Category: Catechesis

Have you ever tried running new software on an old computer? I have. I have a seven year-old laptop—my trusty old road warrior. I’ve replaced the keyboard, the hard disk, and the logic board, three batteries and a few other spare parts from E-Bay. It’s not my primary computer, which is a desktop, but I try to make the old laptop as compatible as possible. However, I find that the new versions of software just don’t run well on old hardware. That’s a picture of the Christian life. Luther called it being “simul iustus et peccator,” which is Latin for “simultaneously a righteous saint and a damned sinner.” We sometimes speak of our “old Adam” or “sinful nature” and our “new man” in Christ. Old You and New You. Old You is the sinner born of Adam, hopelessly infected with the virus called Sin. New You is the saint born of God, pure and holy. The Scriptures call Old You the “outer man” or the “flesh” and New You the “inner man” or the “spirit.”

The key to understanding the Christian life as it is lived by faith is that New You is hidden “in, with and under” Old You—a Christ-mind operating an Adam-body.

In Baptism, the Spirit has given you a new operating system, new software, New You. You have the mind and the will of Christ. You delight in the Law of God and you desire to do what is pleasing to God. The trouble is that New You is running on Old You’s hardware. As a result, there are the inevitable crashes and glitches.

This is how the apostle Paul describes it: “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members” (Romans 7:21-23). In other words, New Paul, his “inmost self,” really wants to do God’s will and delights in God’s law. But the hardware for Old Paul, his “members,” refuses to cooperate.

Old Paul has a terrible virus called Sin that causes him to crash every time he tries to do the will of God. Whenever he wants to do good, evil always lies close at hand. He can’t seem to get anything right. Everything he does is infected with sin, even his good works. And what is Paul’s analysis of the situation? “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24)

Martin Luther communicated an amazingly profound insight in a series of statements he drafted for a debate at Heidelberg, Germany in 1518. This was very early in the Reformation—only a year after Luther had nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg. In his Heidelberg Theses, Luther said that everything man does, even when God is working through man, is sin. That’s because the inner man, the new person in Christ, must always work through the outer man, the old person in Adam. In other words, New You must always use Old You’s hardware.

That explains a lot of things. It explains why our works can’t save us. They are always sinful, even when they are good! It explains why faith alone justifies us before God. Only Christ’s works are without sin. It explains why we always seem to mess up, especially in spiritual things, why we can’t seem to stick with prayer or God’s Word, why we’re not glad when they say, “Let’s go to the house of the Lord.” It’s because New You always has to work through Old You. The righteous saint must always work through the sinner. No wonder the apostle Paul cries out, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24)

It also explains why we can’t seem to fix ourselves. The Christian life is not about retraining old hardware to run new software. Old You is not fixable; it’s destined to die. Instead, Old You must be forced to go along with the program, at least for the moment. That’s where the Law comes in. The Law curbs, mirrors and instructs Old You to death. It curbs Old You’s behaviors, mirrors sin, and instructs with punishments and rewards, much the way you train an old dog new tricks. And you know how well that works.

Old You’s hardware is simply not suited for holiness. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.” Until you come into new hardware in the resurrection, New You’s software is going to have to make the best of trying to control Old You’s hardware.

Does that mean we simply sin to our heart’s content and ask for forgiveness? No! It means that we say “no” to Old Adam, and we bring him under discipline. Even though our new man in Christ needs no Law, our New You uses the Law to threaten, bribe, coerce our old hardware to get with the holiness program. That’s why we set alarms on Sunday for church. The New Adam is glad when they say, “Let’s go to the house of the Lord,” but the Old Adam says, “I’d rather roll over and go to sleep.”

For now you live “simul” by grace through faith for Jesus’ sake as a New You in Christ stuck in an Adam’s Old You hardware. That may not be a pretty sight to those keeping score, but in Christ you are already justified, sanctified, and glorified (1 Corinthians 6:11). You’re just waiting to be rescued from this “body of death” to rise with new hardware to run that Christ-like software.

Rev. William M. Cwirla is the pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hacienda Heights, California.

Taste and see the bliss of heaven known by saints around the throne, where the Lamb, in closest union, lives to love and feed His own. From His riven side forever flows the purest stream of love, love that robes us with the raiment worn by all who feast above. -LSB 572, Verse 5

The Lord’s Supper is not simply an individual meal. As we approach the communion rail, we partake in a meal that unites the body of Christ past, present, and future. Yes, this is forgiveness for you, but it is also forgiveness for all who confess the name of Christ and His saving work. This is another great joy and blessing in Holy Communion. We commune with those in our own physical church building of course, but we also commune with Christians around the world and all the saints who have died in the faith. Every Sunday, you are surrounded by the people of God who sit in His presence- grandparents, parents, siblings, etc…. In some Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches, the communion rail is shaped in a half circle. This symbolizes fact that we are only a part of the attendance at communion. The rest of the circle is completed by those who we cannot see, who are no longer with us here on earth, but who are in the presence of God and still attend to His Word and receive His gifts in the courts of heaven.

These gifts that Christ freely gives to us He gives out of love. As John 3:16 tells us so beautifully, it is God’s love for His creation that brought Him down to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. All that Christ did during His ministry here, He did because He loves us and does not want us to spend eternity enslaved to the powers of sin, death, and the Devil. His sufferings and death on the cross put Him through the greatest pain man could ever experience on this earth. Yet all this was done because of His great love toward us.

When the soldier pierced Christ’s side after He was already dead, blood and water came flowing out. The blood that flows from Christ on the cross washes away all our sins and makes us holy before God. This blood clothes us with the righteousness of Christ: the righteousness He won for us. With this new garment of salvation, we can now come before God and receive His gifts both here on this earth and in heaven after our time on earth has ended. This is how we are saved and can know that we will be with God in heaven. Just as God promised Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden that He would send a savior to crush the power of the Devil, so now God promises to us that all who are clothed in the precious, redeeming blood of Christ will enter into His eternal kingdom and live with Him forever.

Lamb of God, once slain for sinners, Host, who spreads this meal divine, here You pledge our sins are covered, pledge received in bread and wine: “Take and eat; this is My body, given on the cross for you; take and drink; this cup of blessing is my blood poured out for you.” -LSB 572, Verse 4

When Jesus breathed His last on the cross, the punishment for sin was gone. God had poured out His divine wrath on His Son against all sins- past, present, and future, and now that all sin was atoned for, God could bestow the gift of the forgiveness of sins upon His people. The Old Testament sacrificial covenant, which had sanctified the Children of Israel and set them apart from the rest of the world, was no longer necessary. No new blood needed to be spilled on altars to atone for sin because the blood of Jesus now covered all sins. All God needed to do was give His people access to this new, life-giving blood. Therefore, Jesus instituted a new covenant just before He went to the cross which would pass the forgiveness He won for His people to His people.

In this new covenant, God comes to His people and brings them justification through the blood of His Son. This blood covers us just as the blood of the old covenant covered the Children of Israel. We no longer need to sacrifice animals on human altars to atone for our sins. Instead, we now come to the altar of God where we receive this cleansing, atoning blood along with Christ’s body in, with, and under the bread and wine at the communion rail. In the Lord’s Supper, God freely offers us the forgiveness of our sins and life eternal and promises that because of Christ’s payment for sin, we can know for certain that our sins are forgiven forever.

This is why Lutherans value communion so highly. Through receiving communion, we gain access to Christ’s salvific blood and are made holy before God. This is not a meal where we fondly remember that Jesus died for us. No! This is a meal that give you eternal life, forgives all your sins, and sanctifies you. My home congregation offers two services, and once I asked my pastor if it was alright to commune in the second service after communing in the first service. He responded by asking me if I had sinned after receiving communion, and when I responded that of course I had sinned, he said that I absolutely could take communion again. The Lord’s Supper is not a question of how many times we go, but a question of whether we need forgiveness. The answer to that question will always be yes on this earth. It is right that we treasure this gift for all the blessings it gives to us.

Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” – St. Matthew 22:37-40 (NKJV)

When we speak of “the Proper Distinction Between the Law and the Gospel,” we usually mean by “Law” the Ten Commandments or, if we use Jesus’ summarizing them, the Two Tables: Love God and Love your neighbor. The Gospel, we say, is about what Jesus does. The Law, we say, is about what we do, or at least what we are supposed to do. Thus, the Gospel is about Jesus and the Law is about us.

It comes out sounding something like this in our theology: We are sinful, so we break the commandments. Our sinfulness means we can’t keep the commandments. If we don’t keep the commandments, we’ll go to hell. Therefore, God sent His Son, Jesus, to keep the commandments in our place and to give His life as a sacrifice that forgives our sins of breaking the commandments. Then, with the Holy Spirit as our Helper, we go and try to keep the commandments. The problem with this approach is that it makes the Law about us when it’s really about Jesus.

Look closely at Jesus’ words above. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” The “Law” means the “Torah” which is what the first five books of the Bible are called. “Torah” means more than just “Law.” It could be translated as “teaching” or “Law and Gospel.” And the “Prophets” refers to rest of the writings of the Old Testament through which the Lord promised the sending of our Savior. So when Jesus says “the Law and the Prophets” He means Himself! That’s because He is the fulfillment of everything written in the Law and the Prophets (Luke 24:27, 44). So, everything in the Law and the Prophets-that is, Jesus!-hangs on these two commandments: Love God; love your neighbor. And the word there really is “hang,” as in “hang on the cross.” Now, consider that Jesus is both true God and true man in one person and all the pieces click together.

The law says we must love God and love our neighbor. In Christ, God and man are together in one person. And that Person, Jesus, loves God the Father above all things. He loves the Father in such a way that He even obeys the Father in dying for sinners! That’s the First Table of the Law. But He also loves His neighbor as Himself, even more than Himself, because He undergoes suffering and death for you! You can’t love others more than Jesus did-dying for their sins when He didn’t deserve to! So there it is. The Law. Love God. Love neighbor. And Jesus hangs on that Law on Calvary. There, He does what you don’t do. And He pays for what you did and haven’t done according to the Law.

So, the Law is not first and foremost about us. It’s about Jesus! Jesus, who perfectly loves God the Father and who perfectly loves and serves His neighbor. The Law pointed to Jesus and it is kept and fulfilled by Jesus. Everything the Law does-command obedience and punish sin-lands on Jesus on Calvary. He truly does hang on the commandments of the Law. So what does that mean for you? Do you have to worry about the Law? Do you have to bother doing and not-doing what it says to do and not do? The Law will always do its job to our Old Adam: crucifying the sinful flesh with its passions and desires. But the Spirit, by whom we have Christ’s forgiveness, dwells in us to bring forth the fruits of faith, namely, obedience and keeping the Law. Or, as St. Paul puts it, it’s not you living but Christ living in you. Or, even better, we learn to see the Law-the commandments-for what it really is: a gift!

You see, rather than just arbitrary rules God throws out there to trip us up and give Him a reason to condemn us, the Law is a list of all the gifts God gives us, beginning with Himself. The real nature of our sin isn’t that we “broke a rule” but that we have rejected a gift. “You shall have no other gods.” But we don’t want the true God. We want other gods. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But we don’t like the people God has given into our lives and so we treat them badly and strive to please ourselves with other people. But Christ lives as if there is nothing better than loving God and receiving every good thing from His Father’s hand. And that life of Christ’s is now yours through your baptism into Him.

Sure, the Law is for you and about you, but only in and through Jesus. He is the great filter by which your sins against the commandments are forgiven and in whom your obedience and works are counted as perfect and pleasing to your Father in heaven. What we need to watch out for is getting hung up on the Law as if we could keep it ourselves or as if we could ever please God. Rather, because Jesus hung upon the Law as He hung on the cross, He has kept it for you and made you perfect in God’s sight. Touch the Law apart from Jesus, and it will bring down the damning curse. But in Christ, the Law is for you a gift that is delivered through Christ’s hanging on it and keeping it for you. So no more getting hung up on the Law since Jesus already was…for you!

Rev. Mark Buetow is pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in McHenry, Illinois

What these sacrifices promised from a God who sought to bless, came at last – a second Adam – Priest and King of righteousness: son of God, incarnate Savior, son of Man, both Christ and Lord, who in naked shame would offer on the cross His blood outpoured. -LSB 572, Verse 3

The sacrifices and sacrificial covenant of the Old Testament were never intended to be a permanent solution to sin. They were a promise which pointed ahead to the sacrifice that God would send in fulfilment of His first promise to Adam and Eve. For hundreds of years, God’s people waited and watched for the coming of this Savior. As they waited, some of them lost sight of who this Savior would be and His true purpose. When Christ Jesus became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, was born into this world, and began His ministry, many of the Jewish people did not recognize Him as God. They were looking for a temporal savior- one who would free them from political and religious oppression, and they missed the deeper issue of sin and eternal damnation. They did not understand that all the sacrifices of the priests pointed to this Jesus who now lived and taught among them.

Yet Jesus came to make His people holy before God, not to free them from any temporal condition. Jesus humbled Himself and took on human flesh because this was the only way that sin could be removed from mankind bringing us back into fellowship with God. By living a sinless life, Jesus accomplished what we can never do no matter how hard we try. Imagine never sinning against God or your neighbor. We cannot even begin to comprehend what Jesus’ life would have been like, because we are so corrupted by sin that we cannot escape it even for one moment. Jesus never feared, loved, or trusted in anything apart from God, and He always loved His neighbor as Himself. If He had sinned, He would not have been able to redeem us.

Jesus is the second Adam because He obeyed God’s word whereas the first Adam did not. Adam took the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and immediately enslaved the human race and the world to sin, death and the Devil. Jesus, the second Adam, perfectly fulfilled the law of God, and through His death on the cross He crushed the Devil, broke the chains of captivity, and freed His people from their sins. How was this possible? When Jesus took on our sin, He became sin for us. When Jesus died on the cross, sin died as well. The wages of sin is death and in Jesus’ death, sin’s wage is now paid in full. With Jesus death, the promise of God to Adam and Eve was fulfilled, and the sacrificial covenant ended paving the way for the new covenant God established with His people.

“Your mother was in an accident, and is at the hospital in critical condition.”  Those were words I never expected to hear. Yet, at noon on Tuesday, October 17th, 2017, that’s exactly what my father told me.  My sister and I rushed to the hospital as fast as we could.  We learned that our mother had sustained unsurvivable injuries.  As the afternoon progressed, we gathered around her bed to pray, read from Holy Scripture, and sing hymns.  We recited the Apostles’ Creed and Lord’s Prayer at 4:30 p.m., then she was delivered into the resurrection.

I never expected to bury my mother at just twenty three years old.  The hospital staff, friends, classmates, and professors had little clue how we dealt with this tremendous loss or were able to continue with our lives amidst our grief.  But, I understand how, for many young people, the same situation would he hopeless, debilitating, and maybe something they would try to run from. I can even understand why they might flee their church or God.  After all, how could God, who we confess, loves us so much, allow something as terrible as this to happen? Our mother was a loving and faithful Christian woman who steadfastly devoted herself to God’s Word and Sacraments and served others in any way she could.  She surely didn’t deserve to be taken now!

However, Holy Scripture speaks a much different message:  We all deserve death. As the Apostle Paul writes, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).”  Ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin in the garden of Eden, death has been a reality of life here on earth. God told Adam, “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19b). God has not guaranteed us any minimum number of years in this life. Also, He has not promised that our lives will be easy or pain-free.  We will face trials and tribulations, pain and suffering, and even death as difficult as that may be for us to swallow. The weight of the Law, and how sin uses the Law to kill us, rests heavy upon us. However, thanks be to Christ that’s not the end of the story!

As soon as Adam and Eve rebelled against God, and dragged all creation down with them, He prepared a plan of Salvation. He promised in Genesis 3:15 that Eve’s offspring would bruise Satan’s head.  This promise was fulfilled in God’s Son, Jesus. Jesus took on human flesh, was born of the Virgin Mary, lived the sinless life that we could not, and then was crucified and died, taking upon Himself all of the sin of you and me and everyone in the world which separated us from the perfection of God.  Even better, Jesus didn’t stay dead! He rose from the grave three days later, defeating sin, death, and the devil, so that we can say with the Apostle Paul, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). This is the wonderful, sweet message of the Gospel: That Christ died to take away your sins, my sins, and the sins of the whole world!  How exactly do we receive this forgiveness? The resurrected Christ promises us in Mark 16:16 that, “Whoever believes [the Gospel] and is baptized will be saved.”

I know for sure that my dear mother Lisa was baptized, enjoyed faith in Christ through the Gospel and His gifts, and was received into the resurrection at 4:30 p.m. on October 17th, 2017.  Does this mean that the pain is gone?  Of course not – burying my mother will always be painful.  However, the knowledge that she sees Christ face-to-face in the resurrection and that we will be reunited with her at the wedding feast of the Lamb is a great comfort.  And, more than that at present, we are comforted when we receive Christ’s Body and Blood at the altar in Holy Communion. We commune with my mom and “all the company of heaven” who have passed from this life into life eternal.  That’s what your pastor alludes to when he speaks or chants the Proper Preface and it says, “therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven…” All the company of heaven – that’s my mom, your mom, grandma or grandpa, and all Christians who die in Christ Jesus.  Remember that the next time you receive Communion. It brings comfort to those who grieve.

For me and my family, at a time of such profound pain, what else could we do but take comfort in the Gospel?  Since we had this comfort, instead of being overcome by grief like those with no hope, we were freed by God’s Spirit and Word to bear witness to Jesus who is our forgiveness, life, and salvation.  In the end, Christ Jesus is all that matters in this life and the life to come. He is my mom’s life and resurrection. He is our life and resurrection. 

by Matthew Kelpe

Days and months and years unfolding clearly showed what sin had wrought: fallen Adam’s children learning lessons fallen parents taught. All these sacrificial offerings crested as a crimson flood: Patriarchs and priests atoning for their sin with cleansing blood. – LSB 572, Verse 2

We have always lived with the consequences of the Fall. That may sound like a simple, obvious statement- we do not know what it is like to live without the pain of sin, death, and the power of the Devil. However, Adam and Eve had lived in that perfect Eden, and so every sin, every withered plant, every ache, sickness, and human death came as a shock to them as they saw exactly what the price of their disobedience cost themselves and their descendants. Sin was not just a misstep, one small action taken too far, or an accident. Instead, the Fall destroyed the perfect man God created. God, as the perfect father to Adam and Eve had passed on His image to them, yet Adam as an imperfect and sinful father to the rest of humanity passed on his fallen image to all his descendants. The curse of the fall was not just for Adam; it was for the whole human race which was now born innately corrupt and sinful, separated from God forever.

Yet God is merciful to His people. He does not allow us to remain separated from Him no matter how much our sinful nature would prefer to have nothing to do with God. All through the Old Testament, we see the Patriarchs (Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob among others) offering sacrifices on altars to God. They offered them in times of thanksgiving and in times when they knew God had spared them despite their sin. They understood the extent of God’s justice as well as His great mercy, and so they offered their sacrifices to Him in repentance and faith in His promise to send a Savior.

This continued with the sacrificial covenant God made with the Children of Israel. After bringing them out of Egypt, God set out the specific rules regarding sacrificial offerings: when they needed to be made, the amount of the offerings, and the rituals surrounding them. These sacrifices reminded the Children of Israel that God delivered them from slavery and preserved their lives both physically and spiritually. The blood of the animals slain on that altar covered the sins of the people and reminded them that God was not only just, but He was also merciful and did not hold their sins against them. From the outside, the blood of hundreds of animals scattered on the Children of Israel seems gory and unfair, but the price of our sin is death. It always has been since the time God killed the first animal to cover Adam and Eve’s shame. Yet these sacrifices were made in faith that God would in time send a Savior to fulfill His promise to Eve and crush the Devil.

Much to the delight of many youth across the country, the Higher Things conference season is fast approaching. This is always an exciting time for church youth groups who have been fundraising all year for these trips as every conference provides wonderful opportunities to learn and grow. The plenary speakers expound on the conference theme, breakout speakers present on a variety of topics, the multitude of services provide a theological foundation grounded in the liturgy, great hymns, and sermons to meditate on, and yes, there will be some time for fun and games as well. Another aspect of conferences that I especially love is learning the conference hymn. If you were not aware that Higher Things has a specific hymn chosen to fit the theme of each conference, now you know! This year the hymn is “In the Shattered Bliss of Eden” (LSB 572) which ties in with the conference theme – “Sanctified.” The text of this hymn covers the entire story of our salvation from the fall into sin, through the Old Testament sacrificial covenant, onto Jesus’ death and the New Testament sacramental covenant given to us in the present day.

In the shattered bliss of Eden dawned the day of sacrifice, as our primal parents shuddered – Sin had caused this dreadful price! Faith embarked with this discernment: Only God can cover sin, as He took their leafy garments and He clothed their shame with skin. –LSB 572, Verse 1

In Genesis chapter 3 when Adam and Eve took that fateful bite of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the wonderful paradise that God created for them was gone. They achieved what they were promised by the serpent: to know the difference between good and evil just like God, yet with this newly acquired knowledge came the realization that what they had just done was evil. They broke God’s law, and immediately their sin and shame were visible. As they desperately tried to hide themselves from God with fig leaves, God came to them, showed them their sin, and gave them both a curse – the punishment for sin – and offered them a promise, that their sin would eventually be crushed by the seed of Eve.

The scene that followed is highlighted in this first stanza of the hymn: God took an animal and killed it in order to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve. What a shock this must have been to our first parents. This was Eden! Nothing had ever died, or withered, or been sick, or been killed before. God’s warning to Adam in Genesis 2 where He said Adam would die in the day he ate of the tree in the garden was visibly carried out in front of Adam. Adam would eventually die, and all creation took on his curse and would die with him. God killed this first animal to cover the sin of Adam and Eve, and what a horrible price it must have seemed at the time. They could not have foreseen the thousands of animals that would be sacrificed to cover the sins of Children of Israel nor the painful, terrible sacrifice of Jesus Christ – the seed of the woman sent to crush the serpent’s head. Instead, what they saw and learned on that day was that God alone could cover their sin and that all their attempts to cover up what they had done were futile. Sin came at a price, and that price was death.