Means of Grace

Worship is About God’s Gifts to You

Encore Post: In most churches, worship is about what Christians do to glorify God. It is about praying, giving contributions to support the work of the Church, singing your song, and dedicating yourself to follow Jesus. Lutherans understand worship as all about what God gives to us — Absolution, God’s Word read, sung by us and preached to us, and the Sacraments, especially the Lord’s Supper, where Jesus gives us his body to eat with bread and his blood to drink with wine. In these gifts, his means of grace, mysteriously, God places and strengthens faith in our hearts, gives us the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. We sing his praises, pray to him at his invitation, and offer the sacrifice of our lives to thank him for these gifts.

So, worship really is not about us — it is about God’s gifts. God invites us to gather together the same way that our mothers and fathers gathered for dinner. When we call us to eat a well-prepared, delicious feast, we don’t say “Do I have to eat it?” or “But we just had a big dinner last week!” We get up and hurry to receive this wonderful gift of our host’s love and enjoy the time together with those we love.

So, the question we should ask ourselves and each other is not: “Do we have to go to church?” but really is “Do we get to go to church?” The Lord and Creator of the Universe is coming to church. He is the same Jesus who loved us so much that he became one of us, suffered, died and rose again so that he could give us his gifts, forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. So, let’s go and unwrap them!

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

©2018-2024 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

Salvation Guaranteed

Encore Post: When we hear God’s Word, the Holy Spirit creates faith in our hearts. He also comes to live within us. This faith clings to God’s grace and his promise to save us for the sake of Jesus. In Holy Baptism, he places God’s seal on us. We belong to God as his heirs. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is God’s down payment on the resurrection of the dead and eternal life with God in paradise.

What this means is we do not need to worry about whether we will go to Heaven when we die. We do not need to worry whether we did enough to earn a second chance from God. We do not need to worry about whether God chose to send us to hell before we were born. We do not need to worry whether we were sincere when we accepted Jesus as our savior or if we cannot remember whether we ever made a decision for Jesus at all. God has done everything to save us even before we were born.

God the Father loved us before he made the world. He chose us then to be His children and set things in motion to adopt us as his heirs. He sent God the Son to die for us. God the Son was born of the Virgin Mary, becoming God with us. Jesus lived a perfect life for our sake, obeying God’s Law and fulfilling it. Jesus then went to the cross, bearing our sins and paying the full penalty for our guilt. He suffered, died and rose again so that We might be declared “not guilty,” forgiven of our sins, and rise from the dead on the last day. God the Holy Spirit comes to us through the Gospel, Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Through these Means of Grace, He created faith in our hearts, so that we trust in God’s promises and the sacrifice of Jesus to save us. He seals us with the name of the Holy Trinity and enters our hearts as a down payment on our salvation. So our salvation is guaranteed by God Himself, because everything depends on him.

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Rev. Robert E. Smith

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Faith

Encore Post: Faith is one of those “church words” that everyone knows and uses, but finds 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. 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.

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. (much more on this later. For now, see Ephesians 2:10)

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Rev. Robert E. Smith

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Encore Post: Now and then, the news is filled with excitement over lottery jackpots worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Long lines form at convenience stores as everyone wants to buy a ticket. For all but a handful of people, the only value of the ticket is entertainment. Yet the very lucky winner is very happy indeed. She has won a fortune! Yet her bank account hasn’t changed a penny. Until the money is deposited, nothing has changed — other than she discovers she has more cousins than she ever knew she had!

Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have amazing riches in heaven. God loves us, gives us his grace. We are his children. Our sins are forgiven and we will live forever. Yet without a way of these things coming to us, it is not yet applied to us. To give these gifts to us, God uses the Means of Grace.

The Means of Grace are visible means by which God the Holy Spirit gives the gifts Jesus earned by his death on the cross. He uses these to plant faith in our hearts, strengthen and preserve it. Through them, we receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. He uses this to enter our hearts and live there.

These means are the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Holy Baptism, the Lord’s Supper and perhaps Absolution. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and sometimes absolution are called sacraments.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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God’s Masks

Encore Post: Children love to play dress-up. They walk in their parent’s shoes, try on their clothes, put on costumes in their toy chest or use other toys as masks. Adults sometimes do the same on Halloween or at a masked ball. Most often actors will go to great lengths to look the part.

God also chooses to wear masks. Because he is absolutely holy, no sinner can stand in the presence of his full glory and live. (Exodus 33:20) So, God approaches people through priests, prophets, bushes, a donkey and the person of the Son of God before he was born in the person of Jesus. Most often, the Son of God is called the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, God appears to us in flesh and blood in Jesus. In him we know and see God. (John 1:18) Through him, we receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Through him, we can approach God and call him father. When God sees us now, he sees his sinless Son and calls us saints — Holy Ones. (Ephesians 1:4-6)

God also chooses to give his gifts of grace, faith, the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation through his Word, read and preached to us, and through the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In theology, we call these the Means of Grace. We have no promise that he will come to us in any other way. In these means, we know without a doubt that God loves us.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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Is Baptism Necessary?

Encore Post: At first, it seems like a strange question to ask — even the wrong question to ask. Since Baptism is God’s work to save us, why wouldn’t we want to be baptized? There are several different reasons why this issue comes up. The first arose during the Reformation. The Anabaptist movement believed that children are innocent and that God does not hold them accountable until a later age. In the Augsburg Confession (Article Nine) and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article Nine) firmly rejects this argument (more in a later post on infant baptism).

The other reason is that in this sinful world, sometimes people die without being baptized. Lutheran theologians answer the question by saying Baptism is necessary but not absolutely necessary for salvation. Baptism is necessary because God commands us to baptize and to be baptized. (Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 2:37-38) Jesus tells us that you cannot enter the kingdom of God if you are not born of water and the Spirit. (John 3:5) Yet the Scripture is very clear that the preaching of the Gospel also is a means of grace, which creates faith (Romans 10:14-17), forgives sins and brings everlasting life. (Romans 1:16)

So, God’s word can and does save, even when the opportunity for a Christian to be baptized has not come. But God is so rich in his mercy, that he gives his grace over and over again, in the form of the preaching of the Gospel, the baptizing of his children and in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and in Absolution. Each means brings forgiveness of sins, life and salvation in its own way, providing for us certainty that we are God’s own and will live with him forever. We refuse them at our own peril, for God gives them to us for our good and strengthening in the face of the assaults of the world, devil and our sinful desires. While God requires us to do so, so they are necessary, it more that we get to enjoy these blessings.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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Baptism Saves You

Encore Post: Perhaps the point of greatest conflict between Lutherans and the Evangelical movement is our confidence that the Bible teaches that baptism saves you. As I noted in another post, most Protestants think of Baptism as a simple ceremony where a Christian declares that he puts his faith in Jesus as his personal savior. They think of baptism as something we do and so think that to say that baptism saves us, that it is the same thing as saying salvation is something we earn by what we do. Yet the Bible clearly says, “Baptism saves you” (1 Peter 3:21-22) and”unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5)

If Lutherans believed that baptism was something we do, we also would reject the teaching that it saves. After all, the heart and center of the Lutheran confession is salvation is by grace alone through faith alone for the sake of Christ alone. But we believe what the Scriptures teach, that salvation is God’s work, not ours. God the Father saved us, not by what we have done, but washing us and renewing us in baptism by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:4-7) Jesus gave himself for the church, cleansing us by the water and the word. (Ephesians 5:25-27) In Christ, through faith, God has buried us with Jesus in baptism and made us alive with Christ, forgiving our sins.(Colossians 2:11-14) So, when we say we are saved by baptism, we are saying that God saves us by baptism.

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What is Baptism?

Encore Post: You may have discovered that Christians value Baptism a lot. Yet there are few subjects that the various Christian traditions disagree about more. Catholics believe baptism is a means of grace that removes original sin and forgives all actual sins committed before baptism. It does not forgive sins committed after that — for that you need to go to confession, be absolved and do penance. For many Protestants, it is a work you do in obedience to God’s command, showing you’ve accepted Jesus as your personal savior. For others, it is just a meaningful symbol of salvation.

Lutherans believe that baptism is a means of grace, one of the ways, instituted by Jesus himself, God uses to save us. (Matthew 28:19) It combines the Gospel of Christ’s saving obedience, suffering, death and resurrection with water to wash away our sins. (Ephesians 5:25-27, Titus 3:4-7) It is God himself who does the baptizing, using human hands.

Like the other means of grace, Baptism creates faith in hearts where there is none and strengthens faith where it exists. Baptism also marks us with the name of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It makes us his children and heirs — heirs with Christ.

Finally, it is an undeniable declaration that we are saved. Why? Because we had nothing to do with it. In most cases, it is written in record books we can see and in all cases is written in the Book of Life. When Satan tries to cause us to doubt our salvation, we can tell him: “get lost! I am baptized.” Nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And where he is, we will also be.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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What is a Sacrament?

Encore Post: The Roman Catholics have seven sacraments. Lutherans have two (or maybe three). Protestants of a variety of confessions have none. The reason why the list differs is because each has a different definition of sacrament. The word is from Latin and literally means “holy things.” It was used by Jerome in the Vulgate, the Latin version of the Bible used by the Catholic Church, to translate the Greek word μυστήριον (mystery), a word for the saving truths of the Christian faith.

The Church came to use it for the ways God gives his grace to his children. The Roman Catholic Church lists seven sacraments: Baptism, Holy Communion, Confirmation, Penance, Marriage, Ordination and Anointing of the Sick (Last rites)

Lutherans, following Martin Luther, use a narrower definition. For us, a sacrament is something that Jesus instituted, that God uses to give us his grace and so create faith and save us and that combines God’s promise with a physical element (water in Baptism, bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper) Lutheran theologians sometimes have included Absolution, where God forgives the sins of his people through the voice of a pastor. Because Absolution does not use a physical element, Martin Luther and other Lutheran theologians have been reluctant to list it as a sacrament.

We treasure the sacraments because they are gifts from God. They are objective and outside of ourselves. Because they do not depend upon us, but upon Christ who gives them, we are absolutely certain that in them we receive God’s grace, that we are saved, that he forgives our sins, that we are his children and that we will live with him forever.

For us, this changes why we go to church on Sundays and other days. We don’t go because we are doing something for God but because God has done something for us and wants to give us gifts. Here is the strength to live life in the struggle against the world, the devil and our flesh. Because of these gifts, we have the strength to do good works. For these gifts we thank him and give our lives over to his service and to care for others.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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The Marks of the Church

Encore Post: The word “Church” is used in many ways by Christians. We call our buildings churches. We name our local gatherings of Christians churches. We talk about national organizations of Christian believers, congregations, colleges and seminaries 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, to encourage each other and to 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 Christian are. The sinful self of its members mean that 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 choses to use them to proclaim his Gospel, create faith, forgive sins and 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.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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