July 2022 – Page 3 – What Does This Mean?

More About Accepting Jesus as Your Personal Savior

Encore Post: In my first post about accepting Jesus as your personal Savior, I explained that you do not need to do so. Why? Because God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has already accepted you. God made you his child when God the Father loved you before he made the world, chose you to be his own, rigged your future to make sure you would be adopted as his child. The Son became man, shed his blood to redeem you and the Holy Spirit sealed you in baptism and lives within you as a down payment on your eternal life. (see Ephesians 1)

So, where does that leave those who have pledged their lives to Jesus, invited him into their hearts and believe they are born again? The bottom line is all of this shows some sort of faith in Christ and trust in his promises. That faith saves them. They are mistaken that the commitment in any way saves them. The reason: it is God’s grace alone, received by faith alone that saves us. They have the cart before the horse. Works do not save you. Salvation gives us the power to do good works — including giving our lives to Jesus. (Ephesians 2:8-10)

In fact, Lutherans make commitments to serve God and their neighbors all the time. It begins with vows at our baptism — made by us when we are baptized as adults and for us when we are baptized as children. In every divine service and in private confession, we confess our sins and confess our faith in the ecumenical creeds. At Confirmation and every time we join a new congregation, we renew these vows. These frequent confessions and pledges have a very practical value. Since Christians continue to sin the rest of their lives. It is only at death the we are sin-free. These confessions tap the power of the gospel to strengthen our faith.

The trouble with depending upon our own strength to commit our lives to Jesus for salvation is we can never be certain we’re saved. Were we sincere? Did we really commit our lives to Christ? Or were we in it for the approval of other or to escape hell. So many re-commit themselves at every opportunity. We become unsure of whether God loves us and whether he really love us. This could, ironically cost us our faith and salvation. This is why Lutherans insist on the gospel

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana

About Accepting Jesus as your Personal Savior

Encore Post: Our evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ are all about making a decision for Christ. They will often ask, “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior?” Such a question sounds strange to Lutherans, along with the similar question, “are you born again?” The reason is Lutherans believe these are really the wrong questions. Why? Because Jesus sought us, found us, saved us by his suffering and death, accepted us in baptism and gave new birth in it by water and the Holy Spirit. So, yes, thank you, I am born again, but no, I did not accept Jesus as my personal Savior. He accepted me and made me God’s child and his brother. There is nothing more personal than that.

I once was asked by someone if I could study all the Bible passages with him that talk about accepting Jesus as Savior. My answer was no, because there are no such passages. In fact, if you go through the Bible looking for people who were lost and sought God, you will find very few. Think about it for a moment: God made Adam and Eve. When they sinned, he came and found them. He went to Noah and told him to build the ark. He found Abraham and told him to leave home, promising to give him a son. He came to Jacob when the patriarch ran away and wrestled with him. He called to Samuel in the night. He sent Samuel to find and anoint David. Almost every book of the words of the prophets begin with: “and the word of God came to…” We don’t seek God, he seeks us out.

Why is this? We were dead in our sins. (Ephesians 2:1-3) As the saying goes, “Dead men tell no tales.” As Martin Luther says it, “I cannot by my own reason or strength, believe in my Lord Jesus Christ or come to him.” (Small Catechism 2.3) Because he loved us, he is gracious to us. He was moved in Christ Jesus to become one of us, live a perfect life for us, take our sins upon himself and die on the cross for us. It is by this grace we are saved, through his gift to us of faith.

In a sense, we can talk about decision theology, then. God decided to save us. He is our personal savior, because he made it so. We will live with him forever because of this. We can rest in the peace this brings, confident that he will remove every sin from us one day, the day he calls us forth from our graves and dries every tear in our eyes.

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Pastor Emeritus
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Compassion into Action

Sermon on Matthew 9:36; Luke 10:1-20
4^th Sunday after Pentecost
Our Hope Lutheran Church
3 July 2022

Text: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest… “Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you” … “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” … Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Intro: These past few months have been filled with tragedies that made the news. School shootings, natural disasters, brutal warfare, the incredible evil one human being can do to another, especially the innocent and defenseless. We confront this coming out of a truly scary plague and the overreaction of those who meant well making it worse. We can’t help but feel bad for people. And so we reach out and offer our thoughts and prayers – and we follow through, too! It all seems so weak a response. What can you do when you want to do something! When there is not much you can do?

A question that leaps to mind – especially for a man of my generation – is what would Jesus do? The gospel lesson and its sister passage in Matthew begin to answer that question and its follow up – what would Jesus want us to do?

Jesus reacted as Jesus often does… his heart went out to them and he sent help.

Christ’s heart goes out to us.
1. There are several Greek words the New Testament uses to talk mercy talk. Two of them are:
  1. ἔλεος – to be kind to people, even if they do not deserve it. It is used in the most ancient prayer of the church — Κύριε, ἐλέησον, Lord, have mercy
  2. Σπλαγχνίζομαι – To feel compassion in your internal organs. In the New Testament, it is almost always entirely used of Jesus. The closest we can come to translate it is to say: “his heart went out to them” or “it broke his heart.”
  3. Our English word is not too bad – it comes from latin: compassio – to suffer with.
2. When Jesus’ heart goes out to people, compassion results in action.
  1. He feeds 5000.
  2. He heals the sick.
  3. He raises the dead.
  4. He calls on us to pray – and sends workers out.
Sometimes our compassion doesn’t go that far.
1. We see something and say, “that’s awful”
2. Sometimes we pray, which is not chump change, by the way, but that’s it.
3. Once in awhile, our heart itself moves, and we do something. But not much.
4. God wants us to always have compassion, but most of the time we don’t have that emotional bandwidth. Our heart is not in it.
Jesus invites us to share his compassion.
1. Why didn’t God just crumple the world into a ball and build Earth 2.0? He loved us.
2. The heart of God went out to us, and his Son became one of us.
3. He lived a perfect life for us, suffered and died for us, rose again for us, because he had to do something, but not just anything!
4. The Holy Spirit took out our heart of stone and gave us a heart of flesh in Baptism.
5. Now we want to show mercy, as our Father shows mercy.

Conclusion: So what to do? Pray for sure. Jesus invites you to do so. Donate? Of course; either in kind or cash. Roll up your sleeves and go to work on the ground? There are many churches and non-profits here in the Fort that would love to have you. Mister Rogers used to say, when asked what to tell children with disaster comes to TV was, “Look for the helpers. There are always helpers.” Maybe one of them is you.

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana