LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 347

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 347

The 1995 report Render Unto Caesar focused on how the
church speaks to or influences government. Noting the crucial daily
work of believers in their various callings, the report speaks of “in-
direct and unintentional influence” and “indirect and intentional in-
fluence” that the church might have on society through the daily
work of individual Christians.’ We can use similar language to dis-
cuss how Christian care characterizes the Christian community
through the daily life of the believers.

Indirect and Unintentional Care

When the church is engaged in its central task of proclaiming
the Gospel and administering the sacraments, faith is engendered in
the members and love follows—often without explicit instruction.
In many cases the spontaneous—indirect and unintended—result
is active love in the daily life of believers. The terms “indirect and
unintended” indicate that love flows from faith in the Gospel apart
from any specific or organized plan or “intention” on the church’s
part, while at the same time suggesting that the church serves soci-
ety “indirectly” by helping individuals who are in need.

Indirect and Intentional Care

As part of its proclamation, however, the church does also in-
tentionally speak of the works that characterize the lives of believ-
ers. Our justification before God is without works by faith, but
“good works should be done because God has commanded them
and in order to exercise our faith, to give testimony, and to render
thanks” (Ap IV, 189). The Formula of Concord advises that “it is
just as necessary to exhort people to Christian discipline and good
works, and to remind them how necessary it is that they exercise
themselves in good works as an evidence of their faith and their
gratitude toward God, as it is to warn against mingling good works
in the article of justification” (FC Ep, V, 18).

Thus, when the church is engaged in its central task of pro-
claiming the Gospel and administering the sacraments, an indirect
yet intended result will be the active love seen in the daily life of
believers. The church will in fact instruct the believers in God’s
Word “so that they will not be thrown back on their own holiness
and piety and under the pretext of the Holy Spirit’s guidance set
up a self-elected service of God without his Word and command,
...” (FC SD, VI, 20).

Believers also struggle daily with the Old Adam, and the
preaching of the Law alerts us to the pernicious effects of the Old
Adam’s struggle against faith.

In this life Christians are not renewed perfectly and completely.

For although their sins are covered up through the perfect obedience

of Christ, so that they are not reckoned to believers for damnation,

and although the Holy Spirit has begun the mortification of the Old

Adam and their renewal in the spirit of their minds, nevertheless the

Old Adam still clings to their nature and to all its internal and ex-

ternal powers .. . . Hence, because of the desires of the flesh the

truly believing, elect, and reborn children of God require in this life
not only the daily preaching and admonition, warning and threaten-
ing of the law, but frequently the punishment of the law as well, to

egg them on so thal they follow the Spirit of God... . (FC SD, VI,

7-9).

Francis Pieper summarizes this feature of the church’s work as
follows:

The Church must demand of its members that they prove the faith of
the heart by good works. The Church insists on a justification by works
[not before God but before men]. The further a Christian congregation
departs from this practice, the more will license abound in her midst,
the less will she fulfill her calling of being a light 10 the world and a
salt of the earth. Let her never forget that Scripture calls for this justifi-
cation by works. John 13:35: “By this shall all men know that ye are
My disciples if ye have love one to another.”*

The church will not shy away from instructing the believers in
the good works that characterize daily life on the basis of God’s
Word. In the words of the Epistle of James, we will teach that “re-

ligion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to
care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself
unstained by the world” (James 1:27). In this way an indirect but
intended effect of the church’s work will be the shaping of the love
that is shown in the daily lives of the believers.

The Central Concern of the Church

In the preceding section on “The Vocational Dimension of the
Church’s Life: Daily Work of All Believers,” we examined a cru-
cial dimension of the church’s life as regards faith active in love.
This is one of the dimensions discussed in the CTCR’s 1995 report
Render Unto Caesar.’ The Commission stated:

The church, as body of Christ, involves the daily work of all be-
lievers as they engage in the many occupalions thal, together, con-
stitute human communities and meet human needs. The church
reaches out with the love of God for a suffering world primarily
through the words and deeds of its members (Render, 91).

In the daily work of believers we have located the primary way
Christian care, the active love and hope that accompany a true liv-
ing faith, reaches out with the love of God for a suffering world.
This way of locating Christian care in the vocations of Christians
assumes that the church is “the assembly of all believers among
whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments
are administered according to the Gospel” (AC VII, 1). Therefore,
the central concem of the church “must always be the Gospel of
the forgiveness of sins, for Christ’s sake, through faith alone” (Ren-
der, 91).

If an assembly of people is to be and to live as church, then its
central mission must be nothing other than to preach the Gospel
and administer the holy sacraments. When this mission is lost, then
faith is lost; and when faith is lost, salvation is lost and with it the
energetic love and hope that accompany a true living faith. Fallen
children of earth can create assemblies that, to outward appearance,
do great deeds of love. But when deeds of love flow from some-
thing other than faith created by the Gospel, they are, before God,
sinful (Rom. 14:23). The Formula of Concord states:

{Works} which unbelievers and the unconverted are also able
and required to perform, are indeed praiseworthy in the sight of the
world, and even God will reward them with temporal blessings in
this world, but since they do not flow from true faith, they are sinful
(that is, spattered with sins in the sight of God), and God regards
them as sin and as impure because of our corrupted nature and be-
cause the person is not reconciled with God. A bad tree cannot bear
good fruit [Matt. 7:18], and “whatsoever does nol proceed from
faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23) (FC SD, IV, 8).

The central concern of the assembly of believers is to preach
the Gospel and administer the holy sacraments that faith, salvation
and eternal life may abound. “In the sight of God it is really faith
that makes a person holy; faith alone serves him, while our works
serve the people” (LC 1, 147).

Observe how biblical faith frees the Christian for service that is
in no way self-serving. We serve God only by faith’s receiving the
forgiveness of our sins won by Christ. Thus, nothing but Christ’s
work is required to put us right with God, so “Christians are free to
serve their neighbors in the countless ways which love discerns but
law can never specify.”'’ Christians “are free to love their neighbor
without any thought for themselves or their own fulfillment of the
law.””'! Because we are justified by grace through faith, we are free
simply to see needs and meet them in loving care.

Matthew 25:3 1—46 is instructive in this regard. When the Son of
Man comes, Jesus teaches, He [“the King”’] will say to those on His
right hand: ‘“‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hun-
gry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I
was a stranger and you welcomed me, [ was naked and you clothed
me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to
me’” (vv. 34-36). In order to lead us away trom the self-serving

2001 Convention Workbook