Words of Encouragement – October 14, 2009
Paul’s Letter to the Believers at Colosse (continued)
“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” Colossians 3:12-13
As the elect and chosen of God, holy and dearly-loved children of God through faith in Christ Jesus and for the sake of His innocent sufferings and death in our stead (cf. Galatians 3:26-27), we are called upon to put on the image and likeness of Christ Jesus. We were baptized into Christ. All our sins and our old sinful nature were crucified on Christ’s cross. We have been raised up to new life by the working (operation) of the Holy Ghost (Colossians 2:10-15). We daily – through repentance and faith – put off the old sinful nature and put on the new (Colossians 3:5ff.). And so we are called upon to be like Jesus in our dealings with others, and especially with our fellow believers.
We are to put on “bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”
From our innermost being – from the heart – we are to be merciful and kind toward others. Why? because we know God’s mercy and kindness toward us. Even when we were spiritually dead in our sins and living in rebellion against God, He showed mercy to us and sent his only-begotten Son to die in our stead and redeem us (Romans 5:8; John 3:16). Even though we continually sin and come short in our lives, He shows us mercy and washes away our sins in Jesus’ blood (1 John 1:7 – 2:2).
When we remember how Jesus humbled Himself, not appearing in a display of all His divine glory and power but living humbly as a man and even permitting His enemies to crucify Him that He might redeem all of fallen mankind, certainly we have every reason to live humbly and not usurp ourselves or our position over others. As Jesus lived in this world as a servant to meet our needs and win our eternal salvation, so we ought to think and live as servants in this world to meet the needs of others and bring to them the message of God’s redeeming love.
Longsuffering and forbearing with one another means that we are to be patient with others and put up with their failings and shortcomings – we suffer much and long and are yet patient. And, indeed, when we consider the patience, longsuffering and forbearance of God toward us, we again have every reason to show the same longsuffering and forbearance toward others. Again and again each of us fails to live as God intends – we go our own way, think we know better or just neglect to listen – and yet God doesn’t cast us off or condemn us. He continues to deal with us in mercy and patience.
And, instead of holding another’s sins and misdeeds against him, we are called upon to forgive as Christ has forgiven us. And, indeed, if we consider the great debt of sin which Christ has forgiven to us – even going to the cross and shedding His holy and precious blood to pay our just penalty – what is the small debt of sin against us by others? Jesus shed His blood to redeem all and to win pardon and forgiveness for all; how can we not forgive as He has forgiven?
The Apostle wrote the same things to the believers in Ephesus: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:31-32).
We must remember that it is our old sinful and fallen nature – our nature which was condemned and punished on Christ’s cross – which would have us be unmerciful, impatient, unkind, proud, haughty, quick to condemn and unforgiving. The new nature, created in us by the Holy Spirit when we were baptized into Christ Jesus, seeks to be like Christ: with “bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any.”
Once again, we see our own sinfulness and failures to live as God’s redeemed children and we turn to Him for mercy and forgiveness for the sake of the shed blood of Jesus, who died for the sins of all and rose again in victory. In Jesus, we find mercy and forgiveness. His blood cleanses us from all our sins (1 John 1:7). And, in Jesus, we find help and strength to amend our sinful ways and to live each day for Him as God’s elect and chosen children.
Dear Jesus, forgive me for living according to my old evil and sinful nature. Wash away my sins in Your holy and precious blood and give me a heart like Yours, full of mercy, kindness, patience and forgiveness toward others. Amen.
Pastor Randy Moll
We All Believe in One True God:
A Summary of Biblical Doctrine
(The entire book is posted under Pages on the Church Web log)
VI. The Person of Christ
“What think ye of Christ? whose Son is He?” This most important question is asked by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself (Matt. 22:42). The Pharisees whom He interrogated failed to give an adequate answer to His question; for their reply: “The son of David,” though true, is only half of the truth. Simon Peter, by illumination of the Holy Ghost, had given the right answer when Jesus examined His disciples on the doctrine of His Person at Caesarea Philippi, for he had confessed: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). The confession that He is “the Christ,” the Lord’s Anointed, includes, according to the uniform tenor of Old Testament prophecy, the recognition of Him as the Son of David; and the further confession that He is the Son of the living God gives expression to the divine mystery which David himself acknowledged when he called Him “Lord” (Psalm 110:1; Matt. 22:44). The correctness of this answer to the question: “Whom do ye say that I the Son of man am?” (Matt. 16:13, 15) was acknowledged by Jesus in the words: “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17). Everyone who has been taught of God makes the same answer.
Luther gives this same answer in his Small Catechism: “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord.” And every Christian of all ages, including the believers who lived in the days before God’s Son came in the flesh, agrees in this confession concerning the God-man. David, for instance, not only calls Him Lord, in the One Hundred Tenth Psalm before quoted, but he also clearly expresses his faith in the two-fold nature of this Lord, in 2 Samuel 7:19b, as correctly translated from the Hebrew in Luther’s German Bible: “This is the manner of a Man who is the Lord Jehovah.”
The blessed season of Advent and Christmas has its place in the Church Year for the special purpose of stressing this all-important Bible teaching of the Incarnation, or the coming of the eternal Son of God into the flesh. Therefore only a Christian knows the meaning of Christmas. And every Christian who kneels in worship at the manger of Bethlehem does know and confess the doctrine of the Incarnation, even though he may be unacquainted with many of the technical terms in which orthodox theology has from the earliest ages of the New Testament Church confessed and taught this divine truth. Contrary to my general practice in this little book on the principal doctrines of our Christian faith, I shall in the subsequent paragraphs of this chapter employ the very words of a great teacher of our Church, Dr. Franz Pieper, in the second volume of his Christian Dogmatics (English translation), pp. 57, 58, only eliminating a few technical terms which he introduces for the purpose of demonstrating that the truths they express are known and confessed even by Christians to whom these terms are unfamiliar, as long as they adhere to the Christian faith expressed in the simple words of Holy Scripture:
“It is an altogether false assumption that the Christian Church arrived at the true knowledge of the Person of Christ only in the course of time, and that before the ecclesiastical terms were coined this knowledge was lacking. Luther is perfectly right when he sets forth that the true doctrine of the Person of Christ was known and believed in Christendom from the very beginning, before any council passed any resolution, on the basis of the clear statements of Scripture. All that our Confessions teach concerning the Person of Christ every Christian knows and believes because it is found clearly revealed in the Word of the Prophets and Apostles.
“The Christian believes that there are two natures in Christ, for he reads or hears that the eternal Son of God became man through the Virgin Mary (Gal. 4:4, 5; John 1:1, 2, 14). He does not doubt the unity of the Person, for he reads in Scripture that one and the same Jesus presents Himself as the Son of Man and the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:13–17). He entertains no doubt about the real communion of natures, for Scripture tells him that the fulness of the Godhead dwells not beside, but in the human nature of Christ as in its body (Col. 2:9). He believes, on the testimony of Scripture, that the Lord of Glory was crucified (1 Cor. 2:8) and that this gives to the suffering and death of Christ its value (Rom. 5:10; 1 John 1:7).
“The Christian further believes, on the testimony of Scripture, that to Christ was given, here in time, according to His human nature, omnipotence, omniscience, etc. (Matt. 28:18; Matt. 11:27; John 3:34, 35). The thought is foreign to his mind that the omnipotence, omniscience, etc., of which Scripture speaks, may designate merely ‘finite, great gifts.’ And when Christ promises His Church that He will be with her always even unto the end of the world (Matt. 28:20), he cannot but think of this Savior as being present, not without and outside of His human nature, but with and within it, i.e., he ascribes to Christ also according to His human nature omnipotence, omniscience, and, equally so, omnipresence.
“And when Scripture states that the Son of God appeared in the flesh to destroy, through His activity in the assumed flesh, and through the assumed flesh, the works of the devil, and to save mankind (1 John 3:8; Heb. 2:14, 15), the Christian understands this to mean exactly that Christ performs His official acts as Prophet, Priest, and King not beside, but in and through, the assumed human nature, i.e., according to both natures.
“He repudiates the notion that the finite is not capable of the infinite, for Scripture has convinced him that the Son of God did actually become partaker of flesh and blood, that therefore the Infinite has been united with the finite into one Person. This short summary, based on clear Scripture passages, contains the entire doctrine of Christ’s Person in its farthest reaches — and all of it is intelligible to every Christian.”
As a clinching demonstration of the main thesis of this entire book: that Lutheran doctrine is simply Christian doctrine, which every true Christian, as a Christian, believes, let me present a quotation from a Christian theologian, who does not belong to the Lutheran Church but to a denomination which officially disputes against the doctrine of the Person of Christ presented in our Lutheran Confessions, in which he shows the vital necessity of just this Biblical doctrine for our faith in Christ as our Redeemer.
Dr. Alan A. MacRae, President, Faith Theological Seminary (Bible Presbyterian), Philadelphia, Pa., in “The Reformation Review,” July, 1956, pp. 202, 203: “Man is a sinner and must suffer eternally if God is to be just. Man is powerless to save himself. It is he who must pay the penalty of sin, and no other can justly pay it. It would take an eternity of suffering for any man to pay the penalty of his own sin. He could not possibly redeem anyone else. God, however, is not only just, but also loving. His great heart yearns for man’s salvation. His power is limitless. But this power can accomplish nothing, unless it can be made available to man. God cannot forgive man’s sin and still remain a just God, unless man himself first pays the penalty that is due. Man must pay the penalty but lacks the power. God has the power, but it is man who must pay. How, then, can man be saved?
“The second person of the Trinity entered the womb of a virgin and she conceived a son. The eternal One took on Himself human flesh. He was God, the infinite One. He was God, the sinless One. He had no sin of His own which must be dealt with. As man, He could pay the penalty of sin. As God He had the power to make this payment. Through the miracle of the Virgin Birth the God-man came into existence, and only thus could we be saved. All that we need for salvation is simple faith in the atonement of Christ. He, the sinless One, died for our sins. But if we are truly saved, we will go on to become true servants of God, and to do this we must understand something of the infinite mystery of the Incarnation. Only through the Virgin Birth could the power of the infinite God be made available to man in his dire need. The Virgin Birth is vital to belief in a Christ who is capable of being our Redeemer.” The above quotation is Biblical, Lutheran, i.e., Christian, doctrine.
By Wallace H. McLaughlin
Bible Study in Preparation for Sunday
The Adult Bible Class continues its study of the Gospel of John. To prepare, read John 1:1-14. Who is the Word in 1:1? What do these verses say of Him? How is the life the light of men? What happens as this light shines in the darkness? What was the role of John the Baptist? How do men receive the Word? What does this say to us about our witness as individuals and as a church?
The Catechism Class will continue studying the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed and learning of Jesus and what He has done to redeem all mankind. Catechumens may prepare by reading the second article of the Apostles’ Creed and Luther’s explanation of it in the Small Catechism. What is the meaning of the name Jesus? What is Jesus’ title and what does it mean?
Sunday School Classes are scheduled to study Elijah being taken to heaven in a chariot of fire. Bible texts behind the lesson are in 2 Kings 2. Cf. Psalm 104:4.
The Sunday Sermon will be based on II Peter 3:1-18. In preparation, read the chapter and consider the following: Who will come in the last days? How will they walk? What do they say? Why? What do they forget? For what are the present heavens and earth reserved? Is the Lord slack concerning His promise? Why does this evil world continue to go on? What is God’s purpose and desire? What will finally happen? What effect should that have on us as Christians?
What Do We Believe?
What do we believe about Repentance? Consider the following summary statement and look up the supporting Bible passages:
REPENTANCE
We believe that true repentance consists of a troubled conscience (godly sorrow) over one’s sins and sinfulness and of faith in God’s mercy and forgiveness for the sake of Jesus Christ and His innocent sufferings and death upon the cross for our sins and the sins of the whole world. It is a coming to the knowledge of one’s utter sinfulness and of the punishment of God justly deserved; and it is a turning to God in faith, trusting that He mercifully forgives our sins and accepts us as His own dear children for the sake of Jesus’ shed blood (Psalm 51; Psalm 32; Romans 3:9-28; Mark 1:4, 15; Acts 2:36ff.; 3:19; 20:17-21; 26:20; Isaiah 55:6-7; Luke 24:45-47; 2 Corinthians 7:9-10; Ephesians 1:3ff.; 2 Peter 3:9). We also teach that a fruit of genuine repentance is a new and amended life lived for the LORD (Luke 3:3, 7-17; Acts 26:20; 2 Corinthians 5:14-15; Romans 6:1ff.; 1 John 1:5-10; 2:1-6; Isaiah 1:16-20; Ephesians 2:8-10). We believe that a true Christian lives his life here in this world in continual and daily repentance; that is, acknowledging his sins and failures to the LORD God and receiving His mercy and forgiveness for Christ’s sake – as well as the needed help and strength to amend his life and live for the LORD (1 John 1:8 – 2:2; Psalm 32; Psalm 51; Psalm 86:5; Ephesians 1:15-23; Philippians 4:13). We therefore reject the false teaching that true believers do not sin and thus do not need to continue in repentance, or that God cannot bring a fallen believer back to repentance or will not forgive those who have fallen and returned to repentance.
Remember to Pray
Remember to pray for our church and for all our members that none be lost to Christ’s kingdom, but continue in repentance and be strengthened and built up in the true and saving faith in Christ Jesus through the hearing and study of His Word. We continue to pray for any who have been sick or suffering among us, and for our adopted soldiers.
“And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.” Acts 20:32
Upcoming Events
The Regular October Voters’ Meeting of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church is set for this Sunday. A potluck dinner will follow the service, and the meeting will follow the dinner. On the agenda is a review of the congregation’s constitution and by-laws.
A Reformation Hay Ride is scheduled for 6 p.m. Oct. 24. A sign-up sheet is in the back of the church.
Information for bulletins or newsletters may be sent to Pastor Moll by calling him at 479-233-0081 or by e-mail at randy@mollfoto.com.
[Scripture in this Newsletter is taken from the King James Version of the Bible]
