LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1977, Page 100

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99

OTHER PRESENTATIONS
Sunday Morning Sermon

Glory and Honor, Might and Majesty, Dominion and
Power Be unto the Father and to the Son and to the Holy
Spirit!

Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I
to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor
uncircumcision, but a new creation. Peace and mercy be upon
all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God. Galatians 6:14-
16

In Christ Jesus, Our Precious Savior,
Beloved Delegates and Visitors

at the 52nd Regular Convention

of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod:

The thought that I hope you will take with you from
this service for the entire week of the convention and for
all your life is: The Importance of the Cross of Jesus
Christ and the Message It Carries. For this I implore
God’s Holy Spirit’s guidance upon my words and your
hearts.

“That We May Grow” is a laudable motto to choose
for a synodical convention. It is so because of what the
nature of a synodical convention should be. No conven-
tion can be said to have been worthy of its name if it did
not encourage the members of the convention to return
home to stir up God’s people there to greater activity in
the work of the Kingdom. It seems to me that to
accomplish this our thoughts must all be directed to the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and to nothing else. This
is what the Letter to the Galatians is all about. Delegates
to the convention will keep this in mind. This particular
service by its having been placed into the convention
program carries a special importance and should help
set the stage for the greater glorification of God and our
Lord Jesus Christ today and all the remaining days of
the convention.

As we set about the task of emphasizing our desire to
grow, we must do so in the full realization that the
church cannot truly grow if it does not place its whole
confidence in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We may
be tempted to boast of a thousand things, but unless our
boasting is in the cross of Christ, all else will fail.

The apostle emphasized greatly the salvation by
grace. The keynote of the Letter to the Galatians was
struck in chapter 2, verse 16: “Knowing that aman is not
justified by the works of the Law but by the faith of
Jesus Christ, even when we have believed in Jesus
Christ that we might be justified by the faith of Christ
and not by the works of the Law; for by the works of the
Law shall no man be justified.”

Perhaps as a Synod we have not always given our
total confidence to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When things have not gone the way we believed they
ought to go, or when we believed certain persons or
things were not in the tradition of our Synod, our first
reaction was not always evangelical. We looked to the
Bylaws which we had accepted in earlier conventions
in order to adjust what we thought was not right. If we

could not find a Bylaw which we had passed at previous
conventions, we added a new one to suit the situation. In
my experience of almost fifty-one years in the ministry
of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod as a mis-
sionary, a pastor, a District official and synodical
official, I have found that Bylaws do not always
accomplish what we had hoped they would do. We have
a Bylaw which indicates when elections must begin ata
given regular convention. Would you believe that this
Bylaw was placed into the Handbook in order to avoid
electioneering and the control of delegates for the
purpose of elections? In 1959 the Synod passed a
resolution which some thought would add a certain
statement of doctrinal position and faith to our con-
stitutional paragraph on our position to Scripture and
the Lutheran Confessions. It seems to me that we did the
wise thing in 1962 when we rescinded that resolution
and then said in our statement that we beseech the
members of the Synod by the mercy of God to uphold the
synodical resolutions. There is no greater imperative
placed upon any member of the Synod than is placed
upon him by the mercies of God.

Let us give our attention for a moment to the words of
the text. The apostle Paul emphasizes so greatly that our
total glory should be in the cross of Christ when he
stated: “Far be it from me that I should glory save in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Further he stated that
nothing else really matters in this world. He stated that
the cross of Jesus had crucified the world to him and that
he was crucified to the world. He meant to say that the
world really had no attraction for him anymore. Atone
time it was different; he had other ambitions. He was a
Pharisee among Pharisees. He had ambitions to
extinguish everything that did not agree with his
position as a Jew. And he went on to say, “And I am
crucified unto the world.” The world held no attraction
for the apostle, and he said, “Certainly I am not
attractive to the world either.” When the apostle wrote
the Letter to the Galatians, he did so as one who had
been in their midst and had preached to them the Gospel
of Jesus Christ. They had received this Gospel happily
and had lived under the freedom which the Lord Jesus
Christ had provided for them and to which they had
been called. However, the apostle Paul had not been
away from the Galatian congregation very long until
other teachers came in and persuaded the Galatians to
add something to their newfound freedom. The
Galatians were not asked to deny Jesus Christ, but they
were asked to add certain ceremonial laws, specifically,
the ceremonial observance of the rite of circumcision.
But the apostle Paul said, “You have not been called to
such a thing. lam amazed that you should so soon leave
this new freedom to which you have been called.” He
said, “Circumcision means nothing anymore, neither
does uncircumcision.” The only thing that is important
is “a new creation.” The new creation is the Christian in
his converted state. This is the important position in the