LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 92

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working of God, who raised Him from the dead” (Col.
2:12). Is there any better comfort for dying sinners? In a
soaring sermon on Baptism, C.F.W. Walther preaches:
Should the Christian stand all day long at the grave
of all the joys which he enjoyed in past years, through
Holy Baptism a great stream of joy [Freudenstrom]
has been conducted in his heart, which does not drain
away, but streams forward with his life until its waves
carry him into the sea of a blessed eternity. 4
Even if everything else seems uncertain, your Baptism
remains. It happened, and God does not go back on His
Word. 5 This is why we bring even infants for Baptism.
We want them to have the same promise of God.
The Bible is utterly clear about original sin. We sin
because we are sinners through and through, and that
sin leads to death. “Behold, I was brought forth in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me,” said
David. 6 Thus “The imagination of man’s heart is evil
from his youth,” says God through Moses. 7 So Jesus
taught, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts,
murders, adulteries” (Mark 7:21). Paul writes by the
Spirit, “No one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:12). In
other words, the Bible teaches that sin is not simply a
minor blemish on the human character. Nor is sin
something we can overcome if we just try harder, with
better education. No, “the wages of sin is death,” says
the Scripture. 8 If sin is only a small problem, maybe all
we need is a coach to give us a few helpful tips to
overcome it. But I hate to tell you, none of you — not
one — can wake up one morning and ultimately decide
you are never going to die. We don’t need a few tips. We
need a Savior. If our sin problem is small, we only need
a small Savior. But in Christ for you, we have a great
Savior. We have the very Savior we need, the One who
has taken all our sin into Himself, who paid for every
last one, who absorbed the wrath of God we deserved,
who died our death, and has risen from the dead to
justify us forever.
Christ for you means simply Christ for all sinners — real
comfort for hurting and broken people.
CHRIST FOR SINNERS BRINGS JOY IN
FORGIVENESS
All of this hangs on the fact that Jesus Christ is both
fully God and fully human, God become one of us.
There is a shuttle driver at the St. Louis Airport Hilton
where I often park my car when flying. He sees me
coming and right away wants to question me about the
doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Christ. This man
is a committed Jehovah’s Witness, basically a full-on
Arian. That means he sees Jesus as someone special,
92 | PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2019 (67TH) LCMS CONVENTION

divine in some sense, but NOT fully divine, on the same
level as the Father. Jesus to him is a created being, NOT
“of one substance with the Father, not God of God.” 9 as
we confess in the Nicene Creed. I come back with clear
Scriptures such as: In Christ “dwells the whole fulness
of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). Why is this so
important? As a man Jesus knows our weakness and
like us lived under God’s Law. Human through and
through, Jesus suffers under the wrath of God for our
sin and dies our death. Yet the Scriptures are
abundantly clear: Jesus is at the same time the eternal
Son of God, fully divine, living without sin, keeping the
Law perfectly in our place. His shed blood stills the
wrath of God we deserved. As God in our flesh, Jesus
overcomes death and the devil and extends the fruit of
His sacrifice for all. If Jesus died a mere man, there is no
benefit for us. He is just another one of thousands
crucified by the Romans. But because Jesus is
completely human and at the same time “God of God,
Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not
made, being of one substance with the Father,” 10 not
only does He know what we suffer, sin could never find
a foothold in Jesus, not the devil, not even death itself
could ever hold onto Him. 11 He is risen from the dead,
alive forevermore. Now baptized into His name and
trusting Jesus, the God-Man, now seated at the right
hand of the Father, brings us eternal comfort, as the
Bible explains:
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood,
He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that
through death He might destroy the one who has the
power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those
who through fear of death were subject to lifelong
slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he
helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to
be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he
might become a merciful and faithful high priest in
the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of
the people (Heb. 2:14–17).
Our God intimately knows our condition and has done
everything to make us His own forever. Christ for us is
pure JOY! In Him we find the help we need. He is God
Himself in our flesh. God Himself come to pay the
ransom price. So being wheeled down the hallway
toward surgery, only one thing would come to my
mind: the catechism I learned as a child (say it with me):
I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the
Father from all eternity, and also true man, born of
the virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a
lost and condemned person, purchased and won me
from all sin, from death and from the power of the
Convention Essays