Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. -Romans 3:19

Much of life is spent trying to prevent failure or covering it up when it happens. As it stands, neither strategy works. It is bad enough that your ideas of failure miss the mark. How much worse when your true failures are laid bare before the eyes of God and His Law.

As long as you are born of a woman, you are under the Law of God. Therefore the Law of God is speaking to you when it demands total fear, love, and trust in Him. In consideration of this, nothing is left to be said when failure of any kind happens.

There is instead a Word to be received, namely, the Word of Christ, whose obedience as One born of a woman, born under the Law, satisfies the most stringent demands of God. It cares not a whit about the laws of man and his petty notions of offense.

This Word is freely offered and given, daily and richly in Christ's holy Church, where His pastors preach and apply the benefits of Christ's obedience. For this reason there is no need to think failure is yours either to prevent or hide. It is rather yours to confess in repentant faith, because God the Father is intent on chasing you down and seeking you out in and through His only Son.

Whatever accountability is yours due to failure, Christ Jesus has borne in His body on the Cross, and washed away by His resurrection from the grave.

The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. -Romans 3:21-22

+ + +

"The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel." -Mark 1:15

In saying "the time is fulfilled," Christ is incorporating all of history as we know it into His Word and presence. Past, present, and future are all fulfilled in Him, because He is the Creator come down in human flesh to save you through the same flesh He carries to the cross in perfect obedience and raises up for your justification before God.

In saying "the Kingdom of God is at hand," Christ is drawing near so that His hearers may receive through faith what He offers by grace, namely the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life. His body is to be identified with the Kingdom of God not merely symbolically, but substantially.

In saying "repent and believe in the Gospel," Christ urges His hearers to take hold of a righteousness no man can obtain of his own will. It is a righteousness that satisifes the wrath of God and turns the hearts of men away from sin and death and toward the life of the world to come, urging them to abstain from idols and the corruption inherent in the present age. Repentance is offered and received in the person and work of the very One speaking these words.

All of these words are as applicable today as they have been throughout the ages. The state of affairs between God and man is one of reconciliation by grace, out of a boundless love that will never cease, but will seek out and carry home the fallen, the broken, the weak, the sick, the lame, the sinner who is dead in trespasses and dead to God. This is as true and certain as Christ crucified and risen for the sin of the world.

+ + +

There is a great deal of hand-wringing within the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod because she is found to be afflicted with false teachers. While officially the LCMS in no way gives sanction to false teaching, nevertheless it happens today as it has happened throughout history. False teachers arise from within and are also found outside the Church.

What is a Christian to do, especially a Christian who is found to be within the LCMS when false teachers are in her midst? A Christian should first look to the standards espoused by the Synod, not the results when applying them and struggling to honor them. In the LCMS those standards are the Holy Scriptures and the Book of Concord of 1580, both of which set the foundation, by the grace of God in Christ Jesus, for perfect agreement in the articles of faith.

Members of the LCMS – her parishes and pastors – are bound to these not because they somehow came to an agreement, but because they are given from Above and are perfect in the first place. When a parish or pastor is found to be teaching and practicing contrary to these standards, these are first of all marked as such and avoided. “My sheep hear my voice,” says the Good Shepherd.

And so it happens in the LCMS on a regular basis that false teachers are marked and avoided. How they are dealt with beyond that in more official, temporal ways is important, but not nearly as important as seeking out those places where the Word of God is preached in its truth and purity.

Speaking from personal experience, the LCMS is rife with parishes and pastors that place the works of men above the works of God. It is a significant challenge when travelling with my family to find a place where the Divine Service is treated with the reverence inherent in its substance, which is the bodily, concrete administration of Christ’s benefits to poor, weak, sinful people from all walks of life.

If anthropocentric tendencies are found in an LCMS parish liturgy, you will not find my family or me attending that parish if we can help it. If we know in advance we will be out of town on a Sunday we will either make an effort to identify a faithful Lutheran parish or, if none is to be found, make use of what we have as a family.

We do not hold the presence of false teaching against the LCMS, but realize there are weaknesses and teachings to be avoided for the present moment, just as there are throughout the entire world. At the same time we continue to pray, “Hallowed be Thy Name,” knowing that God is at work through the means He has established.

We pray for those who are given to offices in the LCMS that they be faithful, strengthened, guided, and sustained by the grace of God in Christ Jesus. We also pray for the erring in our midst. There are many. It does little good to beat them up. At the same time we are bound to point them out and stay away until they repent by the grace of God.

Above all, we are subject to test the spirits. They are found wanting not only in the LCMS at times, but in every place other than those where the Word of God holds sway, and Gospel is lavishly preached and applied for the comfort of those who are terrified by all the afflictions that attend to mortal flesh.

+ + +

Then the LORD came and stood and called as at other times, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for Your servant is listening." -1 Samuel 3:10

God comes to you, stands in your presence, and speaks to you. Where does He do this? In Church, where His Word is preached and His benefits given bodily through ears, eyes, and mouth.

God comes to you, stands in your presence, and speaks to you. How does He do this? Through His called and ordained servants of the Word.

God comes to you, stands in your presence, and speaks to you. What does He say? Your name as it is comprehended in His Name through Holy Baptism, and His Name as it is your eternal salvation.

Since you were dead in trespasses and sin, He forgives your sin and leads you in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake, not because His name is in need of polishing up, but because His name is holy.

Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ that He comes, stands in your midst, and speaks as He did to his servant Samuel, so that you may take hold of Him by faith and He abide in you to strengthen and sustain you at all times and in all places by His perfect work in Christ Jesus.
+ + +

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

There is very little argument over how this verse of Holy Scripture is to be translated. Almost every English version translates it the same way. Among the most interesting is Young’s literal translation which reads, "and God saith, 'Let light be;' and light is."

This is the earliest attribution of speech to the Creator. It takes place on the First Day of Creation. In fact, besides creating all things out of nothing, this is the first act of God we are given to know by the Holy Spirit: He spoke. In His speaking, creation is subject to bring about precisely the very thing He speaks.

Both explicit and implicit in speech is a recipient, or one who hearkens. Hence it is part and parcel of the creation from the beginning that it is subject to a Speaker, or a Giver. Our experience bears out in multitudinous ways the fundamental reality that nothing happens without cause and effect. So too, we confess that the Word of God blesses and sustains the creation as we know it, even in its fallen state.

Also explicit in speech, cause, effect, and creation as we know it are male and female, a complimentary arrangement whereby new life comes into being by mutual correlation, through a mutual give and take characterized chiefly by love.

Also explicit and implicit in this first speaking (and every speaking from God thereafter), is love. The words, “Let there be light” have a clinical sound about them to our weak hearing, but we have the full, retrospective account of Holy Scripture to attest that God is love. Therefore every word that proceeds from His mouth is characterized by the same.

Note the voice of this first speaking. It is not a question. It is not a declarative or descriptive sentence. It is not an exclamation. Nor is it vocative. We would call it a command (or imperative), and yet it is a command that brings into being, not a command for something that already exists to behave a certain way.

It is characteristic of a man to say, “Look at what I did,” or “Look at what I can do.” To speak this way is quite often the entire aim of a man so that he might be praised for his abilities and skills. Here the Holy Spirit teaches a man to think and speak otherwise, and to say, “Look at what God has done.”

A reading of Holy Scripture will reinforce this truth over and over again, so that a man is continually drawn not to himself and his accomplishments, but first to God, in whom and through whom and to whom are all things.
+ + +

To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ....

Much is made of reaching across the aisle, making amends, setting matters at peace where once there was enmity, and rightly so. The enmity between God and man, as well as the apparent enmity between Jew and Gentile are all done away with, because Christ Jesus, who is God in human flesh, has made atonement for the sin of the world and is seated at the right hand of God, ready to come in glory to judge both the living and the dead.

The Apostle’s past, and well as the Gentile’s past, are just that: past. Abiding in Christ, both are mindful of the depths to which God has gone to reconcile all things. Both have the prophets and apostles who told before hand and bore eyewitness testimony to Christ’s life and love. Now it is a matter of being built up into Him while enduring tribulations in this life. This building up takes place not merely in platonic realms, but really and truly in body and soul.

The life and conduct of Christians, therefore, is one of peace and reconciliation with an eye not only to those within the Church but also those outside. It is not that we excuse or wink at sin, but deal with it through the unfathomable riches of Christ, which are not merely all things in heaven and on earth, but especially the fruits of His innocent suffering and death and his resurrection from the dead. These are preached and administered in the Church continually, as by faith the Church apprehends what is unseen while awaiting the Last Day.

Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory.

+ + +