LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 110

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

Confession, the Small and Large Catechisms
of Martin Luther; the Smalcald Articles; the
Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope;
and the Formula of Concord—as these are
contained in the Book of Concord—are also in
agreement with this one scriptural faith?
The answer:
Yes, I make these Confessions my own because
they are in accord with the Word of God.
“Whoever confesses me before men.” What a wonderful gift the Holy Spirit has given us in the unity of
our confession! We are in agreement on the scriptural
teaching of the Trinity. We are in agreement on the two
natures in Christ, the human and the divine. We are in
agreement on infant Baptism and on the blessings that
Baptism brings; namely, the gift of the Holy Spirit
and the forgiveness of sins. We are in agreement in
our teaching on the Lord’s Supper; namely, that the
bread and the wine are the body and blood of Jesus,
the Son of God, and that with them we receive the forgiveness of sins, and where there is forgiveness of sins,
there is also life and salvation. And we are in agreement that salvation is a gift of God received through
faith in Jesus Christ, without any merit or worthiness
on our part. What a gift we have in this unity and in
many other teachings contained in our Lutheran Confessions to which all our pastors and church workers
and congregations subscribe. And we do not subscribe to these confessions because their teachings
happen to coincide with ours. We subscribe to them
because their teachings are the teachings of the Bible.
Five hundred years ago, this Lutheran confessing
began with the nailing of a document to the door of
a church in Wittenberg. That’s half a millennium of
confessing. And in this confessing, our Lutheran forebears were following the example of the martyrs and
saints who went before them, men and women who
confessed the truth—often in the face of severe persecution and even death. At times, their confession was
a bold and powerful one; at times, it may have been
rather quiet, but in one way or another, they gave an
answer concerning the hope that was in them.
And it is especially as we consider the deaths of the
martyrs that we realize this confessing we do is not
just something we do together. But this joy and this
right of confessing the faith and confessing our trust

110

|

U P O N T H I S R O C K • Essay

in Jesus belongs not just to the Church at large. It
belongs to every individual Christian. It belongs to
you. You see, there is an intimate connection between faith and confession. The apostle Paul says,
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
and believe in your heart that God has raised Him
from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart
one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one
confesses and is saved” (Rom. 10:9–10). This is not to
suggest that confession is a good work which in and
of itself saves. No—faith justifies, Paul says, and out
of this faith the mouth sends out a confession. It is as
though the Holy Spirit, through His Word, breathes
in faith, and the one who is a Christian breathes out
a confession of that faith. Christians confess the
faith, whether together with other Christians in the
Divine Service or individually, as they go about their
daily lives. Do they confess at every single opportunity?
Sadly, no. But Christians do confess the faith. There
is an intimate connection between faith and confession. Martin Franzmann put it this way in verse 3 of
his hymn Thy Strong Word: There we sing, “And our
lives our hopes confess.” Our lives our hopes confess. I
think, therefore, it is entirely appropriate that the Office of International Mission has adopted as the theme
for its outreach program, Every One His Witness.
2

When I used to teach a confirmation class, I would
have a true/false section on the tests I gave. One of
the questions that would generate a lot of discussion
was this one: True or False: Christians go to church.
Now some of the students would mark “False,” because
they wanted to avoid the idea that if you missed church
for one or two Sundays, you were not a Christian. On
the other hand, the statement “Christians do not go
to church” is obviously false.
So it is with the confessing of the faith. True or False:
Christians confess their faith in church and in the
world. You cannot respond to this statement with
the word False. At the same time, we admit that we
do not always do what we should. We are sinful, and
although it ought to be as natural as breathing to
confess this faith that is in us, we are often reluctant
or timid or afraid or embarrassed. Yes, it is true. We
don’t treat our spouses the way we should; we don’t
treat our children the way we should; we don’t treat
2

LSB, 578:3.

“Built on the Rock—Confess”