Ecclesiology – Page 3 – What Does This Mean?

The Forgiveness of Sins

Encore Post:

[Thirty-Seventh in a series of posts on Martin Luther’s Small Catechism]

King David was a prime example of someone who needed forgiveness. In one episode, he managed to shirk his duty as a commander, lust after his neighbor’s wife, use his power to rape or commit adultery with her, lie to her husband, send him on a suicide mission to murder him, then marry Bathsheba to cover it up. He sinned against everyone, it seems. Yet it is to God he goes for forgiveness. In the end, all sins are rebellion against God. (2 Samuel 11:1-12:25 and Psalm 51)

Forgiveness is hard to come by in this world. When we are hurt, we want to return that hurt in kind. Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism have no forgiveness — you pay back the bad karma you give with suffering in this life or nearly endless reincarnations. Mormons must cease sinning to pay for forgiveness and progress towards godhood. Pagan religions require a suitable sacrifice to an appropriate spirit.

Christianity is different. We have a loving and merciful God, who, in Jesus, died to pay for our forgiveness and, through the Holy Spirit, gives faith, the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. The Spirit uses his Church to bring this forgiveness to all. In the Church, the Gospel is preached, God adopts his children through baptism, Jesus gives his body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, and he hears our confessions and absolves us of our sins through pastors he sends to do so.

So, then, the Church is not a country club, a place where only good people need apply. It is a hospital, where we who are sick can get well, taking the only medicine that can make us well. We are, after all, beggars telling other beggars where they can find bread.

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

The Marks of the Church

Encore Post:

[Thirty-Sixth in a series of posts on Martin Luther’s Small Catechism]

The word “Church” is used in many ways by Christians. We call our buildings churches. We name our local gatherings of Christian churches. We talk about national organizations of Christian believers, congregations, colleges, seminaries, and churches. We even call worship services church — in a way. Strictly speaking, the Church is all those who have faith in Christ. Even though only God knows for sure who is a Christian or who is not, the public confession of Christians and their good works reveal them to us and to the world. The same thing is true for the Church as a whole. When the Gospel is preached and the sacraments are offered, there you will find the visible Church. So, these things are called the marks of the Church.

The Means of Grace are the instruments that the Holy Spirit uses to call people to faith in Christ and to strengthen and maintain that faith. He places these gifts into the hands of the church and the pastors he calls to shepherd them. They are the masks God wears to seek and to save the lost. He calls them together to receive these gifts, encourage one another, and thank and praise him. This divine service is what we often call worship.

The church in this sense is also called the church militant — the fighting church — because it is at war with the World, the devil and his forces, and our sinful desires. These earthly organizations formed by members of the Church are plagued by the same things individual Christians are. Because its members are sinful, the congregations also sin, are persecuted by the world, tempted by the devil, and suffer along with the Christians who form them. Unbelievers may also belong to them, all the while deceiving themselves and others, behaving like any other Christian.

Yet, as flawed as they are, God loves his people and chooses to use them to proclaim his Gospel, to create faith, to forgive sins, and to bring the lost home. After all, the Lord of the Church, her Good Shepherd, laid down his life for them. And the day will come when he will return to bring his bride, the church, home to enjoy the marriage feast, which has no end.

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

One Flesh in Two Persons: Marriage

Encore Post: For six days, God had been creating the world. He spoke, and light appeared, earth took form, land appeared out of the great sea. The sun, moon, and stars shone in the sky. Plants grew on the ground, fish swam in the sea, and animals roamed the earth.

Now Father, Son, and Holy Spirit conferred and said, ” Let us make man just like us. “And so he made us — male and female. He planted a garden, came down, formed Adam (His name means “ground, soil” in Hebrew) from the soil, and breathed life into him. But something still was not quite right. Adam was alone.

So God brought all the animals to Adam. He named them all one by one. While they were good, something just was not right. Dogs and Cats just didn’t do it. So God made woman from his own bones. Now at last man was just like God–– two persons in one flesh. Adam called her woman—she-man, and named her Eve—life, because she would be the mother of all people. God’s creation was finally complete. He had made marriage and the family. This was very good.

This perfect image of God, holy like him and the closest human beings have to understanding the nature of God, was ruined by sin and its consequences. When people make themselves the center of the universe, there is no room for a god or another. Now sin tempts us to look everywhere for pleasure rather than in the very good gifts God has given to us. As we turn our hearts from our beloved and the Beloved, they grow cold and unfeeling.

This is why God condemns adultery, pornography, same sex relationships and acts, pre-marital sex, sexual assault, rape, and all other seeking of desire outside of the love of one man and woman, united in marriage for a lifetime. It divides what God himself has joined together and mars the image he placed in us. It destroys the image of Christ’s marriage to the Church and obscures the work he has done for us.

But when we were lost, unfaithful to God our husband, Jesus came and sought us to be his holy bride, with his own blood he bought us, and for our life he died. When he found us, he washed us, cleansed us in baptism, so that he could present us as his radiant bride. On the last day, he will come for us, and bring us to the wedding and the marriage reception that lasts 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

©2018-2026 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

Little Sheep that Hear the Voice of Their Shepherd

Encore Post:

[Thirty-fourth in a series of posts on Martin Luther’s Small Catechism]

God the Holy Spirit gives no end of blessings to God’s people. When he calls us by the Gospel and creates faith in our hearts, we hear the voice of our Shepherd. We will live with him forever. “What else can he give us?” we think.

And yet, there is more. He calls us to be members of his church. The Greek word for church is ἐκκλησία (ekklesia) which means literally “to call out, to call up.” Greeks used it for a city council or a militia unit. The Greek translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint, LXX) used it for the gathering of God’s people. Jesus, the Gospel authors, and St. Paul used it in this way. Martin Luther defined in the Smalcald Articles 10.2: “For, thank God, a child seven years old knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd.”

The Holy Spirit calls, gathers, and enlightens the whole church into which he places us. But this church is not limited to our local congregation. It is catholic — a Latin word that means universal. All people who believe in Jesus Christ are a part of this church. It includes people of all nations, races, places, and situations. It also includes the Church Triumphant, Christians who have died in the faith and whose spirits now live with Christ. It is eternal and cannot be destroyed. This Church is one and cannot be divided.

It is also invisible. Since the faith that makes us a member of the Church dwells in our hearts, only God knows who belongs in it. Yet it is very real. It means that we are never alone. Not only is Jesus with us always — not only does the Holy Spirit dwell in our hearts, we have our brothers and sisters to be with us, pray with and for us and to share our burdens with us. And one day, they will be with us before the throne of God, praising God forever for his grace and mercy.

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

Jews and Gentiles

Encore Post: The Greeks saw the world as made up of two kinds of people — Greeks and barbarians. For the Romans, it was Romans and pagans. In the 1960s, we saw the world as Americans versus Communists. The Communists saw the world as Communist, Capitalist, or Imperialist. For the Jews, it was Jews and Gentiles.

Of course, for them, God was the source of this separation. He called Abraham out of the Sumerian culture and the service of multiple gods to the service of the one true God. He set him apart from the rest of the world to be a blessing to it. He grew the nation from the descendants of Abraham and Sarah. He freed them from slavery in Egypt, gave them his law, formed them in the desert, and gave them the land of promise.

But there, the other nations — the gentiles — worshiped other gods and lived in great immorality. Not the least of that evil was that they would sacrifice their children for favors from their gods. So God commanded the people of Israel to kill them all and destroy all their possessions. The Israelites did not do this perfectly. Those people tempted God’s people to wander from him and sink into their immorality. God punished them by exiling them to Babylon. Except for 150 years, they lived as the subjects of pagan nations.

They learned a lesson. The Jews — at least the pious ones — tried to keep the law so perfectly they invented their own laws and traditions. Among those was strict separation from Gentiles, to the point of not even eating with them. In the temple, they would not allow Gentiles to enter the temple proper and punished transgression with death.

The celebration of Epiphany marks how the coming of Christ changes this once and for all. Jesus died on the cross for the sins of both Jews and Gentiles. The reason for the division is demonstrated when the temple curtain tore in two from top to bottom. Now, as Isaiah prophesied, the nations come to God through Christ and meet God’s people there. Together we praise him who called us both out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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

Meet Wilhelm Löhe

Encore Post: 154 years ago, Wilhelm Löhe was the pastor of a small, rural parish in Neuendettelsau, Bavaria. He was a leader in Germany’s then-new Confessionalist movement. Because of this role, he always had a strained relationship with the leaders of his church body and so was kept out of the way — or so they thought.

Löhe was a man of boundless energy, persuasive when advocating a cause, and highly skilled at marshaling talent and funds to accomplish a goal. In 1842, he read Friedrich Wyneken‘s appeals for the spiritual need of German Lutherans on the American frontier and his stirring plea for pastors. Löhe published his own appeal. He arranged to meet Wyneken to publish a polished version of the missionary’s appeal, titled Die Noth der deutschen Lutheraner in Nordamerika (The Need of the German Lutherans in North America). These appeals caused donations to flow in, and soon, second-career men volunteered to meet the need.

But Loha was just getting started. With his friend Johann Friedrich Wucherer, he provided a basic education to second-career men who volunteered to go to America. Soon they founded a mission society, raised funds, wrote manuals, instructions, and churchly books. He at first sent these men and donations to the Ohio Synod’s seminary in Columbus, Ohio. When cultural and theological differences made that no longer possible, he worked with Wilhelm Sihler, pastor at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Fort Wayne, Indiana, to found a “practical seminary” — an institution focused on providing pastors for the church as quickly as possible. In October 1846, this institution opened in his parsonage. This institution is now known as Concordia Theological Seminary — but that is another story!

Wilhelm Löhe, his friends, and his small parish were just getting started, though. Seeing the suffering of the poor, the ill, the widowed, and the orphaned, he revived the office of deaconess. He also sent men and material to the Wartburg Seminary and its church body, the Iowa Synod (now a part of the ELCA), to Australia, the German colonists of Russia, and other places. To provide a Christian witness to native Americans, he organized and founded Frankenmuth, Michigan, and neighboring communities. His liturgies and worship books became the foundation of the Missouri Synod’s liturgy.

At the age of 63, Wilhelm Löhe died still serving as the pastor of his rural parish on January 2, 1872. He is buried where he served. His institutions still continue to this day, serving God and his church worldwide.

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

Last Things #14: The Missing Millennium

[Twenty-Third in a series of posts on Last Things] Encore Post: Called the “Jewish opinion” by the Lutheran Confessions, the belief in a Millennium comes from a face value reading of Old Testament prophecy and poetry about the Church or about eternal life with God after the Second Advent. It also treats the Book of Revelation, written in a symbolic code called apocalyptic, in a similar way. By doing so, it uses difficult to understand passages to complicate the very clear words of Jesus, Peter, Paul, and other New Testament writers. It is the view of the Pharisees that caused them to rule out Jesus as the Messiah, because he did not intend to battle the Romans and to miss that the Scriptures pointed to the birth, life, sufferings, death, and Resurrection of the Son of God.

The word itself comes from Revelation 20, where the reign of Christ through his church is described as 1000 years. This number is not a literal 1000 years, but is Jewish numerology. The number ten meant to them perfection, and when multiplied by three, the number of God, it means everything is completed. It points to our times when the Gospel has reached every corner of the earth.

While it may seem harmless to believe such things, it detracts from what Christ has commanded us to do. It reads every event, looking for the return of Christ. Instead, we should be ready, as Jesus instructs us, making disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching them, knowing he is with us always.

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, 2023 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

Last Things #13: Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

[Twenty-Second in a series of posts on Last Things] Encore Post: They were ordinary days. The seaside resort of Pompeii was bustling with the daily activities of the luxurious retreat for the most affluent Romans, who escaped the pressures of the imperial capital of ancient Rome. That is, until Mount Vesuvius buried it in ash for 1700 years. It was a lazy Sunday morning in Hawaii, slower than usual for a navy base — until Japanese bombs shattered Pearl Harbor that December 7, 1941. On a bright, lovely September morning, a pastor drove from downtown Fort Wayne, practicing a sermon for chapel on the first regular day of classes for Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne — a sermon he rewrote on the ride in as he learned airplanes had destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City that September 11, 2001. Life was normal — until the world changed.

On another ordinary day, when people will go about their daily lives as usual, eating, drinking, marrying, working in the field and in businesses, Jesus will return from Heaven. (Matthew 24:37-41) He will appear in the sky with the angel armies of Heaven and the souls of his people with him. Every eye will see him. He will send his angels to gather both those who are saved to meet him and the damned to be judged. ( Matthew 13:41, 49, Matthew 24:30-31) There will be no rapture, where Christ appears secretly to claim his own and leave the world in tribulation. This notion comes from a misunderstanding of the dispensationalists.

At that time, Jesus will break the seal of the grave forever. All people will rise from the dead in the great resurrection of the dead. All souls will be reunited with their bodies, and Christ’s own will be transformed to be just like him. (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17) As great dread has been put in this day, it is for Christians the most joyful day of all, even with the next event — the Last Judgment — coming. For the goal of the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord is this day, when all is made right, we are restored to his image, and we will shine like the stars in his kingdom. So, the Church has always prayed: Come, Lord Jesus, come!

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

Pastoral Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Last Things #11: Rapture and Tribulation and Millennium — Oh My!

[Twentieth in a series of posts on Last Things] Encore Post: Many of our evangelical brothers and sisters are fascinated by Biblical prophecy. Seeing the evil around us, they are convinced that we are living in the very last years and months before Christ returns to raise the dead, bring an end to sin, death and the power of the devil, gather all in the final judgement and begin the marriage feast of the lamb that has no end. They are not alone — in every period, Christians were convinced they were living in such times — even St. Paul and Martin Luther!

What makes their view unique in the church’s history is that they accept a theological view called Dispensationalism, a Christian school of thought that was born in the 1800s. It adopted the ancient view that Christ would reign on earth literally for 1000 years after he returned in glory. It was set in the way of looking at history, inspired by the 19th-century cultural movement known as Romanticism. Dispensationalism was developed by Charles Nelson Darby, D. L. Moody and C. I. Scofield.

Dispensationalists believe God divided the world into seven dispensations (also called economies and administrations). In each age, God supposedly revealed himself in different ways. Salvation was offered according to different plans for each age (for example, under the Law of Moses, salvation was by works, but in the church age, by grace), and humans were held accountable to the set of rules for that age. They get to these views by treating prophecies written in figurative and symbolic language at face value and using the interpretations they discover to understand, in a complex way, the simple and clear words of Jesus and the apostles.

For them, this age will end when the events predicted in prophecy occur. They look to current events to fulfill these prophecies, treating the Bible as a giant algebra problem. Some have used such calculations to predict end-time events. Among these are the rapture, when all true Christians will suddenly be removed from the world, leaving only unbelievers, the Tribulation, when they will be punished, and those who come to faith, seeing these events are persecuted, and the Millennium, when Christ and the church will rule the world for a thousand years. Two problems with this: Christ promised he would return suddenly, and the last judgement follows immediately (so the Bible is not an algebra problem), and these versions of a rapture, a millennium, and a tribulation are not in the Bible.

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

©2018-2023 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

Stir up Sunday

Encore Post: In the Anglican Church’s Book of Common Prayer, the collects for the last Sunday of the Church Year and three of the four Sundays of Advent begin with the words “Stir up …” In England, where the mix for Christmas Pudding needed to cure for weeks, hearing the words of the collect reminded households to stir up the Christmas pudding! So they nicknamed the Sunday “Stir-up Sunday.”

Lutheran churches do not use the first collect, perhaps because it is a kind of works-righteousness. But we do use the three Advent Collects. They are:

First Sunday of Advent: Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come, that by Your protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by Your mighty deliverance;

Second Sunday of Advent: Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of Your only-begotten Son, that by His coming we may be enabled to serve You with pure minds;

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come and help us by Your might, that the sins which weigh us down may be quickly lifted by Your grace and mercy;

The three prayers summarize the themes of Advent. We call on God to come, knowing he has come in the person of his Son, comes to us each day by the Holy Spirit, and will come to us on the last day. But our prayers make his coming our own in a special way. The Spirit and the Bride say to us Come! They invite us also to say Come! to God’s children, lost and found. They call on us to say, Come, Lord Jesus. And so we do in Advent.

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