Author: Robert Smith

Encore Post: in late May 1838, Pastor Jesse Hoover died. In the frontier town of Fort Wayne, Indiana, his congregations mourned. Along with them, the whole region missed him, too. Lutheran pastors were rare in the dark forest. Elder Adam Wesel of St. Paul’s congregation wrote to the Mission Committee of the Pennsylvania Ministerium for help. Among other things, he pleaded:

“Have pity, honored fathers and brothers and send us a Pastor… If you canvas the northern part of Indiana you will soon see how important it is that you send us a faithful Shepherd. The harvest is great but unfortunately there are no workers. If it is not possible to send us a Pastor, dear brothers, then send us a circuit rider. We hunger and thirst for the Word of God.”

The letter arrived in Pennsylvania at a perfect time. The committee had planned to send a survey missionary West in September. But their candidate could not go. They were without a man to send.

In August 1838, a letter from Johann Häsbärt arrived at the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Ministerium Mission Society, highly recommending Friedrich Wyneken. The Executive Committee invited Wyneken to visit Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to meet with them. In the company of Häsbärt, Friedrich met with the committee.

So convinced of his fitness for the task and likely moved by his zeal for the work, the Missionary Society set aside its usual practice of waiting until September to send out its workers. They commissioned him to “move to Indiana, to search for scattered German Protestants to preach to them, and, if possible, gather them into congregations.” While the Committee intended Wyneken to make Indiana his base of operations, they also directed him to labor in Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Credentials in hand, Wyneken embarked upon his ministry as a Missionary, traveling in the company of Häsbärt as far as Havre de Grace, Maryland.

In Pittsburgh, Wyneken met for the first time C. F. Schmidt, the editor of Lutherische Kirchenzeitung, who would prove a close friend and the channel through which Wyneken’s first appeals would reach the world. From Pittsburgh, Wyneken traveled by train and canal boat to Zelienople, Pennsylvania, where he purchased a horse and cheerfully rode off to be, as his friend C. F. W. Walther would later describe him, the Lutheran Apostle of the West.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

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

©2018 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@msn.com

Encore Post: The Ascension is an important event in the life of Jesus and in the life of the Church. It is the final part of the work which redeemed us: the cross, where our sins were paid for; the resurrection, where the power of the grave was broken; and the ascension, which restored all His honor, glory, authority, and power. From the early church over 1500 years ago until recent years, the church celebrated the Ascension on the fortieth day after Easter, or on the Thursday ten days before Pentecost. In the 21st century, many churches celebrate Ascension on the Sunday before Pentecost.

When He ascended, Jesus left His Church with a promise, a mission, and a blessing. He promised to be with us always until the end of time. He gave us our mission. We would join His mission to seek and save the lost by going to the whole world, being witnesses to His life, death, and resurrection, proclaiming the good news of salvation, baptizing, and teaching all He commanded us. As He ascended, He blessed them as Aaron and the High Priest did and as pastors do to this day, giving us His peace. He promised to be with us always, until the end of time itself.

Now the church waits patiently for him to return. On a day that no one knows, Jesus will return. On that day, he will raise our bodies from the grave, judge all the living and the dead, and bring an end to sin, death, and the power of the devil. God will live among us again, throwing the greatest marriage feast of all time. He will dry every tear from our eyes.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

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

©2018 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share, and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@msn.com

[Thirtieth in a series of posts on church words] 

Encore Post:

In our post on Justification, we talked about the very good news that Jesus saves us by grace alone, through faith alone, for Christ’s sake alone. When God declares us “not guilty” from his throne, we really are “not guilty” for our sins and will not be punished for them. This is because Jesus was punished in our place on the cross. We are now holy in God’s sight, as if we had never sinned in the first place.

There is one problem — we still sin. In one setting of the Divine Service in the Lutheran Service Book, we recite a passage from the First Letter of St. John to each other during confession, which makes this clear. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we don’t sin. (1 John 1:8-9) St. Paul discusses the war within himself between his new Adam and his old Adam in Romans 7. God solves this problem by sending his Holy Spirit to make us holy. This process is called sanctification.

The word is borrowed directly from Latin, meaning “to make holy.” Lutheran theologians use it in two ways. In general, sanctification includes everything the Holy Spirit does to make us holy: from when he uses baptism and the preaching of the gospel to create faith in our hearts to the day we die or Christ returns, and thereafter he purges sin from our lives forever. Because Catholics believe a person isn’t fully saved until sin is completely gone from their lives, they include time in purgatory after death. Lutheran theologians prefer to use it in a more specific way than to refer to everything the Holy Spirit does after God justifies us.

When we talk about sanctification in general, we talk about it as a process. Using God’s word and the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit changes our hearts. Now we want to please God, not to bribe him to save us, but to serve God because we love him. We now do truly good works, and these, in turn, help us in the battle between our sinful self and our saintly self. Even then, these works are not strictly ours — God prepares them for us to do in the same way a teacher prepares homework for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10) This struggle lasts all our lives, but is complete the day we die. On that day, Jesus will greet us and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” and welcome us into his eternal kingdom.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

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

©2019-2025 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share, and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@msn.com

[Twenty-Ninth in a series of posts on church words] 

Encore Post:

When you talk to people about what they believe, you hear a bunch of ideas that sometimes do not seem to fit together. More often than not, they tell you more about what they do and not why they do it. A Roman Catholic might tell you they go to Mass every Sunday and do not eat meat on Fridays. A Seventh-day Adventist might tell you they go to church on Saturday, or a Muslim might tell you they pray five times a day facing Mecca. If they do get to what they believe is true, the teaching might seem random. What you need to know is their most important teaching — the one on which all the rest are built.

For Lutherans, the teaching on justification is the doctrine on which the faith stands or falls. The question is, how does God make a sinner a saint? We believe that justification is a legal proceeding — a forensic action. From his throne, God declares sinners not guilty, even though he knows full well that we are guilty. He does this because there is no longer a penalty to pay for our sin. Jesus took the sins of the whole world and paid the full price for them on the cross. In our place, God declared him guilty and sentenced him to death. When he said, “It is finished,” the debt we owed was stamped “paid in full.”

Yet justification does more than grant us forgiveness. When God said, “Let there be light,” it was created by the power of his word. When he says, “not guilty,” we are recreated. A new Adam or Eve is born in us. So it is not simply a legal fiction. We really are righteous because God says so. And that changes everything.

When we use a computer to write something, we can choose to right, left, or fully justify the document. What we mean is that all the letters will line up at the left, right, or both margins. In theological terms, God aligns our actions with his will and the law through a process called sanctification. It is not completed in us before we die. God completes us when we enter his presence at the end of our mortal life. But that is another post. It is on this point that we differ with Roman Catholics, Methodists, and Holiness denominations, among others.

Yet God’s word clearly teaches the truth of Lutheran teaching about Justification. The gospel is really true — we are justified only because God is gracious to us, that we believe and trust that it is true, all because Jesus was born, lived a perfect life, suffered, died, and rose again for our sake. It is what makes the gospel such sweet, good news.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

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

©2019 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share, and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@msn.com

[Twenty-Eighth in a series of posts on church words]

Encore Post:

A child is born in ancient Rome. The baby is carefully cleaned and tenderly wrapped. She is brought to the father of the family (pater familias) and set at his feet. The household watches to see what the father will do. If he picks up the child and says, “This is my son,” the baby will be an heir in the family, even if the mother is a slave. If he turns and walks away, the child will be set outside in the street, exposed to the fates and not a part of the family. By this and similar legal proceedings, a free Roman could adopt anyone he wished and grant all the rights and privileges due to his children to that person. In Greek, the word is υἱοθεσία (υἱοθεσία — huiothesia — the placing as a son, the adoption as a son)

Because he loves us, God arranged for us to be adopted as his sons (Ephesians 1:4-5). At just the right time, the Father sent his Son to be born of the Virgin Mary, to redeem us by his sinless life, suffering, death on the cross, and resurrection, so that we might be adopted as his sons in our baptism. He then sent his Holy Spirit into our hearts, so that now we can call him “Abba” — “Father.” (Galatians 4:4-7) The Holy Spirit testified to all of this. Now, since we are God’s heirs — heirs with Christ, we share in his sufferings in order to share in his glory. (Romans 8:15-17) We await the final adoption decree, the resurrection of our bodies at the end of time. (Romans 8:23)

Because we are adopted as sons of God, we are now a part of his family. Jesus is our older brother. All Christians are now related. We are each other’s brothers and sisters in Christ. God has given us to each other. When one of us suffers, we all suffer. When one of us is blessed, we are all blessed. We care for each other, protect each other, and worship together. When our older brother returns, we will live and reign with Christ. That is why Jesus prays for us, that we may be one, as he and the Father are one. It is also why we all go by one name — Christian.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

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

©2019 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@msn.com

[Twenty-Seventh in a series of posts on church words]

Encore Post:

When the Bible speaks about good works, it really is not talking about the everyday things we think about when we mention good things people do. You know these kinds of good works: someone stops to pull a child out of a burning car. A famous person sneaks out, gives her entourage a slip, and goes to the homeless shelter to care for people in need without cameras. Or just the simple good things people do to make life better for others.

As noble as a good deed is, the good things people do are always deep down colored with mixed motives. Maybe we did them so that people would sing our praises. Maybe we expected to get something from them, a reward, a trophy, or a good deed in return. The Hindu idea called Karma is supposed to work that way. If you do good, good will be done to you.

Sometimes the things we choose to do are our own ideas. All-night vigils, long fasts, pilgrimages, and similar feats are very impressive, but God never actually asks us to do these things. They all have the effect of making us feel better about ourselves. Jesus had a simple but biting evaluation of their worth. “You have received your reward.”

The bottom line is that no good work done saves us or even especially pleases God, unless we do them because we have faith in God and want to thank him for his love and mercy towards us. Strictly speaking, non-Christians cannot do good works. Everything they do is motivated by a desire to get something out of it. Even Christians who love and trust God aren’t perfect when it comes to doing good with pure motives.

Truly good works, then, are the product of faith in Jesus Christ. Every thankful thought, grateful prayer of thanksgiving, and things done because we love God are good works. Even though a sinful thought or motive might tarnish them, because Christ earned our forgiveness on the cross, God does not count these sins against us but sees only those things we do because we love him.

So, good works are not worthless. Nor are they trivial things that really don’t matter because God has already saved us. What is important is to put things in good order. Faith in Christ comes first. Then, because we already love God, we want to do good things to thank him for his grace and love. With the strength he gives, we do what he created us to do — good works, which he prepared in advance for us to do.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

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

©2019 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com

[Twenty-Sixth in a series of posts on church words]

Encore Post:

“You won’t die,” hissed the snake. So, what could it hurt? So Eve and then Adam ate the fruit. What they didn’t realize is they had ruined everything. In effect, they told God they knew better than him. They built a wall between God and us. But that was not all. They built walls between them and set their descendants up for constant warfare in one form or another forever. And, it turns out, God was right. Cut yourself off from the source of life, and you die. Slowly, but surely, your body wears out. Creation itself tries to kill you, and everything lives for itself and nothing else. Thorns infest the ground.

When two people are angry with each other, someone has to bring them together. Often it is an apology sealed with a small sacrifice, — one man buying his angry friend a beer, a husband bringing flowers to his wife or other sign of giving a part of themselves to reconcile. The bigger the breach, the more dramatic the sacrifice. An employee resigns to save the company and restore faith in it. A child works off the cost of the window her softball broke.

God told us from the beginning what the sacrifice must be. A holy God cannot live with a sinful, selfish being. To be reconciled to God means to die. Yet God loved us from before he made the world and does not want sinners to die. So God himself provided the sacrifice to bring about at-one-ment — atonement. First, it would be prize lambs or other livestock that would be hurt for a shepherd to lose. Yet that would never really do. So his people still die.

It would take the sacrifice of a sinless human life to bring God and his children back together. Yet they are in short supply — all humans are born sinful. And God himself is sinless — but he cannot die — or so it seems. God in his grace decided to redeem us with the sacrifice of his Son — his only Son– whom he loved. This is not divine child abuse as the atheists charge because God is the Holy Trinity. When the Son of God died, God sacrificed himself. So, the Eternal Son, the author of life, became a man in the womb of the Virgin Mary. When he died on the cross for us, he saved us with his own blood. The curtain of the Holy of Holies tore from top to bottom, and the walls between us came tumbling down.

Now we are at one with God. In every Divine Service, the Lord Jesus seals the New Covenant in his blood. He gives us his body to eat with the bread and his blood to drink with the wine. It is a down payment on the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, which we will join all too soon. Then, fully reconciled with God, we will live with him forever.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

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

©2019 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com