Category: Articles

by Rev. Anthony R. Voltattorni

I would argue that those words make up the single greatest excuse why Christians are increasingly absent from church.

“It’s not interesting.”
“It doesn’t keep my attention.”
“The service isn’t my ‘style’ or ‘preference.’”
“The sermons are hard to listen to.” etc.
In the end, it basically boils down to: 
“Church is boring… so I don’t go.”

But that statement presupposes the belief that church is NOT supposed to be boring. Who said that? Who’s been going around telling everyone that church is not supposed to be boring, because so many seem to believe it. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that church should be boring. It’s not as if the goal is to see just how boring a pastor can make the Divine Service! No, achieving a heightened level of boringness is not the aim here. Neither, however, is it to ensure that you are not bored.  If this were the goal, then I can imagine a hundred other venues that I would find more entertaining, more comfortable, more exciting, and more attention-grabbing than the Divine Service.

Yet, if we truly believe that God is present with us in the Divine Service, that Christ’s body and blood are actually there on the altar, that we’re actually standing before the Almighty, then why on earth should we seek to be comfortable and entertained?

I, for one, know how great and grievous the sins are which stain my hands, eyes, and mind. I can recall them at the drop of a hat, and I’m guessing you can, too. Then, of course, there are all of those sins that don’t come to mind or that we are unaware of but they are sins, nonetheless. Therefore, standing before God, the Almighty Judge, should make us shudder a bit. Moreover, this is what you see throughout Scripture. When God or an angel of God appears, there is often fear involved (e.g., Exodus 3:6; 1 Chronicles 21;30; Matthew 28:5; Luke 1:13, 30; 2:10; Revelation 1:17). It’s not a “comfortable” or “entertaining” experience.

Truly we can look to the cross and see that our judgment has already taken place. It’s accounted for in the blood of Christ, that we might not be afraid at the Resurrection, that we might not be condemned but embraced in the righteousness of the Son of God. However, this way of thinking about church as either “entertaining” or “boring,” ultimately distracts us from the reason why we attend the Divine Service.

Let me put it this way: Is the focus of your attendance the way you feel when the hymns are sung, how inspirational you find the sermon stories, or the level of energy you sense when you leave? These emphases are highly dependent upon where the service falls on the boring-o-meter. Rather, is the reason for your attendance simply, plainly, the forgiveness of your sins, spoken to you from the mouth of your Pastor, washed over you in the waters of Baptism, given to you in the body and blood of Christ, even if it’s boring?

Ultimately, the reason why church is boring is not because there aren’t enough illustrations in the sermon, neither is it because the pastor is too old, nor because there isn’t a praise band, a coffee shop, a state of the art AV system, or liturgical dancers. If the Divine Service is boring, it’s because we’re sinful human beings. We don’t need to be entertained—we need forgiveness. I’m not saying that church will never get any more exciting for you, but if you really want to not be bored in church, if you really want to fix that problem, fix your sin. Go ahead, try. Ah…but this you cannot do.

That is exactly the reason why the focus in the Divine Service is not on you or how entertained or bored you may feel, but on the immeasurable value of the forgiveness of your sins given to you there in words, water, body, and blood. The Divine Service may be exciting, it may be boring, but what matters is that we need it, and Jesus delivers!

Rev. Anthony R. Voltattorni is the Pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Standish, Michigan. He can be reached at pastorvoltattorni@gmail.com.

by Rev. Jeffery W. Grams

“Take, drink; this is the true blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, shed for the forgiveness of your sins.”

Week after week, this phrase is heard in Lutheran churches all around the world. The words have remained essentially the same for hundreds of years. They serve as a reminder of what we are truly receiving from the Lord Jesus Christ every time we celebrate His Supper.

Popular culture has a way of messing with the meaning of words, and in 21st century America our obsession with vampires, in movies and on television, can certainly cause confusion. Nevertheless, fiction has a way of imitating life, and sometimes we can find reminders of the truth in the strangest of places.

Did you ever notice that the mythology of vampires bears a strange similarity to the truth of God’s Word? Let us use this popular myth to take a look at God’s Word and recall the good news of our salvation.

It all begins with the blood. All vampire myths have one thing in common—a vampire must drink blood to survive. Without blood, especially human blood, a vampire will starve and become weak. The drinking of human blood is understood to be the source of true “strength” for the “living dead.”

What does God’s Word say about blood? The life is in the blood…

When Cain murdered Abel, it was his blood that cried out! And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” (Genesis 4:10 ESV)

From the beginning, the biblical understanding was that the life of a creature was in its blood: “ Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.  But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” (Genesis 9:3-4 ESV)

If you search for the word “blood” in the ESV version of the bible, you will find it over 400 times! Why is blood used so often? Just as our life is in our blood, it is by the shedding of blood that we receive the forgiveness of sins. In the New Testament we have come to understand that all of the blood shed in the Old Testament was pointing us forward to our Lord Jesus Christ, who as the Lamb of God would shed his blood for our salvation. (See Hebrews 9:11-28 to read more about our redemption through the blood of Christ!)

Which brings us to the next interesting myth about vampires: 
If you drink their blood you will become immortal and live forever.

What is fascinating to me is that these myths have some similarities 
to the truth of God’s Word. After all, what does our Lord Jesus Christ say in John’s Gospel?

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” (John 6:53-56 ESV)

Clearly this sermon of Jesus is not recommending some form of vampirism or cannibalism! He is pointing us toward His own work of salvation. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the one who would shed His blood on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. He is the one who would give us His flesh to eat and blood to drink in the Lord’s Supper so that we would receive everlasting life. Isn’t that far more comforting and amazing than any myth about blood-sucking undead?

Which raises the question: What do so many people find appealing in the myths about vampires? Some people imagine that becoming a vampire would mean living forever and being forever beautiful. They imagine that as a vampire they would be strong and powerful and fearless.

In reality, even the fantastic promises of this myth pale by comparison to the true joy offered by the Lord Jesus Christ in the True Blood of His Holy Supper. Eternal life will never be found in the blood of some undead monster—but is instead truly received in the Blood of our Savior. Eternal youth will not be received through a bite on the neck—but the new life we have received as we were born again in the waters of Holy Baptism will never end! Digging your way out of a shallow grave can hardly seem an appealing future—but we know that on the day of the Resurrection of all flesh we will all rise again in new and glorious bodies that are forever free from the touch of sin and death.

The glorious future that is given to us by the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is far more amazing than any vampire story found in movies or television. For in the end, by the grace of God, this is the vision of our glory:

“These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every 
tear from their eyes.” – Revelation 7:14-17 ESV

Rev. Jeffery W. Grams is pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and can be reached at RevJGrams@live.com

by Rev. William M. Cwirla

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, and the President of Higher Things. He can be reached at wcwirla@gmail.com.

by Rev. Mark Buetow

But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the LORD.”

1 Corinthians 1:30-31 (NKJV)

Do you do drugs? Sleep around? Look at porn? Steal stuff? Gossip about others? Treat your parents like dirt? Blow off church? How can you be a Christian and do those things? Or maybe those aren’t your sins. You know people like that but it’s not you. Ah, so it’s pride then? Proud of how well behaved you are? Wonder why those other people can’t make the good choices you do?

So, either you’re in the first group—the hardcore sinners who just live like animals, with no common sense and even a little effort to stop doing stupid things, or else you’re in the second group—the self-righteous folks who look pretty good outwardly but whose hearts are full of pride and a self-satisfaction about how few sins they think they actually commit.

Big theological word alert! SANCTIFICATION. The work of being SANCTIFIED. To SANCTIFY. What’s it mean? The Latin word “sanctus” means “holy.” Okay, we’ll try that. HOLY-FICATION. The work of being HOLY. To HOLY-FY something. Still not getting it? “Holy” means “set apart.” When something is holy, it is set apart by God to be special. Are you special? Or do you just blend in with the worldly crowd that could not care less about what it does or how it looks to God or others? Or do you think you’re holy and special because you live a better life than others? Do you see something wrong yet in this article you’re reading? Here’s what’s wrong: We’re talking about everyone but Jesus!

You can’t have sanctification or be sanctified without and apart from Jesus. So watch out! When some people talk about sanctification, they want to make it about you. Usually sanctification is described as “how you live as a Christian” but that’s not it at all! Sanctification is about how Christ lives in you. A church member once accused his pastor and said, “Pastor you never seem to talk to us about good works and how we should be living a good life.” (Incidentally this guy thought he was doing a much better job than some in the congregation.) The pastor replied, “But we don’t do good works. Jesus does them in and through us. ‘For it is not I who live but Christ who lives in me.’ Galatians 2:20.” “But pastor,” he cried, “then you make it sound like Jesus is responsible for your sins, too!” “Exactly!” The pastor smiled, “Now you understand the Gospel and what it is that Jesus has actually done for you!”

The point of that little exchange is this: When we talk about the “Christian life” we can’t ever mean anything else by that than Jesus: Jesus who became man. Jesus who took our sins. Jesus who bore our sins to the cross of Calvary to face our punishment. Jesus who suffered, bled and died for our sins. Jesus who descended into hell, who rose from the dead, and left all your sins buried in His tomb forever and ascended to the right hand of the Father and sent the Holy Spirit through His Word. Jesus who washed you at the font, who absolves you week after week and who feeds you with His pure and perfect body and blood and so actually lives in you. The Jesus whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and, yes, our sanctification. Jesus is your “Christian life.”

Okay, well, so what does that look like? Well, first of all, it means you stop doing things to impress the Lord. So many Christians try to live a certain way because they think that it makes God happy. They are the ones who so easily judge others who don’t live such good lives as they do. Because of Jesus, God is already happy with you! Never doubt that! He smiles upon you every minute of your life, forgets your sins and counts whatever else you do as holy and precious. No need to impress God. Repent of ever thinking you can win God over by how you act! But don’t fall off the wagon on the other side! Just living however you want and doing whatever makes you feel good doesn’t help your neighbor. The problem with drugs or porn or anger or gossip or any of that other stuff is that it doesn’t do anyone else any good. In fact, it harms others. It’s selfishness. Repent of thinking only of yourself and treating others like dirt to get what you want!

And the key to this daily repentance is found in your Baptism. Remember the Catechism? “The Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires and daily the new man should arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” In other words, as we face temptation, and fall into sin, and struggle with trying to avoid sin, the “Christian life” is lived in Jesus, just as Jesus lives in you. It looks like this: You go and receive forgiveness for your sins over and over. Daily you make the sign of the holy cross and remember your Baptism into Christ. You hear your pastor tell you your sins are forgiven. You hear Christ’s Word and preaching about what He’s done for you. You feast upon His Body and Blood which forgive your sins and by which Jesus lives in you.

If you’ve done some nasty sins, Jesus died for those. If you think you’re okay because you haven’t pulled some of those nasties, Jesus died for that, too. And that’s the point of talking about sanctification. Christ is holy and He makes you holy. His holiness covers your sins and makes you look good to the Father. And He lives in you and through you, glorifying the Father and serving your neighbor, which means that you glorify God and serve your neighbor. You can’t not do those things because Jesus lives in you. Holy Jesus, Holy you. That’s what sanctification and the “Christian life” are all about.

Rev. Mark Buetow is pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church in DuQuoin, Illinois and serves as Media Services Executive for Higher Things. He can be reached at buetowmt@gmail.com.

by Magdalena Teske

Until I started college, I went with my family to the Arkansas State Fair every year, if the weather allowed. One time, when I was about 13 or 14, my sister and I had gone on the Tilt-A-Whirl with my father and were rushing across the fair to meet the rest of my family. Amidst all the noise and voices of vendors, excited children and people on scary rides, one man who was advertising his church from behind a booth called after us, “What have you done for Jesus this week?”

My father, being a good Lutheran, turned around and said, “What’s more important is what Jesus did for me.” The man, probably surprised to have someone respond to him at all, said, “That’s true, Sir, but what have you done for Jesus this week?”

What followed was a brief, but interesting exchange in which the other man repeated his question and my father repeated his answer. When my father finally mentioned that he was a pastor, the other man seemed satisfied that my father was, in fact, a Christian. His next question was, “What about your daughters? Do they know Jesus?” My father said that we did, and the man gave us free “Smile, Jesus Loves You” pencils and we left, glad to hold to a faith in which we understand that Jesus loves us and has saved us because of His grace, not because of our works. At the time, I found it surprising that the man from the “What Have You Done for Jesus?” church needed to ask if my sister and I “knew” Jesus. I was baptized as an infant into the Lutheran faith, and the idea of not “knowing” Jesus, when my family was a Christian family, was unthinkable to me.

Since then, there have been many times when I have encountered the unbiblical view that faith must come to a person at some specific point of decision, and that they cannot already have it, especially by infant baptism. I specifically remember one incident in which I suddenly realized fairly late in a discussion that, while the people I was talking with agreed with many of the points I was making, we meant different things when we used the word “saved.” When I said saved, I meant saved, and when they said “saved”, they meant “having had a specific conversion experience at a precise point in one’s life.”

For this reason, I believe I should deny being a “born-again Christian.” When people talk about being born again, they usually mean that they had some sudden spiritual awakening and decided that they were a Christian. They may believe that in order to be a Christian, people must have a personal experience in their lives in which they officially became a Christian and God shows His presence in their lives. Oh, wait. That sounds familiar. That actually has happened to me. But I don’t call it a “conversion experience.” I call it “Baptism.” So I guess I am a born-again Christian after all. (Of course, in adults, the Spirit works through His Word to bring a person to faith and the baptismal font, but this, too, is still only God’s work.)

I find that there is a common objection to the second birth that I and many other saved Christians have had. You see, I was baptized when I was one month old. How could I have faith when I was one month old? How could I know Jesus when I was a baby?

No, I didn’t perfectly understand God and the Bible when I was baptized as an infant. Even now, I don’t understand absolutely everything about God and the Bible, because I am a sinner as well as a saint. But that doesn’t matter, because I am saved by grace through faith, which was given to me by grace. Faith is a gift. My salvation does not come through my own knowledge and understanding, and my salvation is not lost through a lack of knowledge and understanding. It is good to know a lot about theology, but that doesn’t mean that a baby or young child who has not had time to accumulate that knowledge doesn’t have real faith.

So I am a born-again Christian, and I do know Jesus. That is not because I sought out Jesus Christ. It is not because I went to the store and bought myself some Christianity. I know Him because He came to me and introduced Himself and told me that He was my savior, and He did this so long ago that I can’t remember a time when I didn’t “know” Jesus.

Magdalena Teske is a senior at Birmingham-Southern College and attends Hope Lutheran Church in Birmingham, Alabama. She can be reached at magdalenateske@yahoo.com.