You say it every time you recite the 1st commandment and its meaning: “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” But what does that actually entail? What does it mean to fear, love, and trust in God? Suffice it say the words work together so talk about faith.
I deeply appreciate the definitions that Rev. Peter Bender provides along with his Lutheran Catechesis materials. He offers this definition for fear: “the awe and reverence of the heart toward God.” Also in light of the first commandment, he adds, “The terror of heart caused by the demands of God’s Law.”
There are two types of fear in play then when talking about fearing God. We must always remember who is the Creator and who is creature. Obviously the Creator is greater than creature. The Lord speaks through Jeremiah about He being a potter and we being His clay. He can do whatever He desires with us. We should be afraid of Him because of the terror that He can be to sinners. The Lord God is a consuming fire. Fire is a good thing, but we can have a healthy fear of it. If, for instance, fire is uncontrolled it can be dangerous.
Fear, love, and ultimately trust, all come together in the worship of Triune God. We love God when we by the Holy Spirit desire to hear His Word. We are called to rely on His Word for our life now and into eternity. This is the life of faith. This is a life that relies upon God for everything that makes up our needs for this life and the next.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
Sermon on Romans 6:3-5, 9-11 The Vigil of Easter April 16, 2022 Our Hope Lutheran Church Huntertown, Indiana
Text: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. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. … We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Intro: Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed, Allelujah! Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who by his death has destroy death and by his rising again opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
The Easter Vigil is one of the oldest worship services the church celebrates. As early as the first or second centuries, the church at Jerusalem met at sundown on Holy Saturday to tell the whole story of salvation – from the creation of the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus. People love stories. We read them, tell them, quote them and enjoy them over and over again. Even ones that are of real people, often embellished, have a charm for us.
The story of salvation is the best of them all, not only because it has great power and drama, filled with one water rescue after another, but because we are a part of it. This story is not over yet and that makes all the difference in the world. This story, you see, will actually end happily ever after, when Jesus will raise us from our graves to live with him forever.
Jesus is at the center of this story
As God, he created the world.
He kept Noah and his family safe on the Ark.
He spoke from the burning bush to call Moses and was in the pillar of cloud and fire.
He is the Redeemer Job will see on the last day.
He stood with the three witnesses in the fiery furnace.
At just the right time he was born of the virgin Mary,
As the Lamb of God, he was slain for us.
Through apostles, faithful witnesses, pastors and countless others, he brought the word of God to us.
We are in this story.
In our right time, his Holy Spirit, united us with him in Holy Baptism.
When he died, we died with him.
When he rose again, we rose with him, too.
On a day very soon, he will come for us to bring us home.
And on that last day, he will call our bodies from the grave and we will live with him forever.
So now, we consider ourselves dead to sin but alive it him.
With yesterday we looked at how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, how He humbled himself to the place of servant even though He was the master, and the one who deserved to be served. He served His disciples last night attempting to prepare them for the greater service and humiliation of the very Son of God going to the cross for the sin of the world.
To suffering the Lamb goes. And all this He does willingly out of His great an amazing love for you. No sin too great no sin too small. All sins are dealt with on this day once and for all. The wrath for all the sin of the world is poured out on this one Man, the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Poured out on Him instead of you. And He loves you so much that He would rather take upon Himself the punishment than see you languish under the eternal condemnation of the Law. It’s a Good Friday for you.
Last night we heard how the Lord’s love is continual and perpetual. He loves His own until the end. And today my dear friends in Christ Jesus, this love is made even more manifest for you. Behold the very Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the One who takes your sin away. He is the one who pours out his blood for you and for your salvation. God became man for this very day, to serve you in this way. It’s a Good Friday for you.
Know His love, feel His embrace. See how He loves His own. How he nurtures and takes care of His bride. He lays down His life. By His stripes we are healed. He drinks the cup put before Him and fills that cup now with His own blood that we might have His life in us. And have it abundantly at that. It’s a Good Friday for you.
The cross that was a barren thing, a couple pieces of dead wood nailed together are now the place where life is given to you freely. It is your tree of life. You have your life because of the Life that hangs on the tree. He pours out His blood, and gives it you. Come and receive your life from His cross. Eat of his flesh and drink of his blood for these you have His love and His life now in you. It’s a Good Friday is for you.
See the Love of God in the Suffering Servant, your Lord Jesus, who set Himself like flint to go to the cross for you and your salvation, loving you unto the end. He has done it. The battle done. And you have life and have it abundantly for his sake.
Look to the cross and rejoice for the One who was long promised to come, has come. He has shown Himself by His self-sacrificial love, and He still showers us with His love and mercy via the preaching of His Word and Administration of His Sacraments. Sing the praise of Him who died upon the cross. And look to the cross for all mercy. Live in its shadow. By that, I mean to say come often to where the gifts of the Christ’s cross are given to you. Come then to the altar and have your eyes be fixed on Jesus on the cross. Baptism and Christ’s Supper only have their power by the event of the cross. By these Sacraments you are brought to the cross, and your eyes oriented on Christ’s sacrifice and love for you. It’s a Good Friday for you.
In the account of St. John 13 from last night, Jesus told His disciples where He was going the disciples could not come at first. He is speaking about the cross. He is speaking about his death. He must confront and battle Satan and death and defeat them for us. And by His death He conquers death once and for all. Death is swallowed up. Death took a bite of the wrong guy for He has power over death. And so now you do not need to fear death but rather look to the cross and our Lord’s passion. The cross takes the terror of death away. For your sins are taken away for the sake of Him who died for you loving you unto the end. It’s a Good Friday for you.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
Sermon on Luke 15:1–32 Fourth Sunday in Lent Our Hope Lutheran Church & Kramer Chapel March 27th-28th, 2022
Text: “[The Father] said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’ ”
Intro: The Parable of the Prodigal Son is, ironically, not about the lost son. It is about the Father and another son – the older one. Nor is the other two lost parables about the lost sheep or the lost coin. Nor are they about the ninety-nine sheep, safely grazing in the pasture or the nine coins still in the woman’s purse. They are about the friends and neighbors and the angels of God. God looks everywhere for the lost and rejoices when he finds them. He throws a party and wants us to rejoice with him. For they were dead and now are alive again; they were lost and now are found.
Before He made the world, God loved us.
He chose us to be his children, rigged things so that we would be adopted as his heirs.
In Jesus, he became one of us, sought us, died for our sins and rose so that we might live with him forever.
His Holy Spirit put faith in our heart, keeps us safe in his care and is a guarantee of our salvation.
God loves sinners and wants us to love them, too.
Yet we are not alone. God has countless lost children, who have wandered far from home.
Jesus searches everywhere for them.
When he finds them, he rejoices and brings them home.
He throws a party for them and wants us to celebrate and be happy with him.
Yet sometimes we do not feel like celebrating.
Most of us have lived our lives as faithful Christians.
Yet we live in a world that at best ignores God’s will and worst defies it.
When they finally come to their senses, are we really all that happy about it?
What we forget is that we are sinners, too.
Jesus came from heaven and sought us.
He was born and lived in every way we are, except he didn’t sin.
He bore our sins and complaining to the cross, where he died in our place.
He rose to break the power of sin and death.
He brought us home, singing and rejoicing.
In the end, we will share his joy in the party that lasts forever.
This can be a challenging topic for Christians to hear and understand. But, understood well, it is a tremendous comfort. The comfort is not just for the confidence of individual Christians in the faith. But, the confidence also is in Christian witness, that what we perceive as success and failure are not ours but the Lord’s.
First, it is good for us to understand that’s foreknowledge and election are different attributes of God. This distinction is not for God’s benefit or to contain His action or His will. This distinction serves us by preventing us from applying our own reason to fill in gaps what God has revealed to us of himself. The revealed aspects of God and those hidden things can deliver us truths which seem to be in paradox. Our duty as Christians is to embrace and hold fast to those seeming paradoxes in the confidence that we have received what we need to know.
God’s foreknowledge is his knowledge of all events of history, the current time, and the future prior to their occurrence. The prophets are all examples of this attribute of God. This is not to say that they possessed the attribute of God of which we speak. But rather, God revealed to them some of his foreknowledge, allowing them to prophecy correctly. And, that is the mark of a true prophet. What a prophet says, if they are from God, must come true.
“But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.” (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)
God’s foreknowledge includes Christians and unbelievers alike. But it is not given to us to understand this as a causal relationship. That is to say that the foreknowledge of God does not cause sin or evil. The cause of evil and sin is the Devil himself, and mankind’s evil inclination to do sinful things. God’s awareness of all things does not cause bad things to happen.
There are two errors of human reason concerning predestination/election that arise from our discomfort with those things revealed to us that seem to be in paradox.
The first is that there is no predestination/election. This is the Arminian teaching commonly referred to as decision theology (teachings rising from: Jakobus Arminius 1560-1609). Decision theology lays hold of the truth that damnation is a result of mankind’s sin and hatred of God. Then, the Arminians make the intellectual extrapolation that salvation must also be a result of the will of man. The assumption that I can choose God simply does not stand in the face of the scriptures. St. Paul say we were dead in sin. Dead things don’t do things apart from the external, life-giving work of the Holy Spirit.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (Ephesians 2:1-3)
The second error is that God chooses both the salvation of some and the damnation of others. This is a Calvinist error that rises from applying human reason to the hidden things of God and in mingling together foreknowledge and election (teachings rising from: John Calvin 1509-1564).
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:3-6)
Reason says, “if God chooses some for salvation, then He must choose not to save others.” Reason is wrong. He is uncomfortable with incomplete understanding God reveals to us. The rest may be revealed to us at the eschaton, the resurrection of all flesh. But, for now, it is not give to us to know or understand.
There is a simple gap in our understanding between what is revealed and what is not. Those are not given to us to fill-in or to work-out in our own understanding. Rather, God has revealed what He wants us to know. It is sufficient for our salvation by faith in Christ Jesus.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX
“Love your enemies.” This is one of those difficult phrases of Jesus that hits right at our hearts. As my parents used to remind me, if you are mad with someone, pray for them; it will help you not be mad at them anymore.
But “love your enemies” is even a bit more difficult than that because sometimes prayer does not solve issues or restore friendships. “Love” these days in our world is all about feelings and all about selfishness. But that is not Christian love. It is not the “love” in the Scriptures. “Love” means to sacrifice for the sake of someone. Who would sacrifice anything for their enemies?
David certainly wrestles with this in Psalm 3. Let’s take a look.
O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; 2 many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.”
David’s enemies think he should be damned. “There is no salvation for him in God.” What’s more, these foes that are rising against him are led by Absalom his son. David the King vs. Absalom the prince. Talk about a family feud brewing! We love our children, but sometimes our children do not love us. We ask ourselves, “How could David love his son Absalom, the son who is about to kill him?”
3 But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. 4 I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill.
David has our answer. The Lord is his shield. David’s army was against him. His own son was against him. But God was not against him. God would defend him. God would protect him. God would never leave him or forsake him.
“Love your enemies” may be one of the most difficult challenges for us, but we know that God loves His enemies, even those who killed Him, even those who sin against him. He loves even us and forgives us. This we know for the Bible tells us so.
With this comfort in mind, David then continues:
5I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. 6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.
As someone remarked the other day, these verses are not here so that we know that David was tired, and that he needed a nap. David writes this in the poem to show how God is his shield. Even though his son pursues him, even though the army wishes to kill him, even though he has enemies all around, the Lord grants him sleep. The Lord sustained him that evening and each day.
David will not be afraid, and neither should we be afraid. For just as God was David’s shield, he is our shield too. We can love our enemies as God loved His enemies, and we do not need to be afraid because God will sustain us.
Now the psalm finishes with even more comfort.
7 Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.
8 Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people!
“Save me, O my God!” This is David’s prayer, and we hear it again and again in the Scriptures. So many in the Gospels say this very thing to Jesus. “Save us” is “hosanna” in Hebrew. This points us toward Palm Sunday when the entire crowd is chanting “Hosanna!” And save them He did, five days later when He died on the cross.
On that day, our Lord “loved His enemies” even unto death.
What are we fighting about anyway? It seems everywhere you look these days, there is fighting going on. There are fights in families about politics and health. There are fights on social media, and friendships are erased. There are fights between countries, and anxiety among the nations. What are we fighting about today?
Let’s take a look at Psalm 2.
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, 3 “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? According to the psalmist, it is because they are fighting against the Lord and against His anointed. Preach that in this world that is angry 24/7. Why don’t families get along? Because you are fighting against the Lord. Why don’t I have any friends anymore on the internet? Because you are fighting against the Lord. Why are countries destroying one another? Because they are fighting against the Lord. I imagine this message would get laughed out of the room because there is no space for truth like Psalm 2 tells us.
But consider what the war cry is, that “we” would “burst our bonds apart and cast away cords from us.” That they would be free. That is what the war is about. That is what all the fighting is about. That this world wants to be free from God, wants to be free to sin, wants to be free to speak, but only because “I am right and you are wrong.”
It would seem that at the time of the Psalmist, they have forgotten that the truth will set you free. It seems in our own day, that we have forgotten that the truth will set us free. Without the truth, there will always be fighting because there will always be lying. But the fighting isn’t so personal, it is in fact theological. The people are fighting amongst themselves because they are fighting against the Lord.
Let’s take a further look at Psalm 2.
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. 5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, 6 “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”
7I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. 8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. 9 You shall breakthem with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
What will God do about this? It is clear what He will do. He sets His King on Zion, the holy hill. In other words, it is only through the church that peace will come on earth. And the church will only have peace because that King is God’s Son. We know Jesus has come, and that He has brought peace on earth through His death on the cross. We know that Jesus is God’s Son, begotten of the Father. And that we are now going therefore, baptizing and teaching and making all the nations into His heritage.
Consider these comforting words of warning from Psalm 2 today:
10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. 11 Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. 12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
I often teach about the 3 P’s of the Psalms: Poetry, Prayer, and Praise. As we begin taking a look at the Psalms, we notice right away that they are written as poetry and not prose. Hebrew poetry is not written like we might write poetry, with rhyming and meter and so forth. It often compares the righteous and the wicked (as we will see in Psalm 1) and repeats a thought to emphasize and describe what the poet means.
Psalms are also prayers. Whereas many of the passages of Scripture are written in third person past tense, the psalms are frequently written in first person. “Have mercy on me, O Lord!” “Save me, O my God!” This makes the psalms memorable, personal, and powerful as we read them, pray them, or worship with them.
Finally, psalms are praise. I say “praise” for the sake of alliteration. What I really mean is that the psalms are songs. The book of Psalms was the first hymnbook of the church and it has remained in this place in worship even today across denominations and contexts. Psalms are poetry and they are prayers, but they stay with us because we sing them.
Let’s take a look at Psalm 1.
The Way of the Righteous and the Wicked
1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
The first word we find in the entire book of Psalms is “blessed.” Throughout the Old Testament there are many comparisons between the blessings and the curses. And this Psalm certainly brings this out. I often remind my people that this is also how Jesus began His most famous sermon “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” This is also similar to how many pastors begin their sermons with “Grace, mercy, and peace.”
What we want to focus on next in these two verses are the verbs. First, the blessed man does not walk. As we know, “Synod” means to walk together, and this reminds us of the fellowship we have with the congregations around us. But in this case, the man is not walking into sin, “into the council of the wicked.” This is so easy to do, and it is the way that temptation starts. We walk the walk, walking the way to destruction.
What else does the blessed man do? He does not stand in the way of sinners. When we think of walking, there is always the opportunity to “walk away from it.” But now the sinner stands with other sinners and participates with them in it. Now the sinner is one of the rest, just like everybody else.
But soon after we walk the walk of sin and destruction, eventually we talk the talk too. That’s what the sinner does. The blessed man does not get to this point, but the sinner certainly does. Now he scoffs at the blessed man and reviles the faithful.
Walk, stand, sit. This is the progression of sin that the Psalmist wants us to think about. What logically comes next? Lying down dead. As Paul says in Romans 6, “the wages of sin is death.” And that is the result of unrepentance and sin.
What makes the blessed man so blessed?
It is that “he delights in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” In other words, the blessed man loves the Bible. The blessed man studies God’s Word and believes it is true. The blessed man is not walking or standing or sitting, but hearing and reading and believing.
And as Lutherans, it is important that we do not get stuck on the word “law” in terms of Law and Gospel. “Law” here means the entirety of God’s teaching in His Word. This is the Word of God we love, and it is the Word of God we study. And this is what makes each and every one of us blessed by God and called to be His beloved children.
“Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.” Luke 11:28
A Short Summary of the Sermon of Dr. M. Luther Delivered on Reminiscere Sunday March 16, 1522 Martin Luther Preacher at Wittenberg
Now we have heard all the things which ought to be considered here, except confession. We speak about it now.
In the first place, one form of confession, founded on the Scriptures, occurs when someone commits a sin publicly, or with other men’s knowledge, and is accused before the congregation. If he abandons his sin, they intercede for him with God. But if he will not hear the congregation, he is excluded from the church and cast out, so that no one will have anything to do with him. This form of confession is commanded by God in Matthew 18:15, “If your brother sins against you (so that you and others are offended), go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.”
There is no longer even a trace of this form of confession to be found. In this particular case, the Gospel is put aside He who could reestablish it would perform a good work. Here is where you ought to have taken pains and reestablished this kind of confession, and let the other things go. For by this no one would have been offended, and it would have been accomplished without disturbance. It should be done in this way: When you see a usurer, adulterer, thief or drunkard, you should go to him in secret and admonish him to give up his sin. If he will not hear, you should take two others with you and admonish him once more, in a brotherly way, to give up his sin. But if he scorns that, you should tell the pastor before the whole congregation, have your witnesses with you, and accuse him before the pastor in the presence of the people, saying:
”Dear pastor, this man has done this and that, and would not receive our brotherly admonition to give up his sin. Therefore I accuse him, together with my witnesses who were present.” And then, if he will not give up and willingly acknowledge his guilt, the pastor should exclude him and put him under the ban before the whole assembly, for the sake of the congregation, until he comes to himself and is received back again. This would be Christian. But I cannot undertake to carry it out single-handed.
Secondly, a confession is necessary for us, when we go away in a corner by ourselves, and confess to God Himself and pour out before Him all our faults. This confession is also commanded. From this comes the familiar word of Scripture: “Facite judicium et justitiam.” (Genesis 18:19) Judicium facere est nos ipsos accusare et damnare; justitiam autem facere est fidere misericordiae Dei. As it is written, “Blessed are they that keep judgment and do righteousness at all times.” (Psalm 106:3) The judgment is nothing else than a man’s knowing and judging and condemning himself, and this is true humility and self-abasement. The righteousness is nothing else than a man’s knowing himself and praying to God for mercy and help through which God raises him up again. This is what David means when he says: “I have sinned; I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord,” (Psalm 32:5 ff.) and, “You forgave the iniquity of my sin; for this all your saints shall pray to You.”
Thirdly, There is also a confession when you take another aside, and tells him what troubles you, so that you may hear from him a word of comfort. This confession is commanded by the pope. It is this urging and forcing which I condemned when I wrote concerning confession, and I refuse to go to confession just because the pope wishes it and has commanded it. For I wish him to keep his hands off confession and not make of it a compulsion or command, which he has not the power to do. Yet I will let no man take private confession away from me, and I would not give it up for all the treasures in the world, since I know what comfort and strength it has given me. No one knows what it can do for him except one who has struggled much with the devil. Yes, the devil would have slain me long ago, if confession had not sustained me. For there are many doubts which a man cannot resolve by himself, and so he takes a brother aside and tells him his trouble. What harm is there, if he humbles himself a little before his neighbor, puts himself to shame, looks for a word of comfort from him, and takes it to himself and believes it, as if he heard it from God himself, as we read in Matthew 18:19 “If two of you shall agree about anything that they shall ask, ill shall be done for them.”
We must have many absolutions, so that we may strengthen our timid consciences and despairing hearts against the devil and against God. Therefore no one should forbid confession nor keep or drive any one away from it. And if any one wrestles with his sins, is eager to be rid of them and looks for some assurance from the Scriptures, let him go and confess to another in secret, and receive what is said to him there as if it came directly from God’s own lips. Whoever has the strong and firm faith that his sins are forgiven, may ignore this confession and confess to God alone. But how many have such a strong faith? Therefore, as I have said, I will not let this private confession be taken from me. Yet I would force no one to it, but leave the matter to every one’s free will.
For our God is not so miserly that He has left us with only one comfort or strengthening for our conscience, or one absolution, but we have many absolutions in the Gospel, and are showered richly with them. For instance, we have this in the Gospel: “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” (Matthew 6:14) Another comfort we have in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses,” etc. (Matthew 6:12) A third is our baptism, when I reason thus: See, my Lord, I am baptized in Your name so that I may be assured of Your grace and mercy. After that we have the private confession, when I go and receive a sure absolution as if God Himself spoke it, so that I may be assured that my sins are forgiven. Finally I take to myself the Blessed Sacrament, when I eat His body and drink His blood as a sign that I am rid of my sins and God has freed me from all my frailties. In order to make me sure of this, He gives me His body to eat and His blood to drink, so that I shall not and cannot despair: I cannot doubt I have a gracious God.
Thus we see that confession must not be despised, but that it is a true comfort. And since we need many absolutions and comforts, because we must fight against the devil, death, hell and sin, we must not allow any of our weapons to be taken away, but keep intact the whole armor and equipment which God has given us for use against our enemies. For you do not yet know what work it is to fight with the devil and to overcome him. I know it well. I have eaten salt with him once or twice. I know him well, and he knows me well, too. If only you knew him, you would not in this manner drive out confession.
I commend you to God. Amen.
Copyright: Public Domain
Translated by A. Steimle. Edited and Language Modernized by Robert E. Smith From: The Works of Martin Luther. Philadelphia: A. J. Holman, 1915, 2:387-425.
March 15, 1522 Dr. Martin Luther Preacher at Wittenberg
Yesterday we heard about the use of the holy and Blessed Sacrament and saw who are worthy to receive it, those who fear death, who have timid and despairing consciences and who live in fear of hell. Such people come prepared to partake of this food for the strengthening of their weak faith and the comforting of their conscience. This is the true and right use of this sacrament. If you do not find yourself in this state, refrain from coming to the altar until God also takes hold of your and draws you to the Sacrament through His Word.
We will now speak about the fruit of this sacrament, which is love. That is, that we should treat our neighbor in the same way that God has treated us. Now we have received from God nothing but love and favor, for Christ has pledged and given us His righteousness and everything that He has. He has poured out upon us all His treasures, which no one can measure and no angel can understand or fathom. For God is a glowing furnace of love, reaching from the earth to the heavens.
Love, I say, is a fruit of this sacrament. But I do not yet perceive it among you here in Wittenberg, although there is much preaching of love and you ought to practice it above all other things. This is the principal thing, and the only thing that matters for a Christian. But no one is eager to do this. You want to do all sorts of unnecessary things, which are not important. If you do not want to show yourselves Christians by your love, then leave the other things undone, too, for St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am like a trumpeting horn or a clashing cymbal.” This is a terrible saying of Paul.
And further: “Although I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries of God, and all knowledge. And although I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I give all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2-3) You have not gone as far as that, although you have received great and rich gifts from God, especially a knowledge of the Scriptures. It is true, you have the pure Gospel and the true Word of God, but no one as yet has given his goods to the poor, no one has yet been burned, and even these things would profit nothing without love. You want to receive all of God’s goods in the sacrament, and yet do not pour them forth again in love. You will not lend a helping hand to others. No one thinks first about another, but everyone looks out for himself and his own gain, seeks only his own interests and lets everything else go as it will. If anybody is helped — well and good. No one looks after the poor or seeks how to help them. It is pitiful. You have heard many sermons about it and all my books are full of it and have the one purpose, to urge you to faith and love.
If you will not love one another, God will send a great plague upon you. Let this be a warning to you, for God will not reveal His Word and have it preached in for nothing. You are tempting God too much, my friends. If someone in times past had preached the Word to our ancestors, perhaps they would have acted differently. Or if the Word were preached today to many poor children in the cloisters, they would receive it with much greater joy than you. You do not listen to it at all, and give yourselves to other things, which are unnecessary and foolish.
I commend you to God.
Copyright: Public Domain
Translated by A. Steimle. Edited and Language Modernized by Robert E. Smith From: The Works of Martin Luther. Philadelphia: A. J. Holman, 1915, 2:387-425.
