Protestantism – What Does This Mean?

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

Blog Post Series

Encore Post: Etched in stone, framed as a print in calligraphy, the Ten Commandments appear in many places throughout the Western world. As the foundation of the English and French legal systems, they still define the basic moral framework of our society, even though they have been under attack for the last fifty years.

Like the two great commandments, the Ten Commandments sum up all of God’s law, spelling out in a bit of detail what it means to love God and neighbor. Yet they are not quite what we would expect from commandments. First, the original Hebrew calls them the Ten Words, not commands. In fact, Judaism counts “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt..” (Exodus 20:2) as the First Word. Second, God does not number them, so Judaism, Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox all number them differently. Third, most of the verbs have a simple future sense to them. In short, the Commandments explain how God wants his people to live.

In the Small Catechism, Martin Luther divides the commandments into two tables. The first table is about the way God’s people should relate to God. The second table is about the way they should relate to their neighbors. He also looks not only at what each command forbids, but also what it implies we should do.

While for Christians all three uses of the law apply, the primary use that they focus on is the third use. As God’s children, we love God because he freed us from slavery to sin and want to do his will.

Tag: Protestantism

What is Baptism?

The Ten Commandments