Vol. 2 Issue 4 April 2015

THE GENERAL PRAYER – PART VI

This month we pick up were we left off with the General Prayer, found on pg. 23-24 of the Hymnal. The General Prayer continues:

May it please Thee also to turn the hearts of our enemies and adversaries that they may cease their enmity and be inclined to walk with us in meekness and in peace.

The Christian faith runs contrary to human nature. This comes as no surprise, for St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.” Such is the case in this petition of the Church’s General Prayer. Human reason wants its enemies to suffer and have their schemes and success thwarted. (By “enemy” I mean anyone who seeks to harm you physically, spiritually, financially, or in any other way). Mankind’s natural tendency is to think that if someone is against us then we must be against them.

This is not the attitude the Christian is to take towards his enemy though. Christ says in Matthew 5:43-44,

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'  But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

How different this attitude is from our natural inclinations! We are to love our enemies, not merely tolerate them or avoid them. We are not to return the curses of our enemy but bless them, do good to them and even pray for them. 

Jesus’ words aren’t merely a ‘golden rule’ by which men ought to live. Jesus isn’t a moralist teacher who wants His disciples to merely be better people. Jesus’ words about loving our enemies are rooted in the soil of our own redemption. We love, pray for, and do good to our enemies because that is what Christ has done for His enemies. Consider what St. Paul writes in Romans 5:10, “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” St. Paul calls us God’s enemies. We were not a neutral party in between God the Devil, able to lean one way or the other. We were firmly planted in the Devil’s camp since our first parents left God’s will and listened to Satan’s word in the Garden of Eden. Since then all humanity is born as sinful enemies of God.

If we think that the designation “enemy” is too harsh for our pre-conversion relationship to God, remember what Philip Melanchthon writes in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession:

The human heart without the Holy Ghost either in security despises God's judgment, or in punishment flees from, and hates, God when He judges. Therefore it does not obey the First Table. Since, therefore, contempt of God, and doubt concerning the Word of God, and concerning the threats and promises, inhere in human nature, men truly sin, even when, without the Holy Ghost, they do virtuous works, because they do them with a wicked heart, according to Rom. 14:23: Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

Melanchthon certainly has Romans 5:10 in mind when he writes this, as well as Colossians 1:21-22 which says:

And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight.

All mankind is alienated from God by being born sinful. But the Lord is mercy and provides reconciliation for His enemies through faith in the atoning death of Jesus. Just as He immediately brought Adam and Eve to repentance and gave them the Gospel of the Promised Seed (Jesus), so the Triune God still wants to be reconciled to men through faith in Christ’s merits and passion.

When we consider that we are, by nature, enemies of God, and when we consider what being His enemy entails, loving our personal enemies is put in perspective. We love, do good to, and pray for our enemies because that is what our Lord has gracious done and still does for us.

We are also motivated to love our enemies when we consider the fate of those who are still enemies of God. When Jesus teaches us to pray for our enemies He is speaking more broadly than just your personal enemies. He is speaking also about the enemies of the Gospel. In the ancient church that was the heretics and pagans. During the Reformation (and still today) that was the Papacy because the papacy’s insistence on false teaching. In our day, the church’s enemies are politicians who would destroy the church and the Muslims who would eradicate Christianity through Jihad.

It is difficult to pray for these people when they want to take away goods, fame, child, and wife. It is even more difficult to love them when they want to snatch away the pure Gospel of the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake. The Gospel is our true treasure in this life because it forgives our sins and fits us for everlasting life. Nothing else on earth can do that!  What is the fate of the enemies of the Gospel, be they politicians who hate the church,  Christians who teach a false Christ or Muslims who teach Mohammedenism? The prophet Nahum says, “The LORD will take vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies.” (Nahum 1:2) St. Paul says this of the enemies of Christ:

For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame -- who set their mind on earthly things. (Philippians 3:18-19)

Without faith in Christ, the enemies of Christ are damned. No matter what they want to do to us and the faith, we do not wish hellfire upon anyone. Yet we know this is the destination of all who reject Christ. So in love, we pray for their conversion. We do not pray for the success of God’s enemies because that would me our eradication and the eradication of the Gospel (which the Lord has promised will not happen). This is why we pray in this petition of the General Prayer that God would

Turn the hearts of our enemies and adversaries that they may cease their enmity and be inclined to walk with us in meekness and in peace.

  

We were once enemies of God, fleeing from His Word, hating His judgments, and fearing His punishments. Having been justified by faith and having peace with God and are no longer His enemies. With this in mind we love our enemies and pray for their conversion to true faith in Christ so that we may walk together with them in meekness and peace. To that end, Amen.

Vol 2. Issue 3 March 2015

AGAINST THE MODERN ENCRATICS

In the early 350s A.D. a novel doctrine called “Encratism” crept into a group of monks living in the Egyptian desert. There were several different versions of Encratism in the early church, most of which were heretical because they taught that the physical world and the things of daily life were evil to one extent or another. Because of this, every version of encratism agreed that Christians are defiled by the use of meat, wine and marriage.

The encratic doctrine which afflicted the Egyptian monks went a step further to teach that the natural excretions of the body defiled the Christian and merited punishment from God. This meant that normal bodily functions and fluids were sinful, even things like using the bathroom or blowing one’s nose. One can imagine how much spiritual stress this would put on a Christian concerned with his standing before God. Not only were the monks abstaining from sinful motivations, thoughts, and actions, but they had to worry about meriting the Lord’s wrath through normal bodily functions.

As with all false teaching, the encratic doctrine was based on a perverted reading of Scripture. The seat of this doctrine was Matthew 15:11 where Jesus says, “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” The encratics took Jesus’ words quite literally. Saliva comes from the mouth. What comes from the mouth defiles man. Therefore saliva defiles man.  While this may seem silly to us, the encratites were simply taking the words of Jesus literally.

Athanasius was Bishop of Alexandria, Eygpt, at this time. (This is the same Athanasius who fought against the Arian heresy that Jesus was not divine, but a creation of God, the same Athanasius to whom the Athanasian Creed is a attributed). Athanasius responds to this teaching with a letter to Amoun, the revered father of the community of monks. He attributes the encratic teaching to the Devil, who, “In order to distract ascetics [monks] from their usual salutary meditation, and appear to overcome them, stirs up the kind of distracting thoughts that are of no benefit in life.” (Letter to Amoun. Pg. 1, found in The Monastic Letters of Saint Athanasius the Great, translated by Leslie W. Barnard). The Satanic point of the encratic teaching was to distract the monks from mediation upon Gospel with thoughts of their own good works.

Athanasius’ argument against the encratics is that Christ isn’t speaking literally but figuratively. He writes that Jesus is not speaking about bodily functions, but that which comes out of the heart.  A few verses later Jesus teaches His disciples privately,

But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man. (Matthew 15:18-20)

What defiles man is what proceeds from his heart, that is, sin. Athanasius writes, “For we only become defiled when we commit a foul sin.”

Athanasius then argues that God created the body to expel salvia and waste, as well as the sexual function of the body. Since they are created by God they are good and God-pleasing when used according to His institution and not for sin.

What can we learn from the encratics and St. Athanasius’ response to them? The Scriptures are not always mean to be taken literally. Usually, when the Scriptures are not read according to their plain sense it is for the sake of distracting the Christian from meditation upon the Gospel of salvation by faith alone by grace alone through Christ alone.

Let me give you a modern example of taking the words of Jesus literally for the sake of concentrating on personal works and holiness. In Luke 18:22 Jesus tells a rich young man who loved his wealth, “Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” Did Jesus really expect that rich man to sell everything and become a poor beggar in order to gain heaven? No. This would destroy the doctrine of salvation by faith alone.

Jesus’ point was that the rich young man loved his wealth more than the gospel. That idolatry of the heart would disqualify him from the heavenly treasure, for “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” (1 Timothy 6:10) There is nothing wrong with having wealth and riches. The problem is trusting in and loving wealth and riches.

I once read the blog of a young Christian woman who was cut to the heart by Jesus’ suggestion to the rich young man. Feeling that Jesus’ words were to be taken literally, and that failure to do so meant she was weak in the faith, she and her husband sold their expensive home to move into something much smaller and less expensive. After all, Jesus gave the command to sell all your possessions to gain the kingdom of God. She wanted to do everything Jesus commanded in the gospels.

Doing the commands of Jesus was, for this young woman, a way to become a better Christian, even if that command wasn’t given to her. What she had done was make up a man-made work to please God and alleviate her own conscience. She never posted on how the house-selling turned out. However, in a stroke of irony, a week later she posted a picture of her new (and very expensive) running shoes.

What is this but a modern encratism, shunning materialist things and thinking that there is an extra holiness we can achieve by taking Jesus’ figurative words as literal commands for every Christian? This is not the Christian Faith. Christ taught the Gospel that saves sinners from their spiritual defilement by faith in His merits and work. There is no work which we can do before our conversion, during it, or afterwards that will make us any more holy and righteous before God, for it is faith alone which justifies. The good works we then do as Christians are found not in the figurative words of Jesus but in the Ten Commandments, fearing God and loving neighbor according to the will of the Lord.

There is no righteousness to be gained or lost in using the toilet, spitting out saliva, being married, having wealth or owning a nice home. These all are things with which God endows humanity. Therefore we must remain vigilant about how we read the Scriptures, lest we find in the Scriptures more than is demanded of us than simple faith in Christ and good works done according to the commandments. Do not let Satan distract you, as he did the Egyptian monks, with being holier than you can be through faith in Christ. Rely upon Christ for your holiness, blessedness and purity before God, for these are gifts received only by faith. May God grant us such faith Ad Finem Illum, Amen!

Vol 2. Issue 2 - February 2015

BEAUTY FOR ASHES

I have always been uncomfortable with the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. The rest of the day was an awkward experience. Having an ash cross on the forehead certainly draws attention to yourself. And that’s the problem with it. The ashes, which are a symbol of the death we live in and walk towards because of our sin, easily become something else altogether. They become a sign that we’ve been to church that day. Suddenly I would notice how many people did not have ashes plastered on their foreheads. The sinful flesh would begin to become comfortable with the ashes. They were no longer a sign of God’s judgment and my deserved fate. They were now a mark of my own piety. I had been to church on a day when most people had not. I was holy enough to celebrate Lent. The ashes became a mark of my own righteousness, something for me to showcase to others who weren’t pious enough to wear the ashes.

The sinful flesh easily distorts the humility which is intended by the ashes into a work people do so “that they may be seen by men.” (Matthew 6:5) But the problem with Ash Wednesday runs deeper than a practice which the flesh can warp. The ashes are all law. The law always condemns (which is why the flesh tries to make the law into a badge of honor). The imposition of ashes marks the Christian with the law’s condemnation and that is how Christians leave the sanctuary.

But this is now how the Lord wants His Christians to live. God does smite us with the Law, but the Law is His alien work. (Isaiah 28:21) Isaiah calls the Law the Lord’s “alien” or “strange” work because it is the work in which He takes no pleasure. The Lord says to Ezekiel, “I have no pleasure in the

death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11) He uses His Law to accuse sinners of their sin, to kill sinners dead in their tracks. But this work is done so that He might do His proper work, the work of forgiving sins and raising dead sinners to life through His Gospel. Thus the Lord says in Isaiah 61:3 that the task of Christ will be,

To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

Consolation for mourning. Joy for sorrow. Praise for heaviness. Beauty for Ashes. The Lord delights in showing mercy. It is His good and gracious will to forgive sinners who repent. So why leave the sanctuary with the visible symbol of the Law upon our foreheads if our sins are forgiven? This is why we no longer do the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. Instead, we speak together The Order of the Confessional Service (TLH pg.46-49) to confess our sins. Then each individual approaches the rail, not for further condemnation, but to receive the absolution individually. The ashes are merely a symbol of the Law. The Absolution is something far greater than a mere symbol.

The Absolution is commanded by God. It is given to the Office of the Holy Ministry as its chief duty. On the night of His resurrection, Jesus appears to the eleven disciples. St. John records:

When He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. (John 20:22-23)

 The apostles, as Christ’s called and ordained representatives, have this as their primary task. Indeed, all their other tasks, preaching, distributing the sacrament, offering counsel, revolve around this duty: to forgive and retain sins.

This is a real forgiveness in which Christ is truly present. It is not a ‘feel good’ proclamation or a pep talk to do better next time. It is the voice of Christ Himself absolving your sins. He tells the disciples in Luke 10:16, “He who hears you hears me.” He also says in Matthew 16:19, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This is what makes absolution spoken by the pastor a true treasure. It is the word of God Himself.

Hearing the Absolution (publically or privately) provides great consolation to the troubled conscience. Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586) writes:

But if one should diligently explain to me how much comfort comes to a troubled conscience from this, namely that I might know from this where I ought to seek and might find Christ my Lord, so that He might deal individually and separately with me, a very vile sinner, through the Word, and I may be allowed to hear that very sweet statement and comfort as immediately from Him: Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee; go in peace. (Enchiridion 285)

This is far removed from the Do-It-Yourself forgiveness of the modern Evangelicals who prefer to stay home and read their Bibles over hearing the Word of God spoken through His pastor. In absolution Christ deals privately with me through the external Word, not a word within my heart or mind. I hear it spoken to me by the man Christ has put here to dole out His forgiveness.

 

Not only does private absolution deal with each sinner individually with the Word, it also teaches us that it is a means through which God wants to deal with you. Chemnitz again:

Moreover, private absolution also effects this, that I have no need to dispute anxiously and with concern within myself what God thinks of decides about me in heaven, inasmuch as I can become the more sure about that matter through private absolution here on earth, so that I ought not doubt at all that it is valid in heaven also. And the Holy Spirit wants to be present in that very act (Jn 20:22-23) and strengthen and preserve faith through the Word. And for these reasons private absolution is justly to be both exalted and freely used. (Enchiridion 286)

God truly and honestly forgives sins in the absolution so that faith can put its trust in those words and rely upon the absolution in every temptation. The Lord says Christ (and His servants) will give “beauty for ashes.” So we put away the man-made imposition of ashes. After all, what good is a symbol when you can have something real and audible to trust?

This is, of course, teaching you to come to private absolution throughout the year, but especially during Lent. Lent is a penitential season in which we struggle against temptation with faith and prayer. Private absolution is one more means of grace by which Christ wants to forgive your sins and equip you to battle temptation throughout these forty days (and beyond.)

On Ash Wednesday, and any other day of the year, come trade in the ashes of sorrow and guilt so that you might receive the most beautiful thing: the forgiveness of all your sins, spoken by the pastor as if from God Himself. Ad Finem Illum, Amen.