorts the church to care for the poor.
In the third century, Tertullian wrote how the pagans would say of
the Christians, “See how they love one another.”9 The way that the
Church cares for the needs of those within the Church is a witness to
the world. Yet the mercy of God does not stay within the Church but
goes out from the household of faith into the entire world.
“We preach the Gospel,” said Luther while commenting on Galatians
2:9, “in unanimous consensus with you. There we are companions in
doctrine and have fellowship in it; that is, we have the same doctrine.
For we preach one Gospel, one Baptism, one Christ, and one faith.
Therefore we cannot teach or command anything so far as you are concerned, for we are completely agreed in everything. For we do not teach
anything different from what you teach; nor is it better or sublimer.”10

The life together of the apostles was based upon having the same
foundation in Jesus Christ, that is, holding to the same doctrine. This
life together is not created by us but by the Lord. When the same doctrine is recognized in another Christian or in a church body, we have
a life together.
11. On being Lutheran today for the sake of Witness, Mercy,
Life Together. “The Gospel and Baptism must traverse the world,”11
said Luther. This is what Lutheran missions care about—faithfully
preaching repentance and faith in Jesus’ name, baptizing, and teaching so that those who belong to Christ in every nation are built up
in His Word and fed with His body and blood. Mission is, to use the
words of Wilhelm Löhe, “the one church of God in motion,” calling,
gathering, and enlightening unbelievers through the pure teaching
of the Gospel. This definition lies at the heart of what it means to be
Lutheran in mission. Lutheran mission is defined by an unqualified
(quia) subscription to the Book of Concord as the correct exposition
of the Holy Scriptures. We are in harmony in the one biblical Gospel
and the Sacraments instituted by Christ. Rejecting theological pluralism and its offspring universalism, Lutheran mission is grounded
in the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ, knowing outside of His Word,
which is spirit and life, there is only darkness and death.
2016 Convention Workbook

12. The Church today as a community of Witness, Mercy, Life
Together. When the German mission leader and theologian of the
last generation Friedrich Wilhelm Hopf (1910–82) asserted, “The
Lutheran Church can only do Lutheran missions,” he was observing
that the Lutheran confession is inseparable from mission.12 There
is no Church without mission, and no mission without the Church.
Evangelism becomes the Church’s mission when its goal is gaining
souls for the local community of believers and planting the church
as a witnessing, merciful community of believers. When confession
and mission are pulled apart, both suffer. Mission without confession
is reduced to zealous fanaticism. There can be no confession without
mission, for confession takes place before God and in the presence
of a listening world. The mouth of confession is the voice of mission
always proclaiming that Jesus Christ is the God who justifies the
ungodly, giving life to the dead in the forgiveness of sins. And this
forgiveness of sins is found only in the Christian Church where the
Holy Spirit “daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all
believers,” to use the words of the Small Catechism. That is why, in
the Book of Acts, those who received the preaching of the apostles
were baptized, being added to the Church, says Luke (Acts 2:41). In
the church created by mission, which has at its heart the preaching of
the Gospel, those brought to faith “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers”
(Acts 2:42). Church and mission go together; you do not have the
one without the other.
The claim, no doubt disputed in our day, that Lutheran missions lead to Lutheran churches is far from a parochial appeal to
brand-name loyalty or mere denominationalism. Instead, it is the recognition that the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies
a holy Christian people through the pure preaching of the Gospel and
Sacraments administered according to the divine Word. Lutherans are
glued to the scriptural truth that the Spirit works faith in the hearts
of those who hear the Good News of Jesus crucified and risen when
and where it pleases Him. Faith is not created by human enthusiasm,
crusades for social justice, or strategic planning. Faith comes through
the word of the cross. That’s what Lutheran mission is given to proclaim. It is precisely in this Lutheran understanding of mission that
mercy and life together converge.
Lutheran mission celebrates First Article gifts of language and
culture. Lutheran mission has no interest in changing the culture of
a people as long as those conventions and culture are not sinful. In
fact, Lutheran mission, as found in the Reformation, seeks to bring the
Gospel to people in their native language. Lutheran mission teaches
that Christian churches are to be subject to the governing authorities and do not engage in revolution. Lutheran mission seeks to build
capacity in the newly planted churches so that, in the unity of faith
and confession, these younger churches may mature and live as true
partners together with us in Witness, Mercy, Life Together.
13. Word of God. The triune God is a speaking God. By His spoken Word, the Father brought creation into existence (Gen. 1:1–2; Ps.
33:6; John 1:1–3). Christ who is the eternal Logos speaks His words,
which are “spirit and life” (John 6:63). The Word of Christ’s death
and resurrection—the message of God’s reconciliation of sinners to
Himself—is preached. It is this preaching that creates faith since
“faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ”
(Rom. 10:17). The Holy Spirit breathed out by Jesus to His apostles
on Easter evening (see John 20:22) inspired them to put His Word into
writing “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).
It is through the prophetic and apostolic witness to Christ delivered
to us in the Holy Scriptures—the Spirit-inspired and inerrant Word
of God—that we have access to Jesus and life with Him (see 2 Tim.
3:15 and 2 Pet. 1:16–21). The Holy Scriptures are to be interpreted in