LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 71

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CONVENTION ESSAYS AND BIBLE STUDIES
the Gospels. When Judas realized what he had done when
he betrayed the Lord, he felt very sorry. But he did not repent, that is, be turned in faith to the Lord. He simply felt
sorry and then committed suicide. Repentance is to be
turned to the Lord. God through the Holy Spirit works repentance in our hearts. That is, through the preaching of
the death and resurrection of our Lord, He turns us. We
were moving away from the Lord. Each step that we took
led us farther and farther away from Him. But He, through
the preaching of the death and resurrection of our Savior,
turns us back to Him. Repentance is that 180-degree turn
from serving self to serving the Lord.
As we are turned by the Holy Spirit back to the Lord,
forgiveness is granted to us. For all that we have done that
is death-dealing, we are forgiven. We were turned in on
ourselves. We served the great idol, that is ourselves.
Everything that we did was damnable and led us straight
to hell. But we are now forgiven. The preaching of the
death and resurrection of our Lord grants us forgiveness.
Many years ago during the days of post-Vatican II, as
the Roman Catholic Church began to see that there were
other Christians in the world, I was asked if the eighth
grade from the local Roman Catholic school could visit our
church and hear what we believed and taught. Queen of the
Rosary and Holy Spirit, where I was pastor, had adjoining
property making the visit very easy. As the class gathered
in our church I spent about a half hour in a very brief summary of our teaching of the Christian faith. Then I opened
it for questions. One of the teachers, a Roman Catholic sister, observed that my presentation was very much focused
on forgiveness. I had never really thought about that as
being a unique insight of our church. But it was true. I had
emphasized that the work of our Lord was for our forgiveness. Forgiveness becomes almost a summary word for us
Lutherans, for as the Small Catechism teaches, “where
there is forgiveness, there is life and salvation.” To speak
about forgiveness is to speak about the new life that we
have been given; it is to speak of salvation itself.
In the final instructions that the Lord is imparting to
His disciples, He says that this repentance and forgiveness,
accomplished through His death and resurrection, are to be
preached to the ends of the earth, beginning in Jerusalem.
Indeed, the preaching of the Gospel did begin in Jerusalem
and then, as the Book of Acts tells us, expand out to Judea
and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. Because that message of the death and resurrection of our
Lord Jesus Christ was preached in Jerusalem in the first
century and then radiated outward, we today, 2,000 years
later and half a world apart, are a part of the Christian
faith. Because generation after generation were faithful to
the task, we have received the gift given by our Lord, repentance and forgiveness through His death and resurrection.
Think for a moment what would have happened had the
first hearers and recipients of God’s grace decided that this
was just too good for any one else. It was so good that they
would simply keep it for themselves. They would thank God
for the gift of forgiveness. They would live in repentance
and newness of life. They would look forward to the day
when all would be consummated for them in eternal life

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and they would be with the Lord for eternity. But they
would tell no one else. You know what would have happened. The message would have stopped right there. That
would have been the end of it. The Christian message
would have died in the first century with the death of the
last of that apostolic band.
But they heard the word of the Lord. They heard its
mandate. The message of the death and resurrection of the
Lord for repentance and forgiveness must be preached, and
was preached, generation after generation, until it has
reached us. But the same possibility exists, does it not? It is
possible that if we are not faithful to the task, the Christian
faith will end with our generation. It will go no farther.

IV. You Are Witnesses
Our Lord says to the disciples there gathered, “You are
witnesses of these things, and behold I send the promise of
My Father upon you. Witness. That is an interesting word.
We know what witnesses are. They have seen an event and
they are called to testify to what they have seen. It is in the
testimony of two or three witnesses that truth is established. “It happened. We saw it,” the witnesses say, “and it
happened this way.”
Those disciples were indeed witnesses. They had seen it
happen. They had seen the miracles of the Lord that testified to His messianic office. They had been witnesses of His
death on the cross. Now they were witnesses to the miracle
of all miracles, His resurrection from the dead—and soon
also His ascension back to the Father. In the most technical
sense of the term, they were witnesses. They had seen, and
they had testified.
As you know the New Testament was written in Greek.
The Greek word that we translate as “witness” is marturos.
We get the English word martyr from that Greek word. A
martyr is first and foremost a witness. Most of the first witnesses, that is, “martyrs,” witnessed to the truth of the
death and resurrection of the Lord for repentance and forgiveness by laying down their lives. They became in our
English sense of the word, “martyrs.” Because they witnessed, because they “martyred,” succeeding generations
could and did witness down to the present day.

V. We Are Now Called to Witness
These words spoken once so long ago are also addressed
to us. For we too, through the eyes of faith, have seen. We
have witnessed through the words of Scripture, through the
Sacraments administered, through the preaching of the
Word of the Gospel, the death and the resurrection of the
Lord. Through these means we have been called to repentance and granted the gift of forgiveness, that is life and
salvation. And we are now called to witness to our age as
the apostles did to their age.
That task is ours. It belongs to no one else. It is the task
of our Synod. It is the task of our congregations. It is your
task and it is mine. You can’t say, “That is not my gift. I
don’t possess the gift of witnessing. That is a technical skill
and gift not possessed by me. Ask someone else to do it,
please.” Sorry, that won’t work. You, yes you, are called to
witness to the things that you have seen and heard and received. You can’t say that your congregation is not called to