LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 82

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82

CONVENTION ESSAYS AND REACTIONS

count on that wonderful gift for assurance and hope and
strength to live day by day? And doesn’t Christ give to us
his own body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar so
that through simple faith, when we eat and drink Christ’s
body and blood God, forgives us, He restores us, He preserves us unto resurrection and everlasting life? With Holy
Scripture, we say, “Yes!” But for five hundred years, “other”
non-Roman churches in the West have answered that question, no. Your Baptism is only a symbol; the bread and wine
are nothing more than bread and wine. Is this the unity of
the faith? In sorrow, we reply, “No.” Does this error bring
confusion and harm to dear ones for whom Christ died? In
sorrow, we reply, “Yes.”
Only one more, a third tragedy. The Scripture, the
words that testify to the coming of the Christ and proclaim
the deeds and truth that flow from Christ. There need be
no doubt here, for the Sciptures are God’s infallible and inspired and inerrant Word. Right? Well, no. For generations
in this country the ravages of a biblical scepticism have
whittled away at the very heart and core of churches. Sola
Scriptura? Is there unity of the faith? In sorrow, we reply,
“No.” Does this error bring confusion and harm and doubt
to dear ones for whom Christ died? In sorrow, we reply,
“Yes.” The New Testament churches sought unity in teaching, unity in matters that pertain to the Gospel. Our current, tragic situation is torn with disunity among the
churches.

IV. Our Churches and Theirs:
Some Basic Reflections
Churches reaching out to other churches, seeking unity
and fellowship and agreement—that’s what we see in the
New Testament. That is what is embodied in the Book of
Concord—a concord, a concordia, a harmony of what together we believe, teach, and confess. We ask this concord
and agreement of all our pastors. We ask it of eighth
graders when they are confirmed and of adults when they
join our churches, even though they’ve chiefly only learned
Luther’s Small Catechism. This is our faith, our confession,
our teaching.
And how blessed is it to believe and rejoice that there is
but ONE church, whose extent is hidden to our eyes and
in which we simply believe, one holy Christian church that
consists of all true believers in Christ and, yes, of course
members of that one holy church are found, by the grace of
God, in many churches and, yes, in churches who err in
what they teach about matters that pertain directly to the
Gospel message. But how shall our churches of the Book of
Concord relate to those churches?
For our churches to worship together with those
churches would signify the same thing, though from two
different angles. Either it would say to the world that the
disagreements between us are of minor or no significance,
or it would signal that there are no disagreements of any
significance, between us. In deep sorrow, we say, “No.” It is

200l Convention Proceedings

healthy doctrine to teach women and men that they are
saved by Jesus Christ’s work and through faith in that
work—faith alone. It is unhealthy, untrue, and dangerous
teaching to say that somehow, even if it’s by God’s grace,
that somehow our good works attain merit for us in the
sight of God. And so it is with the teaching concerning
God’s chosen, holy sacraments and concerning God’s holy
Word. There is healthy, sound, blessed teaching about how
we receive God’s gifts of life and salvation. And there is unhealthy, unsound, dangerous teaching to the contrary. This
is the situation for our churches who seek to live like the
churches of the New Testament.
What shall we not do? And what shall we do? Public
worship wherein congregations of two contradictory confessions mingle pulpits and messages? In sorrow, we must
say, “No.”
What shall we do? We shall teach our children and the
adults that come to us the Christian faith. We shall resist
the culture’s impulse to shorten and to short-change instruction in sound, healing doctrine—no microwave Christians! We shall and we must train, teach, show, instruct …
thoroughly, patiently, lovingly, and with JOY. Let us grow
into the maturity of Christ Jesus, until we all attain the
unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God.
What shall we do? We must reach out in love to others
who confess Christ but who have erred in their understandings of Word and Sacrament. If we have the truth by
the grace of God, we cannot but share it with fellow Christians. We must find more ways to speak together with respect and love, listening to those who disagree with us and
bearing witness to them of the precious truths of Scripture
of which we are convinced and on which we base our all.
The church’s Lord does not give us the option of being aloof
and standoffish; we must find our way into truly meaningful ecumenical dialogue with other Christian traditions, toward the goal of love and true unity—unity that flows from
agreement in the truth of God in Christ.
What shall we do? We shall cooperate with fellow Christians in those externals where we can do so, without denying or compromising our confession of the truth. If our grip
on the truth is strong, then our love must be strong as well!
In both of these ways, then—bearing with one other in love
and preserving the unity of the faith—we may give our witness as a church that stands in continuity with the
churches of the New Testament.
Jeffrey A. Gibbs
Concordia Seminary
Saint Louis, MO

Notes
1. Richard Bauckham, “For Whom Were the Gospels Written?” in Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All
Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Eerdmans,
1998), 30.