LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2023, Page 94

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himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20). We preach Christ
crucified by preaching the Christ of the apostles and the
prophets. Those who prophesied His saving death and
resurrection in the Old Testament, 16 and those who were
eyewitnesses of these things, and, commissioned by Christ,
have given us their Spirit-inspired testimony in the New
Testament. Because the Scriptures testify of Christ, and
because Christ and His apostles have left us the example of
preaching Christ crucified from the Scriptures, we devote
ourselves to this sacred book, the very Word of God that cannot
be broken. And searching these Scriptures diligently and
learning from the whole counsel of God, we preach Christ
crucified, the Christ of the Scriptures.

“How are they to believe in him of whom they have never
heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”
(Rom. 10:13–14). This is still how the Lord is adding to the
number of those being saved. Through the preaching of Christ
crucified. Publicly in the church through His called pastors. And
through the witness and message of Christ crucified given by
parents and teachers and friends and neighbors.

We preach Christ crucified. We preach Christ crucified. We
preach Christ crucified. Because—statement number seven:
Preaching is God’s plan for the world’s salvation.

While preaching may look simple and weak and even foolish,
the preaching of Christ crucified comes freighted with the Spirit
of God and the Light of Christ Jesus. The message of Christ
crucified is God’s own message—and the Word of God does
things.

Can that really be? Would God really have taken all of the
saving power, all of the saving benefit of His beloved Son’s selfsacrifice, and located it in mere preaching? That is exactly what
God has done.
It seems so ordinary and mundane: preaching. In a sermon,
Luther once mused about how useless and feeble mere
preaching seems. Luther says, “In the eyes of reason God
appears to be the biggest fool of all fools when He tries to
accomplish His purpose by means of the Word and
preaching….To be sure, the world despises it and says: ‘It is a
matter of opinion’….The world has always been opposed to
preaching. If I had been…Christ’s counselor,” Luther continues,
“I would have recommended the use of force and fists. I would
have told Him: ‘What good does it do You to preach? The more
You talk, the less happens. They laugh and jeer about You to
boot. But if You beat about with Your fists, they would feel it.’
[But] Christ does not follow my advice.” 17
Indeed, preaching is God’s plan and God’s way. St. Paul writes,
“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God
through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of
[preaching] to save those who believe.” 18
This was God’s own plan. Jesus told His disciples, “Thus it is
written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise
from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins
should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning
from Jerusalem” (Acts 1:3; Luke 24:27, 46–47). And that is
exactly what happened, beginning in Jerusalem. His apostles
and His followers bore witness, they preached Christ crucified.
Whether they were sent for this purpose or scattered by
persecution, “they went about preaching the Word” and
“proclaiming the Christ”—in all Judea and Samaria, and to the
ends of the earth (Acts 1:8; 8:4–5).
16
Jesus taught that the Old Testament predicts His betrayal,
crucifixion, and resurrection. The apostle Paul says something similar,
that his proclamation of Christ’s death and resurrection is “nothing
[other than] what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass”
(Acts 26:22 ESV).
17
Luther’s Works AE 23:382.
18
1 Corinthians 1:21. The ESV translates the expression τῆς
μωρίας τοῦ κηρύγματος as “through the folly of what we preach.”
This can also be translated as “through the folly of preaching,” as an

94 | PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2023 (68TH) LCMS CONVENTION

We preach Christ crucified because preaching, because the
message of the cross, is God’s plan for the salvation of the
world. And thanks be to God that He has brought such
preaching and such good news to you and to me.
Statement number eight: Preaching is powerful.

God spoke, and there was light. God spoke, and all things came
to be. He spoke, and lepers were cleansed. He spoke, and the
centurion’s son was healed that very hour. He spoke, and the
storming sea became still as glass. He spoke, and dead Lazarus
came walking alive from his tomb. He spoke, and the paralytic’s
sins were forgiven, and he took up his mat and walked home.
“The voice of the Lord is over the waters,” the Psalmist declares.
“The God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters. The
voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of
majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord
breaks the cedars of Lebanon” (Ps. 29:3–5).
What will be the church’s future? What will sustain the
church’s faith? What will bring Christ’s light and salvation to
hurting sinners who grope in darkness, even to those who mock
and rail against Him? The preaching of Christ. We preach Christ
crucified, because such preaching is not really the word of man,
but what it really is, is the word of God. 19 “The one who hears
you, hears me,” Jesus says (Luke 10:16).
We preach Christ crucified, for preaching is powerful.
Statement number nine: We preach Christ to all.
Isaiah prophesied about the Christ, “It is too small a thing for
you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring
back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you as a light
for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the
earth” (Isa. 49:6).
And so, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,
having died for all, having, by His blood, “ransomed people for
God from every tribe and language and people and nation”
ESV text note suggests. (Similarly, KJV: “by the foolishness of
preaching.”) Both are legitimate translations of the noun κήρυγμα,
one focusing on the message that is preached, the other focusing on the
act of preaching itself. Both are also theologically true: It pleases God to
bring salvation by such a simple, foolish-seeming thing as our
preaching, and it pleases God to bring salvation by the foolishseeming message of the death of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world.
19
See 1 Thessalonians 2:13.

Convention Essays