LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 82

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82

CONVENTION ESSAYS AND BIBLE STUDIES

5. It Culminates in Christian Vocation
A Gospel-centered understanding of the church would
produce a people of God who are mightily active in doing
good works and living lives of service to God and our fellow
human beings.
What would such a church mightily active in good works
look like? It’s hard to say, because sanctification cannot be
dictated according to form or custom. There would be no
Christian “lifestyle” with which all “true believers” would
be forced to comply, no rigid application of the Law to bring
conformity in areas of Christian freedom. Rather there
would be a wonderful diversity in Christian living, a
blessed pluralism of good works whereby Christians do
works pleasing in God’s sight as they fulfill their vocations
in the places where God has located them: at home, at
work, at school.
The Lutheran focus on the Gospel brings about an understanding of the church that begins with the means of
grace, takes seriously the public ministry, centers on the
divine Service, gives the highest priority to outreach, and
culminates in Christian vocation.
B. The Church Is Catholic
Lutheran theology is not only evangelical, it is also
catholic. And this fact also has great importance, both for
our theology and for our practice. This was of great concern
to the Confessors and Reformers They went to great pains
in the Augsburg Confession, and in the other confessional
writings, to show that what they were teaching and confessing in their churches was no more and no less than
what the church had always taught and confessed. They
were not breaking off from the universal church.
To be sure, the church’s universality is grounded in and
flows from that upon which the church stands, that is, the
Gospel, or the doctrine of justification. It is in the Gospel of
our Lord, Jesus Christ, that the catholicity of the church
consists. So the church’s catholic character does not stand
alone, nor does it rest upon a manmade institution or a hierarchy or a pope. The church is catholic because it is evangelical. It is in the one Gospel, “one Lord, one faith, one
baptism” (Eph. 4:4), that the catholicity of the church is
found. Thus, we confess in the Nicene Creed: “I believe in
one, holy, Christian, and Apostolic church.”
What will a church with a catholic context look like?
1. It Is Trinitarian
To begin with, the church has a trinitarian starting
point. Reflection upon the church begins with the God, who
is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It begins with the God who
created us and who sent His only Son to redeem us and
from whom proceeds the Spirit, who “calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on
earth.” For this reason, the church is profoundly “theological” in the sense that it begins with reflection upon God.
What would such a theological-trinitarian church look
like? Well, its proclamation, of course, would center in the
Trinity, and at the heart of its public confession would be
the Trinitarian Creeds: Apostolic, Nicene, Athanasian.
Home-made, local, home-grown creeds concocted by a local
pastor or worship committee would would not be regularly

substituted for the ecumenical creeds. In addition, such a
church would seek its unity in doctrine, confessing with lips
one faith in the One God. Unity of doctrine would not be
viewed as a necessary evil or even a hindrance to the mission of our Lord, but as a necessary good and the only God
pleasing means of carrying out the mission of our Lord.
Theological pluralism would not be a characteristic of a
church which finds its unity in the one doctrine of the triune God.
2. It Is One
Also, because the church is catholic, it is one. There is
“one body and one Spirit and one hope to which we were all
called” (Eph. 4:4). Because all who are in Christ through
faith are one with Him, we are saddened when our unity is
disrupted by error and falsehood.
What would such a catholic church look like? Well, first
we are aware that every error in doctrine, because it ultimately affects the Gospel itself, is harmful to faith and that
our Lord Himself has warned us of the false teachers who
would arise in the church (Matt. 7:15; 24:23–24) and that
we are to avoid them (Rom. 16:17–18; Titus 3:10–11). Yet
because the church is one, we deplore the divisions which
have occurred in visible Christendom, and we earnestly
pray, as our Lord did (John. 17:21) that we may all be one,
and we are committed to doing all we can to mend these divisions by securing a God-pleasing agreement in the Gospel
and all its articles.
3. It Is Holy
An aspect of the church’s catholicity is that it is holy. We
confess in the Apostle’s Creed belief in “the holy Christian
church, the communion of saints.” The church is a communion of holy ones. The church is holy, first of all, because
by faith in Christ all members possess the perfect righteousness of faith (Phil. 3:9). All believers in Christ are
righteous and holy in God’s sight on account of the merits of
Jesus Christ. However, the church is also holy, although in
an imperfect sense, because all Christians show forth the
fruits of faith. Although this is distorted by sin, every member of the church catholic at least to some extent demonstrates the righteousness of life.
What would such a church which affirms that the
church is holy look like? It would not isolate itself from the
rest of visible Christendom, but it would seek every opportunity to give witness to our recognition of them as fellow
Christians through God-pleasing participation and dialog
and works of charity. It would not only be unseemly, it
would also be flat out wrong to act as if we were the only
Christians in the world. To do so would be to deny that the
church is holy. So, we would not close ourselves off from the
other denominations, seeking to deal only with our individual or private concerns, but we would seek to engage the
issues with which others are dealing, too. While seeking to
avoid all ungodly associations, we would look for opportunities to express our conviction that the church, all of it, is
holy.