Vol. 2 Issue 7 July 2015

GOD IS LOVE. . . AND OTHER THINGS

On June 26, 2015 the US Supreme Court issued their ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that all 50 states “are required to grant a marriage license to same-sex couples and recognize valid same-sex marriages.” The aftershocks of this ruling are sure to reverberate through the political landscape for years to come. For the church though, the political issues are of secondary importance. What is of primary importance to the faithful is how do we faithfully confess what the Scriptures teach and offer a rational and Biblical defense for marriage as God instituted it in Eden? Over the next few months I will use this venue to explore some of the arguments made in support of homosexual marriage which marshal the Scriptures to their side. Far from being an academic exercise, this is intended to help you defend the faith in your own vocations to which the Lord has called you.

The first, and arguably the most difficult, defense of same-sex marriage happens when someone quotes 1 John 4:8, “God is love.” When this Scripture is used to defend homosexual marriage two things are happening simultaneously. The first is that love is being defined in a different way than it is used in the rest of the Scriptures. The second is that this attribute of God (love) is played off against another attribute of God, His holiness. What is significant about both of these tactics isn’t just that they deconstruct language and God at the same time. The real significance is that these two tactics remove Christ and His cross from “God is love.”

God’s love in the Scripture is always manifesting in a saving action. The most well-known passage in Scripture, John 3:16, shows us this. “God so loved the world.” But how did God love the world? “That He gave His only-Begotten Son that whosoever

believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” God reveals His love chiefly in the Incarnation of Christ. The Incarnation is for a specific purpose as well. St. Paul writes in Romans 5:8, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s love is revealed in Christ dying for our sins.

The love of God is found in Christ Jesus crucified to atone for sins. God’s love is such that He “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4) What is the truth? Jesus says, “I am the truth.” (John 14:6) God loves sinners enough to cast His wrath upon Jesus so that sinners may repent and believe the Gospel of Jesus. The love of God is found only in Christ Jesus.

When “God is love” is used to defend sinful action, the word ‘love’ is being said but the meaning is changed to ‘tolerant.’ The meaning of the word is changed while the same word is used. Functionally, a new word is being made. It is spelled L-O-V-E but is means something entirely different. The God of the “God is love” crowd is not a God who loves sinners enough to die for them. Their god is an idol who dismisses their deviancy and winks at their sin. The ironic truth is that such a god would be horribly unloving! Their god does not truly love you enough to condemn you so that he might justify you, to kill you so that he can make you truly alive. Love is not toleration of abhorrent or self-destructive behavior. Ask any parent. Love does not mean allowing children to do whatever they want. Otherwise cake and jellybeans would be for breakfast, followed by playtime on the highway.

The second thing that the ‘God is love’ defense does is to play off one attribute of God against

another. God is most certainly love, but it is a real love which saves from sin, not a toleration which leaves sinners to their destructive ways. 1 John 4:8 is absolutely true. God is love. But God is also holy. Doesn’t the Lord say in Leviticus 11:45, “You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” This imperative is continued in the New Testament epistles. Holiness means to be set apart for sacred purposes. To be holy means to be pure from the taint of sin.

God is holy and therefore must judge sinners for their lack of holiness. To claim that God is love (read: toleration) negates God’s claim to be holy. Neither are their degrees of holiness. God is either holy or He is not. He either condemns wickedness, as Psalm 5:4 says, or He condones it. While we’re at it, we can also mention another attribute of God: justice, which is closely related to holiness. The justice of God is what demands punishment for sin since sin is a violation of God’s holiness. The ‘God is love’ crowd do not have a god who is just, just as they do not have a god who is holy, just as they do not have a god who loves because in their mind there is no punishment for sin. To this crowd, there is no sin for God to condemn. Neither is there is any need for Jesus, the cross, and the Gospel.

The entire point of Christ crucified for sinners is that the justice of God against sinners be satisfied. The author of Hebrews writes that “without shedding of blood there is no remission.” (Hebrews 9:22) Blood must be shed to atone for sin. It should be our blood. But in mercy God the Father puts forward His only-Begotten Son. God the Father sacrifices His Isaac so that we don’t have to die eternally in Hell. In God’s justice Christ dies with our sins so that all who trust Christ’s atonement are credited as righteous. St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin

to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Using 1 John 4:8, “God is love,” to defend homosexual marriage (or any sin for that matter) is a far graver offense than simply misusing Scripture. Using this passage to defend such things uses the Scripture to make another god entirely. If God tolerates sin at the expense of His holiness He ceases to be God. The god of the ‘God is love’ crowd is not the God of Holy Scripture but an idol that resembles the desires of their own hearts. They desire a God who will leave them alone and make no demands on faith or life. They do not want a God who condemns so they have no need for a God who saves from sin.

It seems so benign (and even pious) to quote Scripture in defense of any position. But we must not be intimidated by just any use of Scripture. That is what Satan did to our Lord in the wilderness in Matthew 4 to tempt Jesus to sin. In those temptations Satan twisted the Scriptures and in so twisting them he made a false god to lead Christ astray. The old evil foe still works in the same manner today as he deceives many, even Christians, into mishandling the Scriptures. Homosexual marriage is not Satan’s ultimate goal. This issue is one of many tools with which to tempt people make a god in their own image, more like their own sensibilities than the God of Scripture, which always ends up as a Jesus-less god.

God is love. This is most certainly true. He is also holy and just. Each of these attributes lead us to Christ crucified for sinners, THE manifestation of God’s love for all sinners, homosexual and heterosexual alike, that all may repent of their sins and believe the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins.

Vol.2 Issue 6 June 2015

 THE GENERAL PRAYER – PART VII

This month we continue with looking at the General Prayer from TLH pg. 23-24. The next section we pray reads as follows:

All who are in trouble, want, sickness, anguish of labor, peril of death, or any other adversity, especially those who are in suffering for Thy name’s and for Thy truth’s sake, comfort, O God, with Thy Holy Spirit, that they may receive and acknowledge their afflictions as the manifestation of Thy fatherly will. 

The Church now prays for those who are suffering in any sense of the word. In this petition we ought to comfort. How often do you find yourself among these descriptions of suffering? Trouble, want, sickness, anguish of labor, peril of death, or any other adversity. These cover the full range of human suffering, don’t they? Trouble is the first on the list because it is the umbrella under which the rest of the list reside. Want deals with a deficiency in life. You don’t have enough (or any) of something you think you need. Sickness strikes everyone at different times and at different stages of life. Sickness is a lack of health. Anguish of labor doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t like their job. Someone is in anguish of labor when their work seems too much for them or when they get no joy from their God-given vocations. Peril of death is obvious, anyone who is close to dying from want or sickness. Then we pray for those in any other adversity. The prayer, being General, is general enough to include all forms of human suffering, even that which we cannot see with our eyes.

The final suffering that is mentioned is “suffering for Thy name’s and for Thy truth’s sake.” We pray for those who are enduring the weight of

persecution. We hear of Christians in other parts of the world who are suffering for the Faith. We read headlines about ISIS beheading Christians and Boko Haram murdering Christians and selling their girls into slavery. We may think of Christians in China who must worship underground. These people are clearly suffering for the sake of Christ’s name and the Christian truth.

But there are different shades of persecution. Not all martyrs spill their blood. Many in our own country suffer for their Christian faith. Businesses close their doors because of their refusal to kotow to the demands of the homosexual agenda. College students must ‘cooperate to graduate’ from most institutions, checking their Christian faith at the door lest they fail to earn the approval of militant atheist professors. The persecution of the faithful is even happening from the pulpits in some denominations where the feminist agenda preaches a gender-sensitive deity whose chief attribute is tolerance. Those who do not confess these articles of the secular faith (immorality, atheism, and feminism) are mocked and maligned as backward, hillbilly, and bigoted. We live in an age which hates the Church. This age hates the church because it hates Christ, His Gospel, and His authority. This petition covers the gamut of all those who are suffering for the name and truth of Christ in any way, shape, or form.

Notice though what do are not praying for in this petition. We pray: “Comfort, O God, with Thy Holy Spirit, that they may receive and acknowledge their afflictions as the manifestation of Thy fatherly will.” We do NOT pray for the alleviation of the Christian’s suffering. We don’t ask the Lord to stop the suffering because that would be praying against His revealed will in Scripture. Yes. You read that

right. It is God’s will that His church suffer persecution. St. Paul tells young Timothy, “Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.”

Persecution and suffering are woven into the Christian life because persecution and suffering were part of the life of Christ our Lord during the days of His humiliation. The Christian lives under the cross, that is, under suffering and hardship, because Christ lived under suffering and hardship. His entire ministry is summarized not in the glory of the empty tomb but in the agony of the cross. The cross is His true glory for it is there that we see God most clearly revealed.

So it is with Christ’s Christians. St. Paul writes in several places that he rejoices in His sufferings (especially those for the sake of the Gospel). This isn’t because the Apostle enjoys pain. He knows that suffering for the sake of the Gospel is to suffer with Christ. And if we suffer with Christ we will also be vindicated like Christ. St. Paul writes, “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1:5) Though we suffer, our consolation is that our Lord suffered and was vindicated by God the Father. St. Peter says it another way: “Rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” (1 Peter 4:13)

Instead of praying for an end to suffering we pray for that the Spirit might comfort those suffering, “that that they may receive and acknowledge their afflictions as the manifestation of Thy fatherly will.” We pray that all who suffer might acknowledge that these afflictions, whatever they might be, are a manifestation, i.e. a visible sign, of

God’s fatherly will. Your sufferings, your persecutions are a sign that your Father in heaven is favorable to you. The author of Hebrews writes:

For whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. (Hebrews 12:6-8)

Everyone God claims as a son He chastens, not in wrath but in love. God is Father. Fathers discipline their sons out of love, for their benefit. This is most certainly true even when the earthly son does not see the immediate benefit of such chastening and discipline. Because they don’t see the benefit does not mean there aren’t any. So it is with our heavenly Father. He disciples all those He calls ‘Son’ in Holy Baptism. He does this by allowing trial, cross, suffering, and persecution.

When you find yourself in the midst of any kind of suffering give thanks to God for it! Rejoice in it! It is a certain sign that you are a Son of the Heavenly Father and that He is favorable and gracious to you. Do not become despondent and despairing over your cross, whatever it might be. You have the promises of Christ that whatever you suffer is the Father’s good and gracious will, just as it was the Father’s good and gracious will that His Only-Begotten Son suffer for the sins of the world. Remember: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (Romans 8:35) None of these are able to do that, for we possess the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. We must suffer because Christ suffered, for through Baptism we are Sons of God.

Vol.2 Issue 5 May 2015

[Sorry for my tardiness in posting the May and June issues. July's issue should be published on the first Sunday of July as scheduled.]

ON PENECOST

The Festival of Pentecost is one of the earliest festivals noted in church history. Hippolytus, writing around 217 A.D., mentions the festival. In The Lutheran Hymnal it is known as Whitsunday. It is called this because in the medieval ages, in the northern European countries, Pentecost was the preferred festival for baptizing catechumens (meaning those who had finished their period of instruction in the Christian faith). The baptismal candidate wore robes of white. The name Whitsunday thus came to be the name of the day on which the baptismal candidate wore white. 

Throughout history, the festival of Pentecost has captured the imagination of Christians because of the tongues as of fire than fell on the Christians and the tongues which they were given in order to preach the Gospel to all nations gathered in Jerusalem. The tongues as of fire and the manifestation of different languages were secondary miracles compared to the great miracle that day: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit so that many repented of their sins, believed the Gospel, and were baptized in the name of the Triune God.

All this is enough to make the Festival of Pentecost something noteworthy for the Church. But there is more. The feast of Pentecost was originally an Old Testament festival of Israel. Knowing that the New Testament fulfills the Old Testament’s shadows, types, and festivals, we are able to see in Pentecost a rich theology of Christ’s work of redemption on the cross and in the Office of the Holy Ministry throughout all ages.

Pentecost is a Greek word meaning “Fiftieth.” The festival is called Pentecost in the Greek New Testament because the Lord commanded this festival to occur on the fiftieth day after the Passover Sabbath (Leviticus 23.15-16). 

In the Old Testament Pentecost is called the Feast of Weeks because the festival occurs seven weeks after the harvest begins. The Lord says in Deuteronomy 16:9-10, “You shall count seven weeks for yourself; begin to count the seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the grain. Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God.”

The barley harvest began during the week of Passover (usually a day after the Passover Lambs were slain and eaten). On the first day of the barley harvest the first barely sheaf is presented before the Lord at the altar with accompanying sacrifices (Leviticus 23.9-14). Pentecost thus occurred forty-nine days after the presentation of the first sheaf of the harvest and fifty days after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 

The number of days in between both of these festivals and Pentecost have symbolic significance. When we consider that in Hebrew a week is called a ‘seven’ (because a week has seven days) here we have a “week of weeks” so to speak. There are seven weeks, that is seven sets of seven days. There were forty-nine days from the elevation of the first sheaf with the fiftieth day being Pentecost. Pentecost is not part of the “week of weeks” but it is, in symbolic terms, the eight day. 

Whenever anything happens on the eighth day in the Old Testament, something salvific is happening (that means something that points to Christ). This pattern begins in Genesis 17:12 with the covenant of Circumcision. “He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised.” 

The significance of Pentecost being the “eighth day” of the Feast of Weeks becomes clear when we place the crucifixion of Jesus within Israel’s liturgical calendar. Christ was crucified on the eve of the Passover Sabbath. He rested in the tomb on the next day, the Passover Sabbath (the first day of Passover). He arose Sunday which was the day of the elevation of the first sheaf of the barely harvest. Thus Jesus’ resurrection begins when the barely harvest begins and will culminate with on the Fiftieth day, Pentecost, the harvest celebration

In their writings the Apostles proclaim that Christ is the true Passover Lamb of which all other Passover lambs were but types ( consider John 1:29; 1 Peter 1:19; Revelation 5:6-10; and 1 Corinthians 5:7). Just as the Israelites were to eat the flesh of their Passover Lamb (Exodus 12:8ff), Christians eat of the true flesh of Christ their Passover Lamb every Sunday in the Sacrament of the Altar. In this sense the Lord’s Supper is the new Passover which supersedes the Mosaic Passover (this is also why it is silly, and a little dangerous, for Christians to hold Seder Meals on Maundy Thursday).

So Christ establishes ‘new Passover’ for the Christian to eat and drink. He also, by His resurrection on the day of the elevation of the first sheaf, demonstrates that “Now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:20) Christ is the prototype for the New Creation. Just as He is risen from the dead, so all who believe in Him will rise to new life on the last day as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:23 and Jesus Himself says in John 11:25-26. Christ is the first sheaf of the harvest that begins on the day of His resurrection.

That also means the fiftieth day, the Day of Pentecost, was the culmination of His resurrection. On the fiftieth day the Holy Ghost was given to the disciples to preach the Gospel so that the harvest may continue. For generations, Pentecost had been a festival of the wheat harvest. But fifty days after the Resurrection of Jesus, He is celebrating the harvest of the firstfruits of Gospel proclamation, whom Luke counts as about three thousand. (Acts 2:41) The harvest that began with Jesus’ resurrection culminates when the Holy Spirit is given to the Apostles. Just as the Feast of Weeks in the Old Testament is bound up with the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover), so the Christian festival of Pentecost is bound up with Lent and Easter as its culmination.

Jesus is our Passover Lamb, slain to atone for our sins so that the wrath of God passes over all who trust that His death atones for their sins. Jesus is the first sheaf of the harvest from the dead, for He is the firstfruits from the dead. All who believe and are baptized will therefore be resurrected on the Last Day, even as they daily die to sin and are raised to new life by believing the Gospel.

The ancient festival of Pentecost thus encompasses much more than just the idea of the Gospel going out into the world. Pentecost includes the very Gospel that Christ is our Passover Lamb through whom we have the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, and the first sheaf of the harvest to which we belong. Rejoice in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit! Rejoice that you are part of the Lord’s Harvest by faith in Christ. To that end. Amen.