Material Principle – Page 2 – What Does This Mean?

Church Words #24: Salvation

Encore Post: One of the most used words in the church’s vocabulary is salvation. We sing about it, we preach about it. It is the goal that every Christian aims for. You can ask even a child what it means. It means that we go to heaven when we die. Right?

Not really. Salvation is not about what we are saved for. It is about what we are saved from. The Hebrew word ישׁע (yasa) and the Greek word σῴζω (sozo) mean “to help, to make whole, to save, to deliver” and similar things. The Hebrew word is behind the names Joshua, Jesus and Isaiah and many others. It is used for saving people from disaster, sickness, enemies and oppression. God saved his people from slavery in Egypt. He saved and preserved his people countless times, not because they deserved it but because he loved them.

It is also used by the prophets for the ultimate rescue — from sin, death and power of the devil. These begin with the promise to Adam and Eve that their Seed would crush the head of the serpent, Satan, and he would bruise the heal of the Seed. (Genesis 3:15) The promised Messiah would bear our sins, atone for them and intercede for them. (Isaiah 53) Finally, he would be born of a virgin at just the right time. (Galatians 4:4-5) The Angel announced to Joseph that he would name the Messiah “God saves” (Jesus) because he would save his people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21) Jesus was the Lamb of God, who bore the sins of the world to the cross. (John 1:29) His death destroyed death and his resurrection won the victory for us, opening the grave for us on the last day. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)

Ultimately, then, what Jesus saves us from is sin. Sin threatened to destroy us and separate us from God forever. This is why we do not return to sin, now that we are baptized. It would be like having a fireman carry us out of our burning home, only to try to go back to get our favorite pictures. There is no point in being saved when you are going to put yourself in danger. When we were baptized, we died with him. When he rose, we rose to new life.

So, what are you saved from? From sin, death and the power of the devil. Why? So that you can live as his child, redeemed, forgiven and be with him forever.

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

Blog Post Series

Church Word #14: Faith

Encore Post: Faith is one of those “church words” that everyone knows and uses, but find hard to pin down. We use it to mean everything from a family of church bodies, to a system of things people believe, to trust in God, to accepting something is true, but that we cannot prove. Hebrew uses various forms of the word ( אמן — ‘aman— firm, trustworthy, safe). The word Amen comes from this same word. It means something like: “I believe that. I agree. It is true”) The Greek language uses one word for both faith and belief. (πιστεύω — pisteoo — to believe, πίστις– pistis — Faith) When the New Testament uses the word, it uses it for both what we believe in and our trust in God to keep his promises to save us.

Many Christians think of faith or believing in a different way. They think it means something like accepting as true and as facts things they can’t prove, such as “Jesus is God,” “God will raise us from the dead on the last day,” and other teachings of the Holy Scripture. They may understand passages like Hebrews 11 to mean this. (For example, verse 1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”) What they miss is that most of the chapter is about what the Old Testament saints did because they trust God and his promises. James, the brother of Jesus, demonstrates how mistaken this view of faith is when he wrote: ” You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! ” (James 2:19)

When the Bible talks about faith in God, (Saving Faith, Justifying Faith) it means a trust in God to keep his promises, especially his promise to save us. This trust is not something we create by things we do. It is created in us when the Holy Spirit comes to us through the Gospel, Baptism or the Lord’s Supper. (Romans 1:17, John 20:30-31, Ephesians 1:13, Romans 1:16-17) Our faith clings to Jesus, believing that his sufferings and death on the cross forgives our sins and gives us everlasting life. This faith responds to the Grace given to us in God’s Word and the Sacraments. It thanks God for his mercy, praises him and gives us the desire to serve God and our neighbors.

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

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Grace Alone and Scripture alone at Leipzig

It really was not about indulgences. The Ninety-Five Theses were a spark that ignited a debate about the place of the Pope and other church authorities. Luther’s opponents noticed the Reformer had challenged their authority when he criticized the abuse of indulgences. Luther had given German princes the excuse they needed to forbid the sale of forgiveness. Luther pleased Renaissance thinkers, who lived by the motto Ad Fontes (to the source) and put the allies of the papacy on the defensive. That is why the attack on an obscure monk consumed all of Europe and why Johann Eck led the charge.

Eck challenged Luther’s friend Andreas Karlstadt to a disputation about free will and grace. He did this hoping the Reformer would join the debate. His goal was to get the Reformer to admit he was attacking the Pope and his power. Duke George “the Beard” of Saxony offered to host the disputation in Leipzig. He pressured the University of Leipzig into organize the event. On 27 June 1519, the disputation opened with a mass at St. Thomas Church (where two centuries later Johann Sebastian Bach would be a Church musician and composer) The event itself was held in the great hall of Duke George’s castle.

Karlstadt and Eck began the debate by discussing the role of free will and grace in the salvation of sinners. Karlstadt argued that a sinner had nothing to contribute to his own salvation, but was completely dependent on the grace of God. He defended this doctrine on the basis of the Scriptures. Eck responded that the Pope and Church tradition taught that grace was necessary, but there was something in a person that worked with it to save him. Karlstadt countered that Scripture is the final word on such matters. The Wittenberg professor was a good scholar, but Eck was a brilliant debater and had set the table for Luther to enter the discussion.

Luther and Eck covered a wide range of topics. In the end, the debate turned on the authority of the Pope and Church Councils. Eck accused Luther of promoting the teachings of Jan Hus, who was condemned as a heretic by the Council of Constance one hundred years earlier. Hus was burned at the stake when the Holy Roman Emperor at the time went back on his promise to Hus of safe conduct. It was a powerful slander. With that, Eck labeled Luther and his followers Lutheran, implying they followed Luther and not Christ. This forced Luther to admit that both Popes and Councils could make mistakes and that there was some truth to the charge.

Later Eck would admit that Luther had proved twelve of his thirteen theses. The last one, and in his eyes, the most important, Eck believed he had won. The result was to make clear the brake between the teachings of Luther, and the Scriptures, and the Pope. There would be no turning back. It was only a matter of time before the church would excommunicate Luther.

Martin Luther, St. Paul and Righteousness

We think of Martin Luther as a great reformer, a writer and a pastor. And he was all of these things. But his call was as a professor. His first lectures were on the Psalms, Romans, Galatians and Hebrews. To do these well, he spent many hours reading commentaries and the writings of the Church Fathers and the scholars of the Middle Ages. Once in awhile, he found himself not quite understanding a passage or a word. He spent months trying to understand some words. When he finally came to understand repentance, he described his excitement as if it unlocked all of Scripture for him.

Over Five Hundred years ago, as he was preparing to lecture on Romans, the great scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam, published a Greek New Testament (1516) with Erasmus’ own Latin translation with it. It was then he came up against Romans 1:17: ” ‘For in it [the Gospel] the righteousness (δικαιοσύνη) of God is revealed from faith for faith” Everything he read said this righteousness was the quality of God that moves him to condemn sinners. He just couldn’t understand how that was good news.

His friends urged him to lecture on the Psalms again, so he began teaching the book in March and April of 1519 — five hundred years ago. While he was working on his lectures in his tower study, he couldn’t get Romans 1 off of his mind. Then his eyes fell on the context: “The just shall live by his faith.” All of a sudden, it occured to him that the righteousness of God is not the holy nature of God, but it is God’s gift of righteousness that Christians receive by faith as a free gift for the sake of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was as if God had opened the gate of heaven for him. God’s righteousness is a gift God gives by his grace.

Luther has a way to go before he fully understood theology they way Lutherans do today. Yet God had revealed to him the central teaching of the faith. He would never forget his tower experience.

Reading Ephesians in the Summer

If you have been reading this blog awhile, you may remember my comments on the structure of the Church Year in liturgical churches, especially the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod. Our long Pentecost season allows continuous reading of books of the Bible — in some cases whole books. In the three year lectionary, we will be doing this with the book of Ephesians beginning this Sunday.

As it turns out, I did a running commentary of Ephesians 1 & 2 at the beginning of this year. If you want to read this series of posts, start with “So, Does God Hate Me?”. At the bottom of each post, select the link for the next “Material Principle” post. If you find your curiousity peaked, drop Pastor Hercamp and I a comment on the blog itself. We would be happy to write a post to answer a question or explore a topic.