LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1977, Page 96

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96 ESSAY AND BIBLE STUDY

and iniquities, yea, from the very greatest and most
shocking sins” (St. L. Ed. X, 1729 ff.). It is only the
Gospel of forgiveness through the blood of the Lamb
which can cure such terrified consciences—and the
angels in heaven sing for joy when God’s prodigal sons
and daughters return home and say, “God, be merciful to
me, a sinner!”

On the other hand, not a “drop of evangelical
consolation” should be offered to those who are living
securely in their sins. The Gospel is not intended for self-
righteous sinners. Our Lord told His disciples: “Do not
give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls
before swine.” Once a certain rich young man ap-
proached Jesus with the question: “Good Teacher, what
shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17 ff.) This
young man was confident that he had kept the Law from
his youth up. Because the Law had not yet brought him
to an awareness of his sins, the Gospel had no relevance
for him. He had no use for a Savior, because he thought he
had no sins to be forgiven. The only hope for this young
man lay in the power of the Holy Spirit working through
the Law to bring him to a knowledge of his sins. Only
then would the Gospel’s sweet promises find a hearing
with him. For this young man our Lord had only words
of Law: “Go and sell all you possess, and give it to the
poor” (Mark 10:21). The evangelist reports that at these
words the young man’s face fell and he went away
grieved. As Walther once said, “We must preach them
into hell before we can preach them into heaven”
(Walther, Law and Gospel, p. 118).

We have already applied the Law-Gospel distinction
to two troublesome areas—faith and works, and concern
for pure doctrine and against false doctrine. We have
noted how faith, far from being a good work which
merits forgiveness, is the receiving hand which accepts
the forgiveness which Christ has already won for us.
Good works inevitably follow after faith. We have also
seen that it is the Gospel which gives life in place of
death as a free gift of grace, but that the exhortation to
long for this pure Word belongs in the realm of the Law.
It is from this perspective that we have noted that the
doctrine of the Gospel and all its articles is not a man-
made weapon with which orthodox fanatics fight one
another, but it is the God-given medicine through which
He saves tortured souls from their sins. This is why
Jesus warns against false teachers and their leaven and
why the apostle Paul can speak so harshly against those
who had preached another “gospel,” which was not a
gospel, to the Galatian Christians.

Unity and Concord

On this final day of our study we want to apply the
Law-Gospel distinction to yet another sensitive area—to
the matter of the unity of the church and concord in the
church. As in the other areas which we have discussed,
also here it is critical that the proper distinction be
maintained between Law and Gospel.

To get a proper perspective on this subject, it is
necessary that we go back to the beginning of things.
The first verse in the Bible tells us that “in the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). The
last verse of this first chapter tells us: “And God saw

everything that He had made, and behold, it was very
good” (Gen. 1:31). There are two things we should note
from these two passages. The first is that our God, the
only God, is the Lord of the universe. We believe in God
the Father, Maker of heaven and earth! Our God is not
just some tribal deity. The triune God, Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, is not just the God of Christians or of the
human race or of the planet earth or of our solar system,
but He is the Lord of lords and the King of kings. The
second thing we should note is that the Lord our God
created everything, and everything He created was
good! God’s good creation was characterized by perfect
peace and harmony.

The fall into sin, however, shattered the concordia of
God’s harmonious universe. In every sphere of God’s
creation the Fall manifests itself in division and
separation. Because of sin the whole world is out of joint.
Because man sinned against his Creator, heis at enmity
with himself, he can’t get along with his fellows, and
even the very elements of the earth testify to the reality
of the curse of sin. Sin plunged our world into division
and darkness.

It is this darkness into which the marvelous light of
God’s Gospel has shined. By means of Word and
sacrament the Holy Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens,
and sanctifies the whole Christian church or earth and
preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true
faith” (Small Catechism, p. 345). In the Nicene Creed we
confess our faith in the one holy Christian and apostolic
church. The New Testament through a variety of
metaphors pictures for us the unity of this one church.
Jesus speaks of one shepherd and one fold (John 10:16),
and He says: “I am the Vine, and you are the branches”
(John 15:5). St. Paul refers to Christ as the “head of the
body, the church” (Col. 1:17). St. Peter speaks of living
stones with Christ as the chief cornerstone (1 Peter 2:5-
6).

It should be clear from what has been said that the
unity of the church is a God-wrought unity. By virtue of
our baptism we are called into the one holy Christian
church. Through faith we are incorporated into the body
of Christ. As Article VII of the Augsburg Confession
makes clear, the unity of the church is not something
which results from human striving. The holy Christian
church “is the assembly of all believers among whom
the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy
sacraments are administered according to the Gospel.
For it is sufficient for the true unity of the Church that
the Gospel be preached in conformity with a pure
understanding of it and that the sacraments be
administered in accordance with the divine Word. It is
not necessary for the true unity of the Christian Church
that ceremonies, instituted by men, should be observed
uniformly in all places” (AL VII, 1-3).

This “true spiritual unity” of the church, as
Melanchthon calls it in the Apology (Ap VII & VII, 31),
transcends space and time. It describes the relationship
which exists between all believers in Christ in the one
holy Christian church which “will be and remain
forever” (AC VII, 1). When Jesus prayed in His high-
priestly prayer “that they may all be one,’ He was
referring to this unity which those who believe in Him