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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 542

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

542

CHURCH AND CULTURE

bodies that have not remained faithful to the teaching of God’s
Word on matters of gender (male and female), sexuality, marriage,
and family; therefore be it
Resolved, That the 2016 Missouri District Pastors’ Conference
affirm the teaching of the Scriptures that God’s design for marriage
is the union of one man and one woman, affirmed as the position of
the LCMS in 2016 Res. 14-02A; and be it further
Resolved, That this conference encourage all of our pastors and
their congregations to a biblical study of sexuality, marriage, and
family, utilizing the assortment of LCMS-adopted and LCMS
prepared studies and positions; and be it further
Resolved, That this conference petition the 2019 Synod
convention to continue to be bold in its affirmation of the proper
biblical understanding of God’s gifts of gender (male and female),
sexuality, marriage, and family; and be it finally
Resolved, That this conference encourage the Synod, through its
seminaries, communications department, Concordia Publishing
House, KFUO Radio, and the Commission on Theology and Church
Relations to continue to develop timely resources to assist pastors
and congregations as they remain faithful in applying Law and
Gospel in matters related to marriage, irrespective of cultural
influences, exercising church discipline when necessary to call
sinners to repentance and absolving the penitent.
Pastors’ Conference
Missouri District
Ov. 11-08

To Uphold the Integrity
of the Holy Estate of Marriage
Rationale
In the beginning, God in Christ instituted, or mandated, the
marriage estate with these words (Gen. 1:26–28):
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and
over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all
the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he
created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed
them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill
the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the
sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing
that moves on the earth.”
In, Genesis with the creation of Adam and Eve, God instituted and
gave marriage to mankind, “Therefore a man shall leave his father
and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one
flesh” (Gen. 2:24).
In the New Testament, God confirmed the marriage estate as
continuing until the end of the world, Jesus himself quoting and
commending the Scriptural institution of marriage, and also
affirming the blessing of children. In marriage, God Himself joins
the man and woman together, and for that reason forbids man to
sunder marriage, “What God has joined together, let not man
separate” (Matt. 19:6b); divorce is thereby forbidden for Christians,
except in cases of adultery or desertion (Matt. 19:9; 1 Cor. 7:15).
By His word and mandate in these Creation Scriptures, God
established marriage as the fountainhead and source of the entire
marriage estate, which entails the following:
2019 Convention Workbook

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marriage itself, the union of one man and one woman until
death parts them (permanent, exclusive, and monogamous;
Matt. 19:3–9; Apology of the Augsburg Confession [Ap]
XXIII 7–13; Large Catechism [LC] I 199–221);
• the Word and blessing of children as the fruit of the marriage
union (Gen. 1:28; Psalm 127; 128; LC I 207);
• family (or household) as the expanded expression of the
marriage estate (e.g., Col. 3:18–24; Augsburg Confession
[AC] XVI);
• the economic concerns of the family, including work and
home (Eph. 6:5–9; LC I 141–149);
• the education of sons and daughters, especially that they be
brought up “in the education (paideia) and instruction of the
Lord” (Deut. 6:1–9; Eph. 6:1–4; LC I 208);
• marriage as the image and likeness of the union of Christ and
the Church, including the incarnation of God the Son, His
life of love, His atoning death on the cross, and the giving of
the divine Ministry of Word and Sacraments in His
resurrection and ascension (e.g. Matt. 22:1–10; 25:1–13;
John 3:28–30; Hos. 1–3; Psalm 45; Eph. 5:22–33; Rev.
19:6–9; 21:2, 9; 22:17; Ap VII/VIII 7–8; LC II 42; Solid
Declaration [SD] VIII 78, 87; SD XI 27, 41; see also the LC
Marriage Booklet, 16 [Kolb/Wengert, eds., The Book of
Concord (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 371]).
In the midst of a Pauline “table of duties” for the marriage estate,
Paul presents a concise exposition of marriage as the image and
likeness of Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:21–6:9), as it is written
prophetically and in fulfillment from Genesis to Revelation. In this
passage the Holy Spirit teaches the Church that the Gospel itself is
at stake in the Church’s treatment of marriage and indicates that the
failure of marriage among Christians portrays the failure of the
Church to submit to Christ and His Word.
We confess these truths in the Symbols of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church (Small Catechism [SC], Sixth Commandment; LC I Fourth,
Sixth, and Tenth Commandments; AC and Ap XVI, XVIII, XX and
XXIII; Smalcald Articles [SA] III 11). The Augsburg Confession
sets the marriage estate, or the household (oeconomia), next to the
civil estate (politia) as institutions of God (AC XVI). In AC XXIII,
Ap XXIII, and SA III 11, which address the papal church’s laws
against the marriage of pastors, we confess that the created
distinction of male and female is according to both natural and
divine law and that they are made for one another within marriage.
In our confession, we praise the exclusive, permanent, and
monogamous conjugal union of marriage, and thereby reject all
violations of the marriage estate. We confess explicitly in the Large
Catechism’s explanation of the Tenth Commandment, “[For] in the
New Testament those who are married are forbidden to get
divorced” (LC I 306).
Divorce is a violation of the integrity of marriage. The destruction
of the integrity of marriage is an attack upon the entire marriage
estate. Already during the French Revolution (1792), marriage was
legislated to be a civil contract, and divorce to be the termination of
that civil contract, in order to remake society according to the ideals
of the Revolution. The past 100 years have especially seen a
progressive and rapidly accelerating destruction of the marriage
estate from within the civil estate. In Russia in 1918 the Bolshevik
Decree on Divorce inaugurated state-sponsored no-fault divorce for
the purpose of revolutionizing society at every level. In the United
States, in 1969 feminism and the sexual revolution began to achieve