This ties very closely into the love-is-love discussion and another one about what hatred actually is. The premise we are expected to buy here is that this child was hatched in a particular state and we dare not discourage that behavior.
The premise is faulty. We discourage behaviors in children constantly. “Don’t pee on the neighbor’s porch.” “Don’t touch that hot stove.” “Cough into your elbow.” “Please be quiet while Ms. Isolde is talking.”
We are born with an inclination to sin in general. And, we are each susceptible to particular sins more than others. I don’t have to go into great detail here. We know who we are and what we do.
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” [Psalm 51:5]
Baptized into Christ, we live a life in conflict with sin. While our corrupted nature is inclined to sin, the new person of faith in Christ fights against them. That’s why we bother to instruct young and old in righteousness, because the faithful Christian in you does want to be good.
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” [Romans 6:1-2]
The premise, Johnny was born gay, falls apart when sin substitution is done. If the premise is true, then every sinful inclination must also be good.
If Suzie had an internal inclination to be irrationally defiant to authority, we wouldn’t allow or encourage that. 4th commandment, you shall obey authorities that it may be well with you and you may live long upon the earth.
If Bobby had an inclination to steal every shiny thing he saw, we wouldn’t allow or encourage that. 7th commandment, stealing is a sin and you’ll wind up in jail.
There’s also a more hyperbolic, but not impossible example. If Helmut had an inclination to torturing and dismembering the neighbors’ pets, We Would Be Horrified. And, rightly so. That’s a serial killer in the making. 5th Commandment, you shall not murder. That kid is a serial killer on the way.
The problem we’re having here comes from the love-is-love argument. In society, we stratify sin into categories of severity and deal out punishments appropriately. That’s a coram mundo (before man) understanding. Coram Deo (before God), all sin is equally damning.
Loving parents cannot encourage their children in sin. That’s a 4th commandment responsibility parents have to their children. They are to obey, you are to instruct in righteousness. God wants us to turn from sin. God turns us from sin.
“Behold, You delight in truth in the inward being, and You teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” [Psalm 51:6]
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” [Romans 6:3-4]
Turn from your sin, dear Christians, Jesus has set you free from it.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
We all know that we memorize songs on the radio much better than articles we read on our computers. We know that kids want to sing in VBS, not just listen to the Bible stories. This also we must do in the church. Even Issues Etc. recently remarked that a Roman Catholic priest after the time of Luther wrote that Luther “destroyed more souls with his hymns than he did with any of his writings.” And this is most certainly true. We may read words on the page, but Romans has clearly said: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” What we hear we believe, and not just what we see or read.
So today, let us turn to the hymn “These are the Holy Ten Commands.” Let us sing about the Law of God this morning:
These are the holy Ten Commands God gave to us by Moses’ hands When high on Sinai’s mount he stood, Receiving them for our good. Have mercy, Lord!
These Ten Commands we call the Law. But many Christians today would love to get rid of the Law, of the negative parts of the Scriptures. They do not want to be confronted by their sin, because they are good people who do not need a Savior at all. But that’s the pesky thing about laws: they don’t go away. In today’s world, it is still important that people go to church. In today’s world, we still expect that children obey parents and citizens obey their rulers. In our immoral society, we still hold that murder is wrong and that adultery is cause for divorce. This is because God’s Law never changes with the times. Though the Ten Commandments are no longer found in the courthouse, the courthouse still enforces them.
Let us sing of the First Commandment:
“I am alone your God, the Lord; No other gods shall be adored. But you shall fully trust in Me And love Me wholeheartedly.” Have mercy, Lord!
Much like the Law of God never changes, neither do His promises. Thanks be to God His promises are new every morning. Thanks be to God, His promises never fail. When God says He is your God, at baptism, at church, at the Lord’s Supper, then He is. Only we can change our minds and run away like prodigal sons and daughters. This commandment demands and commands faith, that God is all that matters to each and every one of us.
Let us sing of the Second Commandment:
“Do not My holy name disgrace, Do not My Word of truth debase. Praise only that as good and true Which I Myself say and do.” Have mercy, Lord!
While the First Commandments speaks of faith, the Second Commandment speaks of worship. Faith without doctrine is not faith. Faith without worship is not faith either. It matters that God’s Word is spoken and heard in this church. It matters that we believe God’s Word to be true and without error. This is why we call pastors, so that we have confidence that he knows God’s Word and teaches it faithfully. This is why we go to Bible Study, so that our faith may not waver no matter what we go through in life.
Let us sing of the Third Commandment:
“You shall observe the worship day That peace may fill your home, and pray, And put aside the work you do, So that God may work in you.” Have mercy, Lord!
This commandment more than all the others is sinned against the most. How often did Jesus teach about the Sabbath, come into controversy with the religious leaders on the Sabbath, and do miracles on the Sabbath? It was far more often than we would be comfortable to admit. The world Jesus entered is the same world that we live in. The sins are the same: we don’t go to church.
But Luther shapes for us what worship is all about, that God may work in us. Church isn’t about what we want, but about what God does. What does God do? He teaches the Word and administers the Sacraments. He asks me to carry it out, to deliver the goods, as it were. For it is at worship that God calls His children by baptism, teaches His people right and wrong, Law and Gospel, saint and sinner, Word and Sacrament. It is at worship that the Lord God feeds us His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of all our sins. It is so much easier and so much more joyful to come to church for the right reason, for the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting. We come to church for the promises of God, and not for our own desires.
Let us sing of the Fourth Commandment:
“You are to honor and obey Your father, mother, ev’ry day, Serve them each way that comes to hand; You’ll then live long in the land.” Have mercy, Lord!
The Lord Himself has ordered creation as husband and wife. The world will continuously create other arrangements of sinful behavior, but God created us in families for a reason. This is the foundation of all society. Fathers, teach your children what a Christian father is. Mothers, show your children what a Christian mother is. Husband and wife, be the example you want your children to follow. Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.
Let us sing of the Fifth Commandment:
“You shall not murder, hurt, nor hate; Your anger dare not dominate. Be kind and patient; help, defend, And treat your foe as your friend.” Have mercy, Lord!
This commandment governs all life. But notice what Luther focuses on. He does not focus on “murder,” the act of taking life. He focuses on our thoughts, hate, anger, and kind and patient, help and defend. This is often when we sin against this commandment, in our thoughts and not in our deeds. For this, we repent this day, and turn once again to the Lord of Life.
Let us sing of the Sixth Commandment:
“Be faithful to your marriage vow; No lust or impure thoughts allow. Keep all your conduct free from sin By self-controlled discipline.” Have mercy, Lord!”
Before God, we vow to one another that we love one another. Let our word of confidence always remain between us, that our deeds and thoughts may not wander. This commandment is not outdated or changed by government definition. Marriage shall always be between a man and a woman. Our promises to one another are more important than our feelings or anything else that may tempt us to flee one another.
Let us sing of the Seventh Commandment:
“You shall not steal or take away What others worked for night and day, But open wide a gen’rous hand And help the poor in the land.” Have mercy, Lord!
This commandment we shall discuss in further detail later this month on Stewardship Sunday. We cannot take what does not belong to us. But of the gifts that belong to us we give freely, generously, and cheerfully. When we have more, we give more, and when we have less, we give less. But we give without strings attached, not for our own sake, but for the needs of our neighbor.
Let us sing of the Eighth Commandment:
“Bear no false witness nor defame Your neighbor nor destroy his name, But view him in the kindest way; Speak truth in all that you say.” Have mercy, Lord!
This commandment tears up the church. In every parish in this country, there are meetings after the meetings, and this should not be so among us. There are lies and slanders, because gossip is juicy. This is the commandment I repent of the most; this is the commandment for all of us to repent of the most. For everything done in the church should be done publicly. There should be no secrets and there should be no darkness. There should be no cliques or special treatment. As Paul reminded the Galatians, there is no rich and poor, there is no young and old, but we are all one in Christ Jesus. There is one Sacrament that binds us together, there is one Church that waits patiently for the coming of the Lord.
Let us sing of the Ninth and Tenth Commandments:
“You shall not crave your neighbor’s house Nor covet money, goods, or spouse. Pray God He would your neighbor bless As you yourself wish success.” Have mercy, Lord!
Coveting leads to other sins. There is one clear thing about the world around us: people desire what they cannot have. Whether a house or boat or business, or a spouse or workers or friends, the world is not content with what they have. So they murder, love, or steal. They take by deeds what they thought in their hearts.
Dearly beloved, let us sing the final stanzas in conclusion this day of these holy Ten Commands:
You have this Law to see therein That you have not been free from sin But also that you clearly see How pure toward God life should be. Have mercy, Lord!
Our works cannot salvation gain; They merit only endless pain. Forgive us, Lord! To Christ we flee, Who pleads for us endlessly. Have mercy, Lord!
In the holy name of Jesus, Amen.
Rev. James Peterson First Lutheran Church Phillipsburg, Kansas
The Church’s one foundation Is Jesus Christ, her Lord; She is His new creation By water and the Word. From heaven He came and sought her To be His holy bride; With His own blood He bought her, And for her life He died.
How does Christ make disciples in the Church? He makes them by water and the word. Baptism is this work of God, and not our own work. Notice that the hymnwriter connects baptism to the Incarnation, that Jesus came from heaven to be married to His Bride, the Church. Jesus shows us that the life of husbands ought to be sacrificial for their wives, and that wives are more precious and valuable than everything else.
Elect from every nation, Yet one over all the earth; Her charter of salvation: One Lord, one faith, one birth. One holy name she blesses, Partakes one holy food, And to one hope she presses With every grace endued.
This stanza speaks of the church from all over the world united by One Lord, One Faith, and One Birth. Consider how beautiful this hymnwriter includes baptism, then prayer and worship, and then the Lord’s Supper, and then the hope of the life everlasting that we confess in the Creed. This is the life of the Church because the Church lives because of Christ.
Though with a scornful wonder The world sees her oppressed, By schisms rent asunder, By heresies distressed, Yet saints their watch are keeping; Their cry goes up, “How long?” And soon the night of weeping Shall be the morn of song.
What are the concerns of the Church today? There is persecution, there is false doctrine, there is low attendance, and there are so many different denominations. But we are those saints who are keeping watch, who pray like the Psalms, “How long?” How long until the Lord returns for us? is the yearning of faith among those who sing.
Through toil and tribulation And tumult of her war She waits the consummation Of peace forevermore Till with the vision glorious Her longing eyes are blest, And the great Church victorious Shall be the Church at rest.
We might expect to sing about justification at the end, but here the hymnwriter has put our vision out in front of us, awaiting the end of the world and the final victory of our Lord over sin, death, and hell. Rather than looking back, we look forward to seeing Jesus once again.
Yet she on earth has union With God, the Three in One, And mystic sweet communion With those whose rest is won. O blessed heavenly chorus! Lord, save us by Your grace That we, like saints before us, May see You face to face.
This final stanza connects us back to communion, back to the saints, and ultimately into fellowship and union with the Holy Trinity forever and ever. Amen.
Rev. James Peterson First Lutheran Church Phillipsburg, Kansas
Our world is an evil place. Full of selfishness, violence, envy and hatred, people kill and torture each other, steal from each other destroy neighborhoods and businesses and ruin the lives of their neighbors. Christians are attacked for their faith and for trying to live life according to God’s word. Don’t you wish that all good, Lutheran Christians could move to a new place, live according to the will of God and love for each other?
We’re not the first Christians to think this way. Some Christians moved to desert areas where they lived more or less by themselves or in communities dedicated to live a pure Christian life. Called Monks (from the latin word for being alone) and Nuns, it worked to a certain degree. But as a project to live sinless lives, it failed every time. It turns out that even the most pious Christian has a sinful nature living in them. No place and be the good place, because there is no one in this world who lives a sinless life.
American history is filled with communities which thought the could achieve an ideal society by inviting only Christians committed to the vision of its founder to settle in it. Sir Thomas More wrote a satire in 1516 he called Utopia (a pun on two Greek words that mean good place and no place) making fun of life in his time. He set it on an imaginary island in America. The Puritans tried such a community in Massachusetts, followed by the Quakers, the Moravians, the Amana Colonies, non-Christian movements such as the Shakers, the Mormons, the Harmonists and others — and even Lutherans in Perry County, Missouri and the Saginaw Valley in Michigan.
The problem was that no place in this life is the good place. The Old Adam and Old Eve live in the hearts of every Christian. Sin will emerge sooner or later. We can’t expect perfection here. Such communities often produce much good but when people put their trust in them and not God, they are bound to be disappointed.
The solution to the evil world is in Christ. He took the sins of the world on himself, bore them to the cross where he died to pay the price for the damage they caused, breaking the power of sin and death forever. On the last day, he will bring an end to evil once and for all, raise us all from the dead, transform our bodies for everlasting life. We will live together with him without sin, death, disease and evil. That is the good place.
So, if pulling out of the world is not a good solution for Christians, how do we cope? As most Christians have done for two thousand years, we continue to live in the world, but live according to the Word of God. We gather with other Christians, receive the gifts God desires to give us: the forgiveness of our sins, the hearing of his word of life, which has the power to change our hearts and the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus, which is food for the journey. We live for the next life, to witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus and to strengthen each other for the journey. Then, before we know it, we will be in that Good Place which lasts not for a lifetime, but forever.
Encore Posts: The Egyptians were not the only people that built pyramids. The Mayans, the Aztecs, the Sumerians — and the Babylonians did also. The all had the same purpose. They were meant to be man-made mountains that would be a ladder from Earth to Heaven, where they could visit the gods, sacrifice to them and get what they want from heaven. Most had temples at the very top, where sacrifices were made, some of them human sacrifices.
The people of Babel intended to settle down, build a city and one of these temples. This idea was sinful in two ways. God had commanded them to migrate over the whole Earth and fill it with people. They saw good farmland and decided to stay. They decide to build a great temple to manipulate God so that they could get everything they wanted. In a sense, they worshipped themselves. But God confused their language and scattered them anyway. Their sin resulted in people fearing each other and set one nation against another.
God gave Abraham a glimpse of this on Mount Moriah. Every indication God gave to him was that sacrifice would be just like the way his pagan neighbors practiced it. He demanded what was most precious to him in sacrifice — his own son whom he loved. But God had something else in mind on that mountain. God’s own son — his only son — whom he loved — stopped the sacrifice of Isaac. Later it would be God who would provide himself as the sacrifice for sin.
So Jesus came to be the ultimate sacrifice. His death was not an attempt to manipulate God, but was God of His own free will paying the price for their sins of rebellion. In Jesus, all divisions among people come to an end. The miracle of the Day of Pentecost showed that God can make us one people again — not to serve ourselves, but worship God together. The speaking of tongues on that day showed that God would bring together his people from all times, places, races, peoples, nations and languages.
Here are three common versions of the Sinner’s Prayer.
“Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior. In Your Name.” (Billy Graham Ministries)
“Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be.” (Campus Crusade for Christ)
“Dear Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner. I believe You died for my sins. Right now, I turn from my sins and open the door of my heart and life. I confess You as my personal Lord and Savior. Thank You for saving me.” (Greg Laurie)
Unlike so much of modern Christianity, these prayers do acknowledge sin in some way. They also acknowledge Jesus as our forgiveness. But, we’re missing what confession does. That’s why the church pulls confession and absolution into their own area.
In the confessional prayer at the beginning of the divine service we say, “most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We justly deserve your present and eternal punishment. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways to the glory of your holy name. Amen.”
The Greg Laurie version is particularly problematic. It flips the confession after the acknowledgement of forgiveness.
All three of these have a very high anthropology. That is to say, they put me into a high position relative to God. “I turn… I open… I invite…” This language is the opposite of what scripture teaches us concerning forgiveness. We were dead in our trespasses and sin. Lost, and hopelessly trapped, Jesus sought and found us.
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” [Ephesians 2:4-9]
The inviting, opening, and turning puts all the work of Jesus back onto to me. We rarely see it this way, but the Sinner’s Prayer is a works righteousness view of Christianity. It requires Jesus to wait on me to invite Him. The Bible calls us dead. Dead things don’t make decisions or open doors.
On the contrary, our Sunday morning prayers use a form that consists of address, rationale, petition, benefit, and conclusion. We do this, because it teaches us to pray from the word of God about the blessings God has already promised to us.
Address: Heavenly Father, O God, O Lord, etc. We pray to the Father directly because Jesus taught us to pray this way. He is our advocate with the Father, who hears us when we pray.
Rationale: You give us all worldly leaders and authorities for our benefit. We should always remember and acknowledge that every good gift comes from our Father in heaven.
Petition: Grant us relief from tyrants and wicked men. This is the ask. What is it that we beg of God today? The rationale and the petition go together. The Father has blessed us and we want Him to keep lovingly giving us His blessings.
Benefit: That through this temporal relief we may be free to love and serve You and to better serve our neighbor. Why? There are things that God’s blessings grant to us. His blessings are not just for us, but also that we may be a blessing to others.
Conclusion: In Jesus name. Amen We should always pray in Jesus’s name. He is our advocate with the Father.
There’s probably more to be said. The whole thing also centers around the idea that Jesus doesn’t enter my heart without my invitation. This is entirely oppositional to the witness of the Scriptures. We are dead in our trespasses and sin. There is nothing we can do or ask apart from the gift of the Holy Spirit to trust in Jesus Christ.
Pray to the Lord, the God of our salvation!
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX
