LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2023, Page 208

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208

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

2. Righteousness embodied — Christ as the visible Image and Likeness
The depth of human sin and shame is real. The fear of God’s wrath and judgment, so real for our first parents, is warranted. Man and woman ought to fear. God has not abrogated His eternal decree that death follows sin (GEN. 2:17; 3:19;
EZEK. 18:4; ROM. 5:12). The bathroom mirrors that reveal imperfect bodies — bodies aging and sick and dying — are visual
reminders of the mirror of God’s law with its accusation and judgment (LC I 187; FC SD VI 4, 21).
Embodied sinful creatures facing disease, decline and death cannot be helped by anyone less than God or by
anything less than an embodied Savior. So the stunning truth at the center of the Gospel: the Word — who “was with
God” from the beginning, who “was God” from eternity, by whom all things were created, who is source of light and
life (JOHN 1:1–4) — this “Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son
from the Father, full of grace and truth” (JOHN 1:14). This reality of a truth that seems impossible must somehow be
articulated, as Paul does in Philippians 2:6–8. The eternal Son,
who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself
nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he
humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
God assumes our likeness, our form — our body. The invisible begotten God is now visible, the living Icon. The
Creator is “firstborn of creation” (COL. 1:16). He is conceived in and born from a Virgin (MATT. 1:18, 20, 23). God is embodied
for our salvation. He is embodied in, for, and like fallen humanity: subject to our diseases, wounds, sorrows and all
the vicious words and deeds of sinful humanity. He has stopped at nothing in His assumption of flesh and blood. The
Holy One of God (JOHN 6:69), who knows no sin, is made sin for us (2 COR. 5:21). Only a supremely gracious God can or
would do something so impossible.
What God has made in His creation, sin has damaged and defaced. Christ in His incarnation, death, and
resurrection has not only redeemed us from our sins, including sexual sins, but embodied for us the living image
of purity, chastity and decency. We seek to live in our created, fallen, yet redeemed flesh according to the image and
example Christ Himself has set for us. As God’s redeemed people, we simply cannot reject His sovereign, immutable
design for creation. Instead, in light of our faith in Christ and the regeneration we have received through Word
and Sacrament, we view our bodies and sexual activity through the lens of what God has given us in creation and
embodied for us in His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

1 Corinthians 6:17–20

Just as Israel is restored as Yahweh’s holy bride despite her sin (see HOS. 2:2), so also the church is the holy bride
of Christ only because of His redeeming and cleansing work (EPH. 5:25–27). And so we confess a holy church that is
Christ’s bride.
We also confess a catholic church. The Apology clarifies the confession that the holy church is catholic:
Moreover, it says “church catholic” so that we not understand the church to be an external government of certain
nations. It consists rather of people scattered throughout the entire world who agree on the gospel and have
the same Christ, the same Holy Spirit, and the same sacraments, whether or not they have the same human
traditions.70

These assertions about the church reinforce another attribute of the church, her unity. Even in its catholic breadth
scattered among all peoples, the one church has in common one Father, Lord, Holy Spirit, Gospel, and sacraments
(EPH. 4:4–6). It is in light of this unity that the church is characterized with particular individual physical images as
Christ’s bride (EPH. 5) and His body (ROM. 12:5; 1 COR. 12:12–27; EPH. 3:6; 4:15–16; 5:23; COL. 1:18, 24). The physicality is important, for
the church is always an embodied reality. The one body is made up of embodied persons called into union (communion) with one another.
The Christian confesses a single communion of people made holy here and now by “the forgiveness of sins.”72

In the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed, believers confess: “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Such a confession of
faith flows reflexively from the fact that no one can confess the Christian faith without the Holy Spirit (1 COR. 12:3; see
also 1 COR. 6:11; EPH. 1:13). The result of the Holy Spirit’s work is cleansing and a new life and spirit (TITUS 3:5; PSALM 51:10–12).
New spiritual life, however, does not happen apart from physical life. Rather, the Spirit’s gift of life confesses faith
in Christ and His work: “Jesus is Lord” (1 COR. 12:3). Faith itself — spiritual life — ordinarily happens as physical ears
hear the “word of Christ” as it is spoken by human tongues (ROM. 10:17). The new spiritual life of faith begins as bodies
receive the physical “washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (TITUS 3:5) and as mouths receive bread
and wine, the body and blood of Christ by His Word (LUKE 22:19–20).65

More common to the LCMS and to many Lutherans in the past is the confession of “the holy Christian Church” That tradition may be rightly appreciated as a
reminder that Christ is the head of the church (see LSCwE, question 203, A., p. 207). The original texts of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, however, describe the
church as “catholic,” which stresses its universality and wholeness (see the footnote in LSB wherever the Apostles’ Creed or Nicene Creed appears).
66

John W. Kleinig, Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), 10, Kindle Edition. Kleinig adds: “So, paradoxically, my
spiritual life, the life that is created and sustained by the Holy Spirit, is always lived in the body. It does not take me away from my body or occur apart from it. Rather, it
takes me ever further and deeper into bodily life and into fuller embodiment as a human being. It makes me at home in my body as I live here on earth.”
65

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This image from Ephesians 5 of the church as the unblemished bride of Christ echoes Old Testament language.
There God “rejoices over the bride,” Israel (ISAIAH 62:5; JER. 2:2–3A; HOS. 2:16, 19–20).

Learn this article, then, as clearly as possible. If someone asks, What do you mean by the words “I believe in the
Holy Spirit”? you can answer, “I believe that the Holy Spirit makes me holy, as his name states.” How does he do
this, or what are his ways and means? Answer: “Through the Christian church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” In the first place, he has a unique community in the world, which
is the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God, which the Holy Spirit reveals
and proclaims, through which he illuminates and inflames hearts so that they grasp and accept it, cling to it, and
persevere in it.71

He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person
commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that
your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not our own, for you were
bought with a price. So glorify God in your bodies.

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The church exists entirely because of the Holy Spirit, who — as Luther asserts — “calls, gathers, enlightens, and
makes holy the whole Christian church [Christenheit] on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common,
true faith.”68 The Apology anchors this truth in Ephesians 5 where Paul speaks of the church as the body and bride of
Christ, paralleling that relationship with the marriage of man and woman.69

Building on the analogy of the holy church as bride, we may also speak of her catholicity as an indication that this
holy bride bears children to the Lord from every corner of humanity (REV. 12:17). Luther affirms this:

C. THE THIRD ARTICLE

HUMAN SEXUALITY

This elemental connection between the Spirit’s work and our physical life is further confirmed as the Third Article
moves from “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” to “the holy catholic church.”66 To confess the Holy Spirit is to confess the
church. In leading people to justifying faith, the Spirit creates a holy people (EPH. 1:4; COL. 1:22; 3:12) and a catholic people
gathered from all the nations (MATT. 28:19; GAL. 3:26–29; REV. 5:9). Proceeding from Father and Son as “Lord and giver of
life,”67 the Spirit brings forth a new humanity, a new creation of universal (catholic) dimensions — to be “a chosen
race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 PETER 2:9).

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It consists of people whose very bodies are even now “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (ROM. 12:1). The
believer’s sanctity is a bodily and not merely a spiritual sanctity. So it is that Paul teaches:

67

Nicene Creed, LSB 158.

68

SC II 6; KW 355–56.

69

Ap VII & VIII 7; KW 175.

70

Ap VII & VIII 10; KW 175.

71

LC II 40–42; KW 436; emphasis added.

72

Apostles’ Creed, LSB 159.

HUMAN SEXUALITY

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on earth the pristine innocence and righteousness that Christ has so graciously imputed to us at Baptism through a
faith given us by the Holy Spirit. Yet, as the church always renews and reforms itself according to God’s Word, so with
the aid of the Spirit we conform ourselves to the image of Christ in all we say and do — and that does not exclude our
sexuality, but necessarily includes it as part of the creation God Himself seeks to redeem.

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral
person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
(1 COR. 6:18)
So, the one holy virginal bride (EPH. 5) bears children who are also called to a similar purity.
Redeemed humanity is also promised a hope and a future (JER. 29:11) in spirit, soul and body (1 THESS. 5:23). The promise assures us of something far greater than some extra years in decent health. Instead, we have been promised “the
resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”73
This confession is repeated so often by Christians that we may not recognize how ridiculous it sounds to human
reason. The problem lies not in the confession of “life everlasting,” but the belief in “the resurrection of the body.”
While some religions teach a bodily reincarnation, that doctrine is not the equivalent of resurrection. Most of the rest
of humanity holds to some sort of belief that one’s “soul,” however that is conceived, survives death.

The three articles of the Creed, though they express different actions of God in the world and different works of
the individual persons of the Holy Trinity in time and space, nonetheless present a single, comprehensive portrait of
God’s plan for His people to live in their bodies according to His design. The God who has created us in our sexually
differentiated bodies with their accompanying characteristics and desires, has redeemed us from the sin that has
corrupted those bodies and desires through the Son of God. The Son of God furthermore embodies chastity and
sexual decency for us. Through His Spirit, God renews us according to the image of that Son so we might live with
that same chastity and sexual decency. How we live in such a way against the countervailing cultural winds and
sexual pressures of this world, however, will require more disciplined attention — to that we now turn.

III. HS 2023 APPLICATIONS: CHASTE AND DECENT LIFE AS MALE AND FEMALE

That is not the emphasis in the Christian confession. Rather, we boldly confess that a new bodily life is to be given.
Human reason cannot comprehend the resurrection of the body. Do our eyes deceive us? We see bodies that retain
beauty and vigor only as long as a seemingly superhuman regimen of diet and exercise is maintained. Even that only
postpones the inevitable. Our bodies are ultimately frail on so many levels that everlasting bliss cannot accommodate
them. We are perishable, with a “shelf life” much like the food in pantries and refrigerators. How could eternal life
include bodies, with their frequently corrupted and quirky genes, amoral longings, aging flesh, and vulnerability to
everything from obesity to cancer to dementia?

The Small Catechism’s call for a “chaste and decent life” with respect to the Sixth Commandment on adultery
furnishes us with more than a readily recitable description for purposes of memorization. It involves a conscious
awareness of the intended design for marriage and sexuality; the temptations and lusts of the flesh that seek to derail
that design; and the goal of a Christlike morality that impacts every area of our lives, sexuality included. To live
chastely and decently in the male and female bodies given us by God entails:

Nevertheless, it is God’s promise that our bodies — so undeniably perishable and mortal — are to rise from death.
The resurrection of the body is both an inconceivable and a concretely comprehensible assurance. Job seems almost
contradictory as he prophesies: “And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (JOB 19:26).
Or, as the Spirit reveals through Paul, the perishable “flesh and blood” of this present bodily life “cannot inherit
eternal life.” Nonetheless the dead will be raised bodily in a change that defies description other than to declare that
perishable, mortal bodies will “put on” a bodily imperishability and immortality (1 COR. 15:53).

• Second, a commitment to an ongoing conflict with the sinful desires introduced at the fall of our first parents,
Adam and Eve, and with the personal and social consequences that the fall into sin has caused for our sexual
activity; and

These teachings remind us that the spiritual and material may be distinguished, but they must not be divorced.
The “spiritual body” that Paul describes is not some other-worldly phantasm, but, ultimately, nothing less than the
perfected form of human embodiment. It is a fulfilled humanity — the humanity that is exemplified and illustrated in
the resurrected Lord Himself, whose resurrection is not a merely spiritual reality: “See my hands and my feet, that it
is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (LUKE 24:39). The risen
Christ, who is the “firstfruits” of the resurrection of all flesh, is the assurance that in the coming resurrection of the
dead “shall all be made alive” (1 COR. 15:20–23).
We walk by faith and not by sight in the face of this mysterious and glorious assurance of bodily immortality and
bodily imperishability held out to God’s redeemed people. Therefore, while affirming the immortality of the soul, the
Formula of Concord insists that, “concerning the article on the resurrection Scripture testifies that this very substance
of our flesh, albeit without sin, will rise, and that we will have and retain this soul, albeit without sin, in eternal life.”74
The people God has recreated by the Holy Spirit through Word and Sacrament seek to live in accordance with His
design and intentionality for our lives, minds, bodies even our sexuality. As the church is the pure, unstained body of
Christ, renewed by the Holy Spirit, so we individuals and members of that body are renewed daily by the same Spirit,
that we might become holy and pure in thought, word and deed. We can never hope to attain in our daily lives here
73

Apostles’ Creed, LSB 159.

74

FC SD, I 46; KW, 539. Christian anthropology must always distinguish but not divorce soul and body.

HUMAN SEXUALITY

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2023 Convention Workbook

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• First, a commitment to the sexual identity we have received from God in creation and in His ongoing act of
creation that fills and replenishes the earth;

• Third, a commitment to the sexual ethic of leading a chaste and decent life that finds its purest expression in the
person of Jesus Christ and guides the lives of all Christians, whether married or single.

A. SEXUAL IDENTITY FROM GOD
As the foregoing section indicates, the foundation for the Christian understanding of human sexuality is one of
creaturely embodiment in a life and identity given and restored by the Triune God. We are created and restored for a
holy life that glorifies God. This reflects the Catechism’s understanding that many Lutherans learn from childhood in
Luther’s explanation of the First Article: “I believe that God has made me and all creatures. He has given me my body
and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members. …”75 As His sons and daughters, redeemed by the bodily sacrifice of Christ
(“with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death”76), we are called to new life.
The title for section three now echoes the Commandments, specifically the meaning of the Sixth Commandment,
“You shall not commit adultery,” as Martin Luther explained it. The Commandments provide direction and specificity
to the way we are to live as God’s holy people, redeemed in Baptism.
The authority behind Luther’s words from his explanation to the Decalogue is not his own, but God’s. In His
commands, our Creator leaves no ambiguity about what He expects of His human creatures. To speak about a “chaste
and decent life,” or a “sexually pure and decent life,” is necessarily to speak from the standpoint of God’s Law. God’s
Law is not only to give order and direction, however, but also has the all-important purpose of bringing humanity to
repentance, for all have sinned against God and His Law (ROM. 3:23). It is vital to keep that truth in mind. Otherwise,
75

LSCwE, 16; emphasis added.

76

LSCwE, 17.

HUMAN SEXUALITY

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