LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1995, Page 79

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80 150TH ANNIVERSARY BIBLE STUDY

And how does Jesus respond? Our Lord so often does the
unexpected or says the unexpected. When they dropped the
paralytic down in front of Him, for example, and they were

- expecting that perhaps He would lay healing hands upon
him, our Lord at first ignored completely the physical prob-
lem and said, “Son, be of good cheer. Your sins are forgiven
you.” And when the rich young ruler comes to Him and
says, “What good thing should I do that I may inherit eter-
nal life?” Jesus at first ignores that question and says,
“Why do you call Me good?” And when the leaders of the
Jews see the woman taken in adultery and ask Jesus what
should be done with her, that Moses says she should be
stoned, Jesus continues to write as though He does not
even hear them. And then He remarks, “He who is without
sin, let him be the first to cast a stone.” So here Jesus
brushes aside this commendation, this word, “You must be

_ a teacher sent from God.” And He responds by saying, “I’m
telling you, unless a person is born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God.” And Nicodemus, of course, does not un-
derstand. “What.do you mean by that? Born again? Go into
the mother’s womb for a second time?”

Some months ago I was coming home from the airport
and talking to the taxi driver. I remember a good hint from
Jim Boldt. He says that when we talk to people or want to
witness to them, better than to say, “What church do you be-
long to?” or “What church do you attend?” (which may em-
barrass people and kind of shut off the conversation before
it gets started), why not ask instead, “What church were you
brought up in?” After all, everybody or, at least, most people
have been brought up in some kind of church. So I said to
the taxi driver, “What church were you brought up in?” He
mentioned another Christian denomination and then began
to talk about his involvement. And he said, “Reverend, I read
so much in the paper and I hear people talking about this
being born again. What do they mean when they say born
again?” That was Nicodemus’ question. And, of course, it
gave me a wonderful opportunity to present to him both the
message of the Law and the message of the Gospel.

“Except a man ...,” and now Jesus expands on it, “be born
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of
heaven.” Not just born of water, but born of water and of the
Spirit. To say that is to say “to be born of water and the
Word.” For where do we look for the Spirit of God save in the
Word, and where the Spirit is, there is the Word of God.

Why is it that a person must be born again? “That which
is born of the flesh is flesh.” And Jesus does not mean what
is born of a human being is a human being. Nor when He is
talking about flesh does He mean this stuff that hangs on
our bones, as though to say, “Well, the body is bad, but the
soul is good.” No, in the devotion this morning in Portals of
Prayer, if you read it, you know that the text was Genesis
1:31: “God saw everything that He had made and, behold, it
was very good.” But when Adam and Eve fell into sin and
listened to the voice of the devil, then not simply was death
brought upon all people, physical death, but body, soul—all
was defiled, all was polluted. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh. And so, a thousand years before David had said,
“Behold, I was shaped in iniquity and in sin did my mother
conceive me.” Not that the act of procreation itself is sinful,
although that, too, has been polluted by reason of the sin

of our first father. Rather, because from father to son, from
son to grandson, from grandson to great grandson, death is
passed along, because sin is passed along.

And St. Paul reminds us in detail of how all of this hap-
pened and where it all happened when he says in Romans
5, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death
by sin.” And a couple of verses later, he says: “Death
reigned from Adam to Moses.” Even though through those
thousands of years there was no Decalog, there was no
Word of God saying, “Thou shalt honor thy father and thy
mother.-Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adul-
tery. Thou shalt not bear false witness,” even though there
was no written Decalog, death reigned. Why did death
reign between Adam and Moses? Because, by one man’s
disobedience, many, yes, all were made sinners. Death
reigned. So man is not just sick; he’s not just critically ill,
but as Paul said in Ephesians 2, “You were dead in tres-
passes and sins.”

And Father Luther says this in such a clear way in the
Smalcald Articles, where we are told: “Here we must confess
what St. Paul says in Romans 5:12, namely, that sin had its
origin in one man, Adam, through whose disobedience all
men were made sinners and became subject to death and the
devil. This is called original sin or the root sin.”

-Many people deny that. And they say, “How can that lit-
tle baby really be sinful ... that sweet little thing?” At this
convention I have had the privilege of getting to see so
many former students, and if they aren’t wheeling some of
their little ones about, they pull out their wallets and show
pictures. And we say, “Oh, isn’t that a sweet little thing?”
And that’s true, but sweet is not a synonym of holy. If you
want to have some proof of that, think about this little
baby—it may only be a few days old. It cannot communi-
cate in any other way extept to cry when it wants food. And
so the baby cries. And we know perhaps the baby wants
milk. But suppose you wait 15 minutes. Suppose you wait
30 minutes. Suppose you wait an hour, and you don’t feed
that crying baby. What kind of a cry do you get then? They
clench their fists and they get red and they scream. And
what is that? Temper? How did that little baby just a few
weeks old get temper? It got it from Father Adam.

When Pastor Arthur Kramer began working with the —
Chippewa Indians in the Saginaw Valley of Michigan (if
you go to our booth, you'll see one of those immigration

_ strands), one of the most difficult tasks he had was to con-

vince a little boy of his sinfulness. Finally the boy did ac-
knowledge that he was a sinner and had need of forgive-
ness, and the Baptism of this lad and that of his two sisters
took place on Christmas 1846. They took the names, these
Indian children, of Abraham, Magdalena, and Anna. And
14 days later Magdalena died. In the Feb. 7, 1847, issue of
Der Luteraner Pastor Kramer wrote, “How happy was the
brother as he heard that his sister was with Jesus Christ in
heaven, who through Baptism received her into His eter-
nal glory.” “Here,” he said, “the church rules over children
of strange tongues, not through human force but only by
the means of grace through Word and Sacrament.” Born of
water and of the Spirit! That is to say, Baptism saves!

And Peter uses those very words in his first letter, the
third chapter. And Paul says in Titus: “Not by works of