Pastor Weedon does a great job refuting a cherished myth among many Christians, unfortunately, too many Lutherans. tonight’s Bible Class. He writes:

We’re in Jeremiah, and did chapter 9 last night.  Eleanor sometimes visits our class.  She had the most disturbing comment to report this evening:  some fellow Lutherans had actually said to her “I’m forgiven so it doesn’t matter what I do.”

THIS IS NOT LUTHERAN.  This is purely devilish.

The first of the 95 must ever be remembered:  When our Lord Jesus Christ commanded us to repent, he meant that the entire life of the Christian should be repentance.

Which is to say, the entire life of the Christian, powered by the forgiveness of God, is an ongoing war against the sin that remains in our flesh. There is no peace treaty with that sin because of forgiveness.  The exact opposite.

You have a house infested with poisonous snakes and you make a treaty of peace with them?  Heck no!  You go after them with a vengeance each time one shows its ugly head.  You do so in the joyful confidence that the final victory WILL be yours, not theirs!

It is absolutely true that this battle continues to our grave.  The evil desires continue to pop up from our corrupted flesh and will.  But the grace of the Holy Spirit is given us for this battle to wage on.

Do we do it perfectly?  Of course not!  We literally LIVE from the forgiveness of our sins.  But because we do, we’re snake hunters.  We watch for the wretches to show up and then we attack with a vengeance.  We know they mean us death, and so we bring them to death.  We most certainly do NOT feed them, coddle them, or excuse them with saying:  ”But I’m forgiven, so they can stay.”

I had always turned to the Apology’s repeated assertions about the impossibility of faith existing outside of repentance, but Pastor Curtis pointed out that the Smalcald Articles are even clearer.  Read for yourself III:III:40, 43-45.  Luther is utterly clear.

“In Christians, repentance continues until death. For through one’s entire life, repentance contends with the sin remaining in the flesh. Paul testifies that he wars with the law in his own members (Romans 7:14-25) not by his own powers but by the gift of the Holy Spirit that follows the forgiveness of sins [Romans 8:1-17]. This gift daily cleanses and sweeps out the remaining sins and works to make a person truly pure and holy.  . . . So it is necessary to know and to teach this: When holy people—still having and   p 277  feeling original sin and daily repenting and striving against it—happen to fall into manifest sins (as David did into adultery, murder, and blasphemy [2 Samuel 11]), then faith and the Holy Spirit have left them. The Holy Spirit does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so it can be carried out, but represses and restrains it from doing what it wants [Psalm 51:11; Romans 6:14]. If sin does what it wants, the Holy Spirit and faith are not present. For St. John says, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning … and he cannot keep on sinning” [1 John 3:9]. And yet it is also true when St. John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” [1:8].

Source: Concordia : The Lutheran Confessions, Edited by Paul Timothy McCain, 276-78 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005).

Rant over.  And thanks to Eleanor for bringing the matter up – for it surely is a wound that needs addressing on the body of Lutheranism.

In light of some recent comments I’ve run across again on this issue, it’s time once more for the “Aversion to Sanctification” blog post, since the problem persists and appears to have become part-and-parcel of what some perceive to a confessional Lutheran understanding of God’s Word. More recent examples of this problem in action include a pastor posting a picture of a guy giving “the finger” and claiming there is nothing wrong with that and defending it, continued comments about how no matter what good works are done they are still “sinful,” and the ongoing effort to turn every comment in the Scriptures about the good works to which we are called into a discussion about the second use of the law, virtually laughing off Proverbs 31 and saying that text does not really apply to individuals but is really about Christ and the Church. But, I think the comment that took the prize was posted on my Facebook wall where the text of God’s Word was actually twisted to the point that the that indicates that God has prepared good works for us to walk in, to read “good work upon which God has prepared us to work” thus not about good works, but about Christ. All these things are put forward with the best of intentions, but they betray an unhealthy lack of balance and understanding on these issues. So here’s an oldie but a goodie:

I was just in a conversation with two younger men who were seriously saying that listening to the audio pornography and vile filth of Eminem is appropriate for Christians. One suggested that because only what comes out of a man is what makes him sinful that it matters not what he sees, or hears, as a Christian. These two young men are sadly typical of a poorly formed understanding of the life of good works to which we are called as Christians that seems pandemic in the Christian Church, where apparently some can wax eloquent about how they are striving to be faithful to God’s Word, but then turn right around and wallow in the mire and squalor of sin. This all the more underscores for me the point that we have a serious lack of emphasis on sanctification in our beloved Lutheran church. There is much teaching that is not being done, that must done. Simply repeating formulas and phrases about justification is not teaching and preaching the whole counsel of God. Comforting people with the Gospel when there is no genuine repentance for sin is doing them a disservice. There is a serious “short circuit” here that we need to be mindful of. Let this be clear. Listening to the “music” of swine such as Eminem is sinful and willfully choosing to listen to it is sin that drives out the Holy Spirit. This is deadly serious business. Deadly. Serious.

Pastors who wash their hands of this responsibility claiming that they want to avoid interjecting law into their sermons when they have preached the Gospel are simply shirking their duty as preachers and are being unfaithful to God’s Word.

We have done such a fine job explaining that we are not saved by works that we have, I fear, neglected to urge the faithful to lives of good works as faithfully and clearly as we should. This should not be so among us brethren.

I’m growing increasingly concerned that with the necessary distinction between faith and works that we must always maintain, we Lutherans are tempted to speak of good works and the life of sanctification in such a way as to either minimize it, or worse yet, neglect it. I read sermons and hear comments that give me the impression that some Lutherans think that good works are something that “just happen” on some sort of a spiritual auto-pilot. Concern over a person believing their works are meritorious has led to what borders on paranoia to the point that good works are simply not taught or discussed as they should be. It seems some have forgotten that in fact we do confess three uses of the law, not just a first or second use.

The Apostle, St. Paul, never ceases to urge good works on his listeners nad readers. I recall a conversation once with a person who should know better telling me that the exhortations to good works and lengthy discussions of sanctification we find in the New Testament are not a model at all for preaching, since Paul is not “preaching” but rather writing a letter. This is not a good thing.

A number of years ago an article appeared that put matters well and sounded a very important word of warning and caution. It is by Professor Kurt E. Marquart of Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I strongly encourage you to give it your most serious attention.

Antinomian Aversion to Sanctification?

An emerited brother writes that he is disturbed by a kind of preaching that avoids sanctification and “seemingly questions the Formula of Concord . . . about the Third Use of the Law.” The odd thing is that this attitude, he writes, is found among would-be confessional pastors, even though it is really akin to the antinomianism of “Seminex”! He asks, “How can one read the Scriptures over and over and not see how much and how often our Lord (in the Gospels) and the Apostles (in the Epistles) call for Christian sanctification, crucifying the flesh, putting down the old man and putting on the new man, abounding in the work of the Lord, provoking to love and good works, being fruitful . . . ?”

I really have no idea where the anti-sanctification bias comes from. Perhaps it is a knee-jerk over-reaction to “Evangelicalism”: since they stress practical guidance for daily living, we should not! Should we not rather give even more and better practical guidance, just because we distinguish clearly between Law and Gospel? Especially given our anti-sacramental environment, it is of course highly necessary to stress the holy means of grace in our preaching. But we must beware of creating a kind of clericalist caricature that gives the impression that the whole point of the Christian life is to be constantly taking in preaching, absolution and Holy Communion-while ordinary daily life and callings are just humdrum time-fillers in between! That would be like saying that we live to eat, rather than eating to live. The real point of our constant feeding by faith, on the Bread of Life, is that we might gain an ever-firmer hold of Heaven-and meanwhile become ever more useful on earth! We have, after all, been “created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). Cars, too, are not made to be fueled and oiled forever at service-stations. Rather, they are serviced in order that they might yield useful mileage in getting us where we need to go. Real good works before God are not showy, sanctimonious pomp and circumstance, or liturgical falderal in church, but, for example, “when a poor servant girl takes care of a little child or faithfully does what she is told” (Large Catechism, Ten Commandments, par. 314, Kolb-Wengert, pg. 428).

The royal priesthood of believers needs to recover their sense of joy and high privilege in their daily service to God (1 Pet. 2:9). The “living sacrifice” of bodies, according to their various callings, is the Christian’s “reasonable service” or God-pleasing worship, to which St. Paul exhorts the Romans “by the mercies of God” (Rom. 12:1), which he had set out so forcefully in the preceding eleven chapters! Or, as St. James puts it: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (1:27). Liberal churches tend to stress the one, and conservatives one the other, but the Lord would have us do both!

Antinomianism appeals particularly to the Lutheran flesh. But it cannot claim the great Reformer as patron. On the contrary, he writes:

“That is what my Antinomians, too, are doing today, who are preaching beautifully and (as I cannot but think) with real sincerity about Christ’s grace, about the forgiveness of sin and whatever else can be said about the doctrine of redemption. But they flee s if t were the very devil the consequence that they should tell the people about the third article, of sanctification, that is, of new life in Christ. They think one should not frighten or trouble the people, but rather always preach comfortingly about grace and the forgiveness of sins in Christ, and under no circumstance use these or similar words, “Listen! You want to be a Christian and at the same time remain an adulterer, a whoremonger, a drunken swine, arrogant, covetous, a usurer, envious, vindictive, malicious, etc.!” Instead they say, “Listen! Though you are an adultery, a wordmonger, a miser, or other kind of sinner, if you but believe, you are saved, and you need not fear the law. Christ has fulfilled it all! . . . They may be fine Easter preachers, but they are very poor Pentecost preachers, for they do not preach… “about the sanctification by the Holy Spirit,” but solely about the redemption of Jesus Christ, although Christ (whom they extol so highly, and rightly so) is Christ, that is, He has purchased redemption from sin and death so that the Holy Spirit might transform us out of the old Adam into new men . . . Christ did not earn only gratia, grace, for us, but also donum, “the gift of the Holy Spirit,” so that we might have not only forgiveness of, but also cessation of, sin. Now he who does not abstain fro sin, but persists in his evil life, must have a different Christ, that of the Antinomians; the real Christ is not there, even if all the angels would cry, “Christ! Christ!” He must be damned with this, his new Christ (On the Council and the Church, Luther’s Works, 41:113-114).

Where are the “practical and clear sermons,” which according to the Apology “hold an audience” (XXIV, 50, p. 267). Apology XV, 42-44 (p. 229) explains:

“The chief worship of God is to preach the Gospel…in our churches all the sermons deal with topics like these: repentance, fear of God, faith in Christ, the righteousness of faith, prayer . . . the cross, respect for the magistrates and all civil orders, the distinction between the kingdom of Christ (the spiritual kingdom) and political affairs, marriage, the education and instruction of children, chastity, and all the works of love.”

“Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, unto Thy Church Thy Holy Spirit, and the wisdom which cometh down from above, that Thy Word, as becometh it, may not be bound, but have free course and be preached to the joy and edifying of Christ’s holy people, that I steadfast faith we may serve Thee, and in the confession of Thy Name abide unto the end: through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord. Amen.”

Kurt Marquart

Concordia Theological Quarterly

Sadly, I continue to read serious confusion among Lutherans who have been sucked into error and overstatement from people like Gerhard Forde, and others, who speak incorrectly about sanctification. Nothing like a bracing slap of reality from the Lutheran Confessions to correct errors about this. Enjoy this quote from the Large Catechism. Just the other day, I heard a person trying to explain away Christ’s words, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” as applying only by way of “second use of the Law” and thus directed at the unconverted, not to Christians. Huh?

Until the last day, the Holy Ghost abides with the holy congregation or Christendom, by means of which He fetches us to Christ and which He employs to teach and preach to us the Word, whereby He works and promotes sanctification, causing it [this community] daily to grow and become strong in the faith and its fruits which He produces. Source: The Large Catechism Part II/Article III.54; Triglotta, p. 691-93.

KALAMAZOO — Age hasn’t slowed the Rev. Louis Grother. [Source for story here]

Time, in fact, only seems to inspire the Kalamazoo resident to reach out more to the homeless, the poor, the mentally ill and the downtrodden.

“There will always be a need for someone to support the people who many in society have given up on. … I consider it my duty to take the time to listen, to offer prayers and to be a part of the lives of people who don’t have anybody else,” said Grother, who will celebrate his 97th birthday this year.

In recognition of his benevolent manner, dedication to the destitute and commitment to treating all people equal, Grother has earned the lifetime achievement honor in this year’s STAR Awards.

When Pamela Post read the criterion for the Irving S. Gilmore Lifetime Achievement Award, she knew instantly that Grother was more than deserving.

In nominating Grother for the honor, one of several categories in the Sharing Time and Resources Awards, Post said Grother’s greatest gift is “his dedication to the very people that society looks down on or ignores. To these, he touches their weary souls with his love and nurturing.”

Now retired from the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital, Post remembers Grother visiting hospital patients and taking the time to talk with them. Grother still conducts a weekly chapel service at the hospital, followed by a post-chapel social event where Grother shares conversation and Scripture with the patients.

“Tuesdays are very special days for me,” Grother said. “I look forward to visiting my friends at the hospital.

“It’s probably fair to say that I get more out of spending time with them than they do with me. … I get a lot of unsolicited care and kindness in return for what I do, and that’s what brings me joy.”

Doing what is right

Although Grother is reluctant to talk about his goodwill gestures, Post is happy to provide examples of kindness and respect she witnessed between Grother and patients at the psychiatric hospital.

“He takes care to greet patients individually, with a handshake and a smile. He listens intently and gives them positive encouragement and hope,” Post wrote. “It’s really a privilege to be a part of it.”

The son of a minister and his wife, Grother was born in Paducah, Ky. He was ordained and installed as assistant pastor at First St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago in 1938. During his 11 years in Chicago, he was a frequent visitor to the sick and dying at Cook County Hospital.

In 1949, Grother accepted the post of reverend at Zion Lutheran Church in Kalamazoo. It was in Kalamazoo, Grother said, that he found his niche in life. In addition to his duties at Zion, Grother served for 20 years as chaplain to the Kalamazoo police and fire departments. He also served as chaplain at Kalamazoo College and initiated a religious education program for Lutheran students at Western Michigan University.

“The patients and workers there have been very kind to me and they always make me feel welcome,” Grother said. “I love those people very much. Those patients are very dear to me.”

Grother said he learned kindness from his parents. In addition to his father being a minister, his mother came from a family that included its share of church leaders. Grother acknowledged the Lord has been good to him.

A widower for eight years, Grother has two adopted children and six grandchildren. His children, Bill and Mary, spent their careers as teachers. His son, who is retired, worked with at-risk teens, while his daughter teaches at a reservation in New Mexico.

He beams when talking about his children.

“I can’t take credit for the good choices they made in life, but I’m awfully proud of them,” he said.

Grother said he’s humbled to win the Irving S. Gilmore Lifetime Achievement Award. As a man of the cloth, he said he’s been taught to not perform good deeds for glory or recognition.

“It was very kind of the people who had a part in this honor to think of me,” he said. “But I’d just as soon prefer to go along in life without the hurrahs and fanfare around me. I just did what was right, by going through the doors the Lord opened for me and never turned my back.”

© 2011 MLive.com. All rights reserved.

Wow. Just. Wow.

I guess I’ve seen this before, but … today I needed to see this and pay attention. Maybe you do too.

This man is simply, amazing, and I was delighted and deeply humbled to find out he comes from a Christian family and it is is precisely his faith in Christ that has sustained him. God is using him to touch millions of people.

Have you seen or heard about him?

Here you go. Amazing. Te Deum laudamus. This is amazing and so humbling.

If and when you are tempted to feel sorry for yourself….bookmark this video and watch it. Again, and again.

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One of my favorite quotes from the Book of Concord is this one:

We see the infinite dangers that threaten the destruction of the Church. In the Church itself, the number of the wicked who oppress it is too high to count. Therefore, this article in the Creed shows us these consolations in order that we may not despair, but may know that the Church will remain ‹until the end of the world›. No matter how great the multitude of the wicked is, we may know that the Church still exists and Christ provides those gifts He has promised to the Church—to forgive sins, to hear prayer, to give the Holy Spirit.

(Concordia : The Lutheran Confessions, Edited by Paul Timothy McCain, 144 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005).

Here is another great quote, in light of the recent debacle with Rob Bell, the disaster in Japan, the unfolding theological meltdown in much of world Lutheranism, with the ELCA leading the way, and in light of whatever challenges we each face in our own individual callings:

“The present is a time not for ease or pleasure, but for earnest and prayerful work. A terrible crisis unquestionably has arisen in the Church. In the ministry of evangelical churches are to be found hosts of those who reject the gospel of Christ. By the equivocal use of traditional phrases, by the representation of differences of opinion as though they were only differences about the interpretation of the Bible, entrance into the Church was secured for those who are hostile to the very foundations of the faith. And now there are some indications that the fiction of conformity to the past is to be thrown off, and the real meaning of what has been taking place is to be allowed to appear. The Church, it is now apparently supposed, has almost been educated up to the point where the shackles of the Bible can openly be cast away and the doctrine of the Cross of Christ can be relegated to the limbo of discarded subtleties.

“Yet there is in the Christian life no room for despair. Only, our hopefulness should not be founded on the sand. It should be founded, not upon a blind ignorance of the danger, but solely upon the precious promises of God. Laymen, as well as ministers, should return, in these trying days, with new earnestness, to the study of the Word of God.

“If the Word of God be heeded, the Christian battle will be fought both with love and with faithfulness. Party passions and personal animosities will be put away, but on the other hand, even angels from heaven will be rejected if they preach a gospel different from the blessed gospel of the Cross. Every man must decide upon which side he will stand. God grant that we may decide aright!

“What the immediate future may bring we cannot presume to say. The final result indeed is clear. God has not deserted His Church; He has brought her through even darker hours than those which try our courage now, yet the darkest hour has always come before the dawn. We have today the entrance of paganism into the Church in the name of Christianity. But in the second century a similar battle was fought and won. From another point of view, modern liberalism is like the legalism of the middle ages, with its dependence upon the merit of man. And another Reformation in God’s good time will come.

“But meanwhile our souls are tried. We can only try to do our duty in humility and in sole reliance upon the Savior who bought us with His blood. The future is in God’s hand, and we do not know the means that He will use in the accomplishment of His will.”

—J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, (New Edition; Eerdmans, 2009 [orig., 1923), 150. HT: Justin Taylor.

Pastor Weedon offered these wise words on his blog site. I like how he turns the question on its ear.

In Bible Class last Sunday: can a person who denies a specific part of the Creed still be regarded as a Christian? I thought immediately of how the Methodists (at least, last time I checked) dropped “He descended into hell” from the Apostles’ Creed, and I said: Yes. Yes, but…

And the but is this: the Creeds hand over the faith as a whole body. Can you still live, if you chop off your hand or your leg? Yes, but living becomes that more difficult, and the danger of infection runs rife – zeroing in on the beating heart. Can a person be healed and learn to get along without some piece of the Creed’s confession of the faith? Yes, but if they suggest then that hopping around on a single foot is actually all one needs, and a whole body isn’t that important and they wish to stop chopping off our feet…well, you can see where I’m headed. Luther famously said: Lass das Sakrament ganz bleiben – let the Sacrament remain whole. Same for the Creeds that express the faith of the Holy Church. Let them remain whole. They hand over to us the faith of our fathers to us not in pieces, but in whole.

It becomes a deadly game to play: how much can I chop out and still remain alive? Rather we should ask: why settle for anything less than the fullness, the whole corpus of the faith, that the Creeds witness to and confess?

The other Sunday I was sitting, as is my habit, in church looking through the lectionary readings, looking up the hymns and reflecting/pondering their words and praying, using the prayers in the inside cover of Lutheran Service Book. Behind me I heard an ever growing level of chatter and conversation, some of which I could hear. It was not conversation about the worship service about to begin, but chatter about a whole host of wholly irrelevant things. It is a shame that a long practice in the church of reverent silence before the Divine Service begins has fallen so far out of use. Frankly, in many congregations, the time before the service begins sounds more like what you experience before a live show begins in a theater, conversation and so forth. Even when the prelude begins, this does not apparently give people a clue that something special is about to happen, it only encourages them to talk more loudly. Not good. I would encourage folks to consider changing their habits.

OK, so I gave this post a provocative title to get your attention. Did it work? Good!

But admit it, it worked because you would love to know how to get God to talk to you. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if He did? What would He say? Would you want to hear what He has to say to you? You think you do, don’t you. But think with me for a moment. Do we really want to know what God has to say to us? Really? Are we ready to hear it? I’m not so sure. There is a plague going around in Christianity these days, but it is not really anything so new. People claim they want to hear what God has to say, but they don’t. Not really. Why? Because God usually has something to say that we really would rather not hear. God will tell us precisely how, why, when and where we are mucking everything up in our lives. And that’s the bit we would rather not have God talk to us about.

It seems God is not really all that great a conversationalist. He is kind of a fanatic, and that’s the sort of person who won’t stop talking and won’t change the subject. And that’s pretty much what God is like when He talks to us. He just won’t change the subject, no matter how much we wish He would. There are a lot of people who turn to false gods and false hopes and false religions precisely because they talk about things that interest them. And nothing is of more interest to you than you, right? You would rather have God talk about you, but even then, to talk about you in a very certain way: positively. God, please assure me once more what a basically wonderful person I am, that I’m not really all that bad.

Well, the bad news is that God does not talk to you, and me, the way we would prefer, but in the way He chooses to talk to us. But wait. How do we get God to talk to us at all?

The answer is really quite simple and it is not one people stop and think about enough.

God talks to you, and to me, through His Word. When you pick up your Bible, you must understand that when you meditate piously on God’s Word, it is God speaking directly to you through that Word and He is always going to be speaking to you either in the way of the Law, or the Gospel. When you read God’s word openly, honestly and prayerfully, you will hear God speaking and you will hear Him pointing out, first, your sin, the fact that you are indeed, at the heart of it all, a poor miserable wretch. There’s nothing “good enough” about you to make God love you. There’s only sin and death, but it is precisely as you once more realize this reality, when God’s Word holds God’s perfection in front of you and you realize you don’t measure up, that you are ready, no, hungry, famished for the Gospel.

God loves to talk to you about His Gospel, in fact, this is his “native tongue” — the language of the good news. And what makes it such good news is that it is the news that you are forgiven, you are loved, you are called, you are redeemed. God does not attach conditions to the Gospel. You do not have to prove you are worthy of His mercy (you aren’t!). You don’t have to show God how much you have earned it (you haven’t!). No strings attached to the Gospel. It is purely a gift of God’s love, the news of this love that caused God to send to this world His own dear Son to live, suffer, die and rise again, for you.

So,if you want to get God to talk to you, open your Bible. Pray and meditate on it. It is God who is speaking to you. In ways that may shock you, may surprise you, but will always lead you once more directly to your Savior, Jesus.

From Martin Chemnitz in his Enchiridion:

The Augsburg Confession and the Apology set forth the reasons thus: It is necessary to do good works commanded by God, not that we may trust to earn grace by them, but because of the will and command of God, likewise to exercise faith, and for the sake of confession and giving of thanks. Urbanus Rhegius, in the booklet De formulis caute loquendi, summarizes the reasons in this way:

I. Because our good works are due obedience commanded by God which we creatures owe the Creator, and they are as it were thanksgiving for the favors of God and sacrifices pleasing to God because of Christ.

II. That our heavenly Father might be glorified thereby.

III. That our faith might be exercised and increased by our good works, so that it may grow and be stirred up.

IV. That our neighbor might be edified by our good works and spurred to imitation and be helped in need.

V. That we might make our calling sure by good works and testify that our faith is neither feigned nor dead.

VI. Though our good works do not merit either justification or salvation, yet they are to be done, since they have promises of this life and of that which is to come. 1 Ti 4:8.

In Loci communes Philipp Melanchthon lists in this order the reasons why good works are to be done:

I. Because it is God’s command, and we are debtors.

II. Lest faith be lost and the Holy Spirit grieved and driven out.

III. To avoid punishments.

IV. Since our works, though they do not fulfill the law of God and not merit eternal life, are nevertheless called by God sacrifices that both please and serve Him for the sake of Christ.

V. Since godliness has promises of this life and of that which is to come.

Luther sets forth the reasons why good works are to be done in such a way that, if they were briefly summarized, the list would be about this:

First, some have regard to God Himself, namely since it is the will of God (1 Th 4:3) and the command of God (1 Jn 4:21). And since He is our Father, it therefore behooves us children to render obedience to the Father (1 Ptr 1:14, 16–17; 1 Jn 3:2–3). And as He loved us and graciously forgave [our] sins, so we also should love the brethren, forgiving them [their] sins (Eph 4:32; 1 Jn 4:11), that God might be glorified through us (Ph 1:1; 1 Ptr 4:11; Mt 5:16). Christ also redeemed us, that, being dead to sins, we might live unto righteousness and serve Him (1 Ptr 2:24; 2 Co 5:15; Tts 2:10; Lk 1:74–75; Gl 5:25). Nor should we grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30; 1 Th 4:8).

II. Some motivating reasons for good works have regard to the reborn themselves. For since we are dead to sins, we ought therefore no longer walk in sins but live unto righteousness (Ro 6:2, 18; 2 Co 5:17; Eph 5:8, 11). Likewise, that we might have sure testimony that our faith is not false, feigned, or dead, but true and living [faith], which works by love (1 Jn 2:9–10; 3:6, 10; 4:7–8; 2 Ptr 1:8; Mt 7:17; Gl 5:6). And that we might not drive out faith, grieve the Holy Spirit, [and] lose righteousness and salvation (1 Ti 1:19; 5:8; 6:10; 1 Ptr 2:11; 2 Ptr 1:9; 2:20; Ro 8:13; Gl 5:21; Cl 3:6; Eph 4:30). And that we might not draw divine punishments on ourselves (1 Co 6:9–10; 1 Th 4:6; Mt 3:10; 25:30; Lk 6:37; Ps 89:31–32).

III. Some reasons have regard to the neighbor, namely that the neighbor be helped and served by good works (Lk 14:13; 1 Jn 3:16–18). That [our] neighbor might be drawn to godliness by our example (Mt 5:16; 1 Ptr 3:1). That we be not an offense to others (1 Co 10:32; 2 Co 6:3; Ph 2:15; Heb 12:15). That we might stop the mouths of adversaries (1 Ptr 2:12; 3:16; Tts 2:7–8). And it is unimportant in what order the reasons are listed because of which good works are to be done, provided the Scripture basis of this article is retained complete and pure.

Martin Chemnitz and Luther Poellot, Ministry, Word, and Sacraments : An Enchiridion, electronic ed., 98-99 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999).

“Through the preaching of the Gospel and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Jesus sanctifies all people who believe in him. He makes them and their Spirit-produced offerings acceptable to God the Father in and through him (Rom 15:15–16). Jesus determines how they are to serve his heavenly Father. By his commands, he institutes the right mode of worship. Their liturgical service is acceptable to God the Father if they perform it as he has ordained (1 Jn 3:22; 1 Clement 40:1–4). They can therefore worship him in an acceptable way in the Divine Service (Rom 14:18; Heb 12:28). They can offer him a pure sacrifice each Sunday as they gather together to break bread and give thanks to the Father together with their great High Priest (Didache 14:1–3).

“Since the saints are purified by the blood of Christ, their bodies and their souls, their offerings and their good works, their prayers and their praises, their acts of thanksgiving and their confessions of faith are well-pleasing to God the Father (Rom 12:1–2; Phil 4:18; Heb 13:16; 1 Pet 2:5, 9). He takes delight in them and enjoys them. The saints can therefore be sure that he is pleased with them and their service of him. They enjoy his approval of them and delight in his gracious acceptance of their offerings to him, for in Christ they have the righteousness and peace and joy that come from the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17–18). Everything that they do is pleasing to him, an acceptable thank offering to him (Col 3:17). Their whole life on earth is therefore included in the service that they offer together with Jesus in the heavenly sanctuary.”

John W. Kleinig, Leviticus, Concordia commentary, 480 (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Pub. House, 2003).

Another interesting blog post from Pastor Mark Henderson, I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. (2 Timothy, 4:6-8_

“We confess that eternal life is a reward, because it is something due on account of the promise, not on account of our merits. For the justification has been promised, which we have above shown to be properly a gift of God; and to this gift has been added the promise of eternal life, according to Rom. 8:30: Whom He justified, them He also glorified. Here belongs what Paul says, 2 Tim. 4:8: There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me. For the crown is due the justified because of the promise. And this promise saints should know, not that they may labor for their own profit, for they ought to labor for the glory of God; but in order that they may not despair in afflictions, they should know God’s will, that He desires to aid, to deliver, to protect them. Just as the inheritance and all possessions of a father are given to the son, as a rich compensation and reward for his obedience, and yet the son receives the inheritance, not on account of his merit, but because the father, for the reason that he is his father, wants him to have it. Therefore it is a sufficient reason why eternal life is called a reward, because thereby the tribulations which we suffer, and the works of love which we do, are compensated, although we have not deserved it.”
Defence of the Augsburg Confession, V, 241-243

I wonder how many pastors will be preaching on Paul’s text this Sunday? I certainly am. I’ve found there is a great need to clearly expound the relationship between justification and reward to our Lutheran folk, as this is a question on which they are not clear, and often much confused. As the Confessions urge: “the preaching of rewards and punishments is necessary. God’s wrath is set forth in the preaching of punishments…Grace is set forth in the preaching of rewards.”

Perhaps in the past there has been too much “we are unworthy servants…poor miserable sinners” (true enough in its proper context), and not enough “we are sons and heirs of the kingdom” (note how the Confessions pick up this theme)? Too much law, not enough Gospel? Older folk tell me this was the case. The preacher needs to diagnose his hearers rightly, lest he apply the wrong medicine! (Or, rather, it might be better to say that he needs to have a word for both the self-righteous and the repentant sinners.)

The Confessions provide helpful guidance on properly distinguishing Law and Gospel on this matter, and can steer the preacher on the proper course between the Scylla of denying scripture’s teaching on rewards out of (understandable) concern to keep the sola gratia (grace alone) pure, and the Charybdis of the Roman Catholic importation of human merit into justification. The sermon might have to clearly reject the Roman concept of Gnadenlohn (“gracious merit”), as the Germans call it, whereby human works merit an increase in grace and/or justification (sic!). This scholastic innovation has even crept into popular theology (“God helps those who help themselves”).

An interesting challenge is whether/how to fit the Gospel (Luke 18:9-14) in as an illustration? This parable, which so clearly teaches justification by grace alone though faith alone, could be a good place to start the sermon: “In our Gospel this morning we hear of a man who was justified freely by God’s grace and mercy…yet in our second reading Paul writes to Timothy about rewarded for keeping the faith, which reminds us that elsewhere in scripture, rewards for works we do are mentioned (cite examples)…What’s going on here? Is salvation and eternal life a gift or a reward? How do we reconcile these teachings of scripture?”

The key to exegeting the Pauline text is the place he assigns to faith.

The Confessional teaching that works should be done to the glory of God could be brought in at the conclusion of the sermon, and might bring the sermon to a close on an eschatological theme – the crown of righteousness…the glories of heaven… praising God (for himself, and also for works done in his name).

Another direction a sermon on this text could take is to consider faith as both gift and task.

Note – This is really just me ‘thinking out loud’ as I meditate on the text in preparation for my sermon this Sunday. It is not intended to serve as a replacement for any other preacher’s own reflections, but if it helps…SDG.

Christians must be very careful about their behavior and never allow themselves to think, “It doesn’t matter what I do, God is going to forgive me no matter what.” No, dear friends. Do not play with fire! Here is how Martin Chemnitz explains it in his “Enchiridion.”

What If We Indulge and Delight in Evil Lusts and Seek Occasions to Give Them Free Rein (Ro 6:12; MI 2:1; Ja 1:15)?
Then they become mortal sins (Ro 8:13; Ja 1:15), because there surely is no room for true repentance and faith where the lusts of the flesh are served and given rein, so that they break out into action. 1 Ti 1:19; 5:8; 2 Ptr 1:9. It is the nature and particular character of true faith that it does not seek how to commit, continue, and heap up sins freely, but rather hungers and thirsts after the righteousness that releases and frees from sins. Therefore, where there is no true repentance, the Holy Spirit pronounces a very solemn sentence. Jer 5:3, 9; Ro 2:5, 9; Lk 13:3; Rv 2:5. And where there is no true faith, there is neither Christ, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the grace of God, nor forgiveness of sins, nor any salvation. Therefore what? Doubtless the wrath of God, death, and eternal condemnation, unless the fallen are turned to God again. Cl 3:6; Ro 8:13. As a result of this, therefore, and for this reason mortal sins occur in the reborn, namely when repentance, faith, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are driven out and lost.

How, Then, Should One Deal with Those Who Have Fallen into This Kind of Sins?
Their sins are not to be disguised by silence, camouflaged, excused, or defended, but solemnly and earnestly censured and rebuked. Is 56:10; 58:1; Eze 13:10, 18; 2 Ti 4:2; Tts 1:13: “Reprove them sharply,” in such a way that the fearful judgment of God is threatened on them; 1 Co 6:10; Gl 5:21; Cl 3:6; 1 Jn 3:15; Mt 11:21; 2 Ptr 2:10. For he that regards those people as true Christians, and charms and misrepresents them, not only miserably misleads them, but also makes himself partaker of their damnation. Is 3:12; Jer 8:11; 23:17; Eze 3:18; 33:8. Now, the preaching of repentance, rebuking sins, is the instrument and means by which God wants to lead fallen sinners back to the way and convert them. Jer 26:2–3. But if the wicked, neglecting this means, will persevere and continue in his wickedness, he indeed shall perish, but the word of the minister shall deliver his soul. Eze 3:19.

But What If the Fallen Rise Again by the Grace of God and Earnestly Repent?
Then they are indeed to be received with joy and are to be restored and supported with the declaration of the forgiveness of sins. Jer 3:12; 18:8; Eze 18:21; 33:15; Mt 18:13, 27; Lk 15:7. This is what the examples of Scripture testify, e.g., Peter, David, the prodigal, the Corinthians and Galatians. And this indeed not only seven times, but seventy times seven times, Mt 18:22.

Martin Chemnitz and Luther Poellot, Ministry, Word, and Sacraments : An Enchiridion, electronic ed., 104-05 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999).

It is an ever vexing problem: how do I have a more productive day? What can I do to organize myself in such a way as to maximize efficiency, so as to get as most of what I must get done in a given day? Let’s face it, it is easy to be lazy. It is hard to be productive. Lazy comes naturally to the sinful human flesh. Being productive takes determination and personal discipline.

I know some people like to deflect attention away from this subject by making fun of it, laughing it off, or actually taking the position that such “practical” considerations are beneath them. That’s dangerous. We have to work while it is day, before the night comes, when no man can work. Here are nine practical tips I picked up off the Internet, nothing earth -shattering here, but these are great tips:

1. Use one post-it note per day. Follow Mark McGuiness’s method of limiting your to-do list to one post-it note per day. “I got more done,” he says, “by making my to-do list shorter.” This is a scary discipline because it requires you to learn the difference between urgent and important.

2. Write two-sentence e-mails . E-mail is a great way to triage tasks, but you often waste a lot of time either composing e-mails or waiting for others to respond to them. You’d be surprised how much you can say in two sentences and how much more likely you are to get a response when your e-mail is short and to the point.

3. Check your e-mail twice per day. A co-worker of mine limits how often he checks e-mail because, he says, he prefers to devote his whole attention to the project at hand. I quickly learned that if I really need him, I have to walk up to his desk. Now I stop to consider whether my demands are worth interrupting his concentration.

4. Assign “points.” To avoid becoming a workaholic, assign equally weighted value to both personal and professional accomplishments (a tip I learned from Gallup’s StrengthsFinder). Doing so will help you avoid feeling guilty when you aren’t working (or applying to jobs), and you’ll finally cross off those to-dos that keep getting bumped from week to week.

5. Know when you’re most productive. I work best before noon, but I hate getting out of bed. So I established a morning routine that I could look forward to. I now wake between 6am and 7am instead of 9am and 10am. I adapted my routine from zenhabits’ sit/read/write, but what’s important is that it works for me. If you work best late at night but work a traditional nine-to-five, figure out a way to creatively position yourself in flow during the right hours.

6. Unclutter. Clutter — both physical and digital — might be productivity’s biggest enemy. Don’t let stray notes-to-self or Banana Republic e-newsletters intrude on your work. Make your desk (and desktop) pleasant and calming by clearing it at the end of each day. And develop organizational systems that are aesthetically appealing so that you’ll actually use them.

7. Be intentional with your time. Don’t lose countless hours to Facebook or television. Neither activity is bad in and of itself, but if you only have a few hours of “free” time during the day, you’d probably rather spend it getting a beer with a friend. Try tracking your time one day: write down what you do every half hour, and at the end of the exercise, evaluate where you think time was “wasted.” If you find yourself browsing the internet when you’d rather be reading a book, it might be time to cancel wireless at your house, or at least turn off your phone’s Twitter alerts.

8. Say no. When people start to see you as a person who gets things done, they will naturally approach you when (wait for it) they need something done. Learn to accept only the proposals you consider worthwhile and say no politely. Even at the workplace, if you’re asked to take charge of a project that you could care less about, feel out management and, if it seems safe, politely express that your interest lies elsewhere. Your co-worker may be dying to plan the spring fundraiser, and saying no could put that task in the hands of someone better suited for it while keeping you free for a project down the road.

9. Make more decisions. Tape this Seth Godin mantra on your monitor and start chipping away at the paralysis of decision-making. Spinach omelet or biscuit and gravy? Professional life or grad school? Hey — both options are pretty good. And if the one you pick turns out not to be so great, at least you made a choice. Because as Seth says, “Not deciding is usually the wrong decision.”

At first your productive disciplines may seem strange and even rude to friends and coworkers. But if you take the time to explain your practices in a non-patronizing way, they’ll likely understand and perhaps even follow suit.

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