LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1977, Page 89

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ESSAY AND BIBLE STUDY 89

No wonder the ancient Greeks could say in one of their
tragic dramas that the best thing to have happen to a
man is never to have been born and the next best thing is
to have been born and to die right away (Sophocles,
Opedipus Rex).

Such a conclusion is the result of the Law. Were it not
for the fact that the Law is not God’s final word to us,
were it not for the fact that “the Law has become our
tutor to lead us to Christ that we may be justified by
faith” (Gal. 3:24), then it would also have been better for
us had we never been born.

The Gospel

If we had the Law only, then there would be no hope
for us, and we would all without exception perish in hell.
But thanks be to God for His unspeakable goodness to
us. The Law is not God’s final word. There is a second
word, yes, a higher word—the Gospel word! Luther says
it so well in the hymn stanza:

But God beheld my wretched state
Before the world’s foundation,
And, mindful of His mercies great,
He planned my soul’s salvation.

A father’s heart He turned to me,

Sought my redemption fervently:
He gave His dearest Treasure. (TLH 387: 4)

With this Gospel word we enter into the realm of the
greatest mystery in the world—the inexplicable mystery
of God’s love affair with His fallen creatures. There is at
least a certain inexorable logic about God’s law which
demands our assent in spite of ourselves. The claim of
the Law, the justice of God’s wrath cannot be denied
even when its verdict is directed against us personally.
All the world is accountable to God, and we stand
condemned in our own hearts.

But the good news of the Gospel—who is there who
can fathom the meaning of the words: “For God so loved
the world that He gave His only-begotten Son” (John
3:16)? Who can explain the love which led God from
before the foundations of the earth to plan to give His
dearest Treasure, His own dear Son, Jesus Christ, into
death to be our Savior? When we turn to the Gospel
revealed in the Holy Scriptures, the mind of natural man
has no ability whatever to believe it. And even when the
Holy Spirit makes known “the mystery of Christ” (Eph.
4:3), the believer’s finite mind can only marvel in wonder
that such a love “so amazing, so divine,” could ever
exist.

The Gospel is the startling good news that what man
could never do for himself, already from eternity God
had decided to do for him. “Foreknown before the
foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20), prophesied by
prophets (1 Peter 1:10), “when the fullness of the time
came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born
under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who
were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption
as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5). In the form of God He did not
“regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but
emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond servant, and
being made in the likeness of men . . . He humbled
Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even
death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8). St. Paul expresses the
mystery of the Gospel in these words: “God was in Christ

reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their
trespasses against them” (2 Cor. 5:19).

Since “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God” (Rom. 3:23), and because the “wages of sin is
death” (Rom. 6:23), God Himself “bore our sins in His
body on the cross” (1 Peter 2:24). The cost for our
redemption is staggering to the imagination. Perishable
things like silver and gold did not suffice to pay the
penalty the Law demands. The price of our redemption
was “precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and
spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19). Jesus Christ,
true God and true man, fulfilled the Law perfectly in our
behalf, and He was nailed to the cross and put to death
(Acts 2:23).

But having paid the demands of the Law for our sins
and having put “an end to the agony of death,” God
“raised Him up again” (Acts 2:24). Therefore St. Paul
boasts: “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54).
St. Peter writes: “For Christ also died for sins once for
all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring
us to God, having been put to death in the flesh but made
alive in the spirit, in which He also went and made
proclamation to the spirits now in prison” (1 Peter 3:18-
19). Is it any wonder that “therefore also God highly
exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth,
and under the earth, and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”
(Phil. 2:9-11)?

What is the Gospel? Luther has expressed it well in
the familiar words of the explanation to the Second
Article of the Apostles’ Creed:

I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father

from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is

my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned
creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death,
and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver but

with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent
suffering and death.

This is the Gospel. It is the unconditional promise of
life and salvation now and forever. To the question
prompted by the Law, “What must I do to be saved?”
comes the answer of the Gospel: “Believe in the Lord
Jesus, and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:31). So glorious
is this good news that it should come as no surprise when
St. Peter reports that these are things into which the
angels, who have never known the experience of having
been “called out of darkness into His marvelous light,”
long to look (1 Peter 1:12). The praise to God offered by
blood-bought souls includes a dimension the praise of
angels does not possess. As Charles Wesley puts it in one
of his hymns:

A song which even angels can never, never sing, .
They know not Christ as Savior but worship him as King.

All eternity will not be too long a time to sing the praises
of Him “who according to His great mercy has caused us
to be born again to a living hope through the resurrec-
tion of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Let us
right now join in singing the praises of our God and
Savior in the words of the hymn “Crown Him with Many
Crowns.”