Building Up the Culture of the Family of God: From the Family of Faith to a Holy Place

            Although Exodus follows immediately from Genesis, there seems to be little connection between the two in the kind of story that is being told. At the beginning of Exodus, Moses does remind us very briefly of the ending history of Genesis. He names the twelve sons of Jacob (or Israel), tells us that after Joseph’s death the children of Israel multiplied greatly and that a Pharoah arose who did not know Joseph. He then plunges into the account of the children of Israel’s oppression as slaves in Egypt, the birth and preparation of Moses as a leader, and the birth of Israel as the people of God, a holy nation.

            The thread that runs through both books, as through the entire Old Testament, is that the one true God is present and dealing graciously with his chosen ones. Even more, this gracious God has promised a Seed who would come from Abraham’s line, be born of a woman without a man, and who would crush the power of Satan by dying in the place of sinful man.

            But after the historical account of the creation and flood, with some details about the beginning generations of man from Adam and Eve, and then from Noah, the narrative focuses almost exclusively on one man and his family: Abraham. It appears that the one, holy, Christian Church is one man with his family. It is a preaching of faith in the true God and his promise of the Savior. The Word of God resides in one household, is taught by one preacher, and seems constantly to be on the verge of extinction.

            But after the historical account of the creation and flood, with some details about the beginning generations of man from Adam and Eve, and then from Noah, the narrative focuses almost exclusively on one man and his family: Abraham. It appears that the one, holy, Christian Church is one man with his family. It is a preaching of faith in the true God and his promise of the Savior. The Word of God resides in one household, is taught by one preacher, and seems constantly to be on the verge of extinction.

We also know that Abraham and his family had been idolators in Ur of the Chaldees, deep in the heart of Mesopotamia in the delta of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The true Church of the living God had become a small minority religion scattered here and there throughout the ancient world. The lifestyle, the morality, the customs and habits of the ancient world descended into unholy chaos, a darkness which was always seeking to overcome the light of the Gospel of the coming Savior.

Even the family of Abraham often proved unreliable. Nephew Lot’s family was overcome by the effeminate and sodomitic culture of Sodom and Gomorah. Abraham’s son Ishmael mocked and rejected the promise given to his half-brother Isaac. Abraham’s grandson Esau wanted to kill his brother who had received the promise of the Savior. Grandson Jacob’s family hoarded and honored various household idols, went on a murderous rampage in the neighboring town of Shechem, and betrayed and sold one of their own brothers into slavery. The Church of the living God was a small and beleaguered household, living among neighbors sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile. As we have seen in our own times, the church has troubles, sometimes even enemies, right in her midst.

Genesis is the history of a Christian family, a story of justifying faith in Jesus Christ. But isolated families cannot build or sustain a culture that is able to withstand the menacing cultures around them. As Hebrews 11 tells us, they could build no permanent home, no lasting city. This is the picture of a very deep reality of our lives as Christians. Our faith in God and our hope for better things is rooted firmly in “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

In Exodus 1, the Christian family has grown into great people, numerous, enslaved, and leaderless. As we will explore in our coming articles, in Exodus we see another picture of our Christian life, a picture of life as a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a consecrated and unique people of God.

But that history takes some telling. At the beginning of Exodus they were not a people, not royal, not a priesthood, not consecrated or unique. God created a new and wonderful thing in Exodus, as we shall see. And we will rejoice in this new and wonderful thing he has done in our midst, making us into a Christian people of God.

Building up the Culture of the Family of God

The cultural traditions of Christmas are enduring through generations. There are many people today who still celebrate Christmas in culturally recognizable ways, even after they have long since abandoned the Christian faith. Cultural traditions sink deep roots into our hearts and minds. In the case of our loved ones who have wandered far from the church, we pray that the cultural link to “the glad tidings of great joy” will someday be a door through which the Word of God once more enters their lives to give them repentance and forgiveness, faith, and life in Jesus. Healthy and stable Christmas traditions can keep the door open to the Christian faith.

Our cultural traditions in the church are evidence that Christian doctrine is not merely a bloodless, disembodied idea or a system of philosophical propositions. Doctrine is life, as my spiritual fathers taught me. This means that what we believe and what we do go together and have the same source in God’s Word. God’s Word actually changes and shapes how we live.

Consider how a simple theological fact and a beautifully narrated historical account of that theological fact has blossomed into the Christmas we love today. The theological fact is that God became man in the Person of our Savior Jesus Christ. This fact is at the heart and center of our entire Christian faith. The historical account of that fact is recorded beautifully in Matthew 1 and 2 and in Luke 1 and 2. The text is deeply ingrained in our hearts: “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus….” The great doctrine of Christ’s incarnation happened in a particular time and place with Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the little town of Bethlehem all becoming a part of that great historical event. This doctrine and event have become the Christmas we celebrate year by year.

The incarnation and birth of God is the wonderful reality and joy-filled conviction of our lives. It is expressed and reinforced by a endearing array of practices: Christmas trees, candles, lights, special foods and meals, celebrations, gift-giving and cards, carols and hymns, Scripture readings, worship services, and more. Each family and each congregation has its own particular variations. The blending of the Christmas doctrine with language and rituals and Christian piety takes deep root into our lives and shapes our convictions, emotions, and actions.

We Lutherans have always been careful to distinguish the divinely mandated doctrine and rituals, like the incarnation and the Lord’s Supper, from the liturgical traditions and cultural practices that express God’s Word. We don’t make law out of traditions. But we also have the knowledge that our humanity is made for ritual, traditions, and cultural practices. Man is a cultural, ritual creature. Our convictions, relationships, habits, and dispositions are formed and sustained by healthy cultural traditions. The richness and truth of our doctrine has conceived and brought forth such beautiful and pious practices among us Christians

It is in the use of God’s Word—reading, teaching, preaching, hearing, pondering—that the Spirit of God sustains and keeps us in the true faith unto life everlasting. The Christmas traditions of our Western cultural past would become mere tinsel and garish neon lights, ultimately empty and depressing, if the heart of our Christmas culture were not kept and treasured by using and believing God’s Word. Thus we gather in our homes to read and sing God’s Word. So also we gather in church to hear and believe together year after year the beautiful Word that the Son of God is born as a little man-child for our salvation. “And she brought forth her firstborn Son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for him in the inn.”

God grant you and all your loved ones a blessed and merry Christmas as you join in the celebration of Christ’s incarnation and birth!

Building Up the Culture of the Family of God
What is Culture, and Why Does It Matter?

God took forty years to purge the children of Israel from the cultural and theological customs that they had learned in Egypt. God used the ten plagues of His judgment of Egypt to debunk the idolatry of Israel’s slave-masters and prepare them for His Word and worship. But much of what God gave and commanded Israel in the political and ceremonial laws recorded by Moses was designed to separate His people from the culture of the Canaanites into whose land they were entering. It was not simply a matter of rejecting sin. God forbade their rituals, customs, and cultural practices because they were interwoven with idolatry and false doctrine. In the place of these practices He established a distinctly Christian, Old Testament culture. God instituted and created a culture for His unique and precious people by His divine Word.

District leadership has chosen a theme for the 2025–2028 district triennium that gives us occasion to consider what God says about culture: “Building up the Culture of the Family of God.” Many of the articles and essays in the Roundup for the next three years will revolve around the many aspects of this theme. See, for example, the article, “Where are the Homemakers?” in the last Roundup.

In this article we begin with a basic definition: What is culture? Culture is how a community lives together in a place. It encompasses the beliefs, language, rituals, and virtues of that community. It includes the institutions, knowledge, and worldview of that community.

For the Christian, and for the community of Christians, culture is instituted, shaped, nourished, and governed by the Word of God. Culture is the natural expression of man’s created nature. God created man for marriage, church, and community. Man was commanded to work in Eden and settle it for his new family. He was given God’s Word to direct his actions. He was enculturated from the beginning.

Culture embodies the beliefs of a community. Our Christian beliefs, what we call sound doctrine or the true faith, are taught us in God’s Word. These convictions include the application of God’s Word to how we live our lives in our home, our congregation, and our civil community. Our faith take outward shape in our worship of God and our works for our neighbors.

When we refer to the language of our culture, we are not merely referring to the English language. It is true that when our Lutheran forefathers (whether German, Norwegian, Wendish, Danish, Swedish, or Finnish) came to this country, they realized that adopting a new mother tongue for their children would run the profound risk of jeopardizing the Lutheran culture that was bound up with the language of the Old Country. The language of a culture includes the words and phrases we use in common, our generally accepted terms and definitions of important ideas, our common historical and literary tradition, even the things we have memorized together. Our historic liturgy and readings, catechism, Lutheran hymns, and doctrinal heritage constitute a common cultural language for us. Ultimately, God’s Word is our cultural language.

A distinct culture is practiced and passed on to others through common rituals. Ritual is the enactment of beliefs, relationships, offices, and the like. Good manners are a kind of ritual. The church’s liturgy is ritual. Weddings and the married life are highly ritual enactments of our humanity. The worship life of the church, her sacraments, her pastoral office, her prayers, and her care for one another are all a part of the church’s ritual, essential to her culture. The church’s rituals are handed down to us through tradition, but they are not governed by tradition. They are governed by the Word of God and shaped by Christian charity toward one another.

A particular characteristic of culture among Christians is the piety, or virtue, which is often the first aspect of our culture seen by outsiders. “See how they love one another.” Virtue is a word that describes our moral disposition, and piety (or godliness) emphasizes that this disposition is in relation to God. True virtue is a gift of the Holy Spirit which He works through the Gospel and in accordance with the eternal will of God. Culture among Christians not only expresses Christian piety but also nourishes and encourages it. What we might call Christian culture today has generally been called Christian piety by our Lutheran forefathers.

We will be probing many aspects of “Building up the Culture of the Family of God” in the months to come. God has much to say about the matter in His Word. Here we may summarize a culture of Christian virtue in this familiar and beautiful passage from Philippians 4:8–9:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

REFORMATION 500: The Peasants Revolt

One of the most important political events in Germany in 1525 was the Peasants Revolt. The rebellion that began in the summer of 1524 reached its highwater mark between March and May 1525. There was some justice on the side of the peasants. The peasants were experiencing significant poverty in the rural areas and among the urban lower classes. Governmental structures were being changed, with the result that some of the ancient rights of the peasants were being violated. Taxation had become a burden, including taxes owed to church institutions. The resulting resentments were supported, at least in the minds of the peasants, by the Reformation critique of the Roman Catholic Church and the call for evangelical freedom.

But responsibility for the revolt cannot be attributed to Luther, at least not from his own words and actions. Luther had recognized the injustice of some financial practices, including unfair taxation and usury, the charging of high interest rates. He had rejected the destruction of old ecclesiastical government structures. In that respect, Luther advocated a conservative Reformation, making changes only where it was necessary to promote and express pure doctrine. In every case, he rejected rebellion and revolt as being among the greatest of all possible civil evils. In particular, he opposed the preacher, Thomas Müntzer, who was the spiritual and political leader of the peasant rebellion.

In the middle of March 1525 a pamphlet appeared known as the Twelve Articles. The pamphlet appealed to evangelical theology on behalf of the peasants, seeking reforms in both the ecclesiastical and civil spheres. Many of the pamphlet’s demands were just. Toward the end, it included a veiled threat if the demands were not addressed. Although the pamphlet received broad distribution, coming even to Luther, it was not received well or acted upon by the princes. Battles broke out in various places at the end of March and throughout the month of April, though none of them in Electoral Saxony. The peasants won some surprise victories and suffered one defeat.

During this time, April 16 to May 6, Luther traveled to Eisleben and made various stops along the way. As he travelled, he worked on a pamphlet, Admonition to Peace, which was published by the date of his return to Wittenberg (AE 46.3–43). He observed, against the peasants, that the destruction of the temporal realm would make it impossible to preach the Word of God. Indeed, even greater disasters would follow for all of Germany when the Word of God had been silenced. He observed that some of the demands of the peasants were just, while others were self-interested. He urged the princes to yield on some matters. But his plea for peace fell on deaf ears.

            In fact, his pamphlet was already outdated by the time it was published. The war of the peasants was spreading and threatening to engage more German territory. On May 10 Luther published again, a work known by the title, Against the Raging Peasants (AE 46.45–55). He came out strongly against the revolt that had broken out and identified the “false prophet” Thomas Müntzer as the leading spirit of this rebellion. He rebuked the peasants, calling them to repentance and the abandonment of their rebellion. He condemned the peasants if they refused to repent and obey their God-given authority. He then proceeded to advise the consciences of the civil authorities concerning their duties from God’s word. The rulers should negotiate with the peasants if possible. If not, they should strike forcefully with a clear conscience.

In the midst of this turmoil, and perhaps partly because of it, Elector Frederick the Wise died, May 5. Luther preached at his funeral in Wittenberg. On May 15 an army of Thuringian peasants were slaughtered in battle by their civil rulers at Frankenhausen. The rebel false preacher Müntzer was captured in the battle and executed on May 27.

The defeat of the peasants at Frankenhausen quieted the revolt, but not the accusations and criticisms. Luther often found himself at the center of the competing interests of the peasants, the civil rulers, the Roman Catholics, and the radical reformers. All sides could find reason to accuse Luther of fomenting the rebellion or of promoting the cruel slaughter of the peasants. In the early half of July 1525 Luther wrote in response to the criticism, An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants (AE 46.57–85). He continued to affirm the duty of the princes to put down the rebellion with force. Although he may not always have understood all the forces at work in the revolt, he consistently applied the doctrine of Holy Scriptures to this complex and dangerous political situation. He had advocated for the duty of the princes to crush the rebellion. Afterwards, he also urged the princes to have mercy and to correct their own abuses and tyranny. God would judge all those involved, both princes and peasants.

Scholars continue to debate Luther’s role and responsibility in the Peasants Revolt. But there are lessons that we should learn from his conduct in this dangerous political situation. We should note, first, Luther’s understanding that the Word of God cannot be preached and have free course when civil authority has been destroyed. The church, and pastors in particular, have a theological and ecclesiastical interest in the maintenance of just laws, civil peace, and good order. Pastors in our own day have had to address the outright rejection of divine, natural law and moral order in the laws and culture of our local and national governments. These open violations of God’s law threaten our ability to preach the Word of God freely.

Second, we should learn from these events that the preaching and course of the pure doctrine of God’s Word will always produce reactions and responses from civil society and government. We are the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and the city which has been set on a hill (Matthew 5:13–16). The gospel which we preach must inevitably change not only hearts but also lives, and in changing the lives of people, the world around them must also be changed. History is a witness to the many salutary effects that the church has had upon the civil society and government around it. But the Word of God also provokes the hatred of the world and the wrath of Satan, so that the church cannot always dwell in peace, but must often suffer afflictions and persecutions.

Third, we see that Luther the pastor did not, and indeed could not, avoid engagement with the events of his time. He preached, taught, and wrote about these events, giving very direct instruction and counsel from God’s word. The preacher today might be reminded that his central and primary task is to preach the whole council of God centered upon the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. But God’s Word will certainly teach him to address also the civil and political events of his own day. We cannot avoid the troubles of the civil communities in which God places us. But we must give the help and counsel of God’s Word to our neighbors, and especially to those in authority. In any case, we can keep our own consciences clean by learning and keeping God’s Word in our own speech and conduct.

Where are the homemakers?

Katie Luther was an educated woman. She was brought to the convent as a young child and learned her Latin, in which she worshipped daily, and the basics of education. Her appearances in Martin Luther’s Table Talks reveal her wit and wisdom. When she and Martin were married, she became the mistress of a large and increasingly complex household. She regularly housed students and guests. It was common for her to oversee and provide for more than two dozen people at a meal. She kept a large garden, chickens, and livestock. Eventually she even bought a farm (Proverbs 31). When the plague came through, as it did periodically, she became a nurse to those afflicted by this highly infectious disease. She bore six children with Martin, one of whom died as an infant, and one who died as a teenager.

Some have noted that Katie was a strong-willed woman with a biting wit. And it is true that no one appreciates a sharp-tongued woman. “It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife… It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman” (Proverbs 21:9, 19). But then, she needed to be educated and sharp-witted, as well as bold and industrious, for her to carry out her very challenging vocation. Martin was not easy to live with and had a tendency to give away all their valuable possessions. She had to keep a budget and a close eye on her entire household. Perhaps more importantly, she helped restrain Martin’s impulsive tendencies and gave him good advice. She comforted and encouraged him. She called for the doctor and the pastor when he was sick in body or sick in heart.

Katherine von Bora, the wife of Martin Luther, provides for us a model and pattern for the Christian vocation of homemaker. It is too often the overlooked and undervalued vocation. Christians of our day have rightly given a great deal of attention to the decline and fall of manhood. Where are the men? we ask. Men have too often been absent from our churches, from our homes, and even from the civil institutions of government and higher education. Our young men have often lost their way and seem to be unable to finish entering into the adult world of marriage and work. They are addicted to computer games, pornography, sports, and the like. Without them, the future of the home, the church, and civil communities is in grave danger. But the same sort of danger is present in women’s abandonment of homemaking.

This essay is prompted, in part, by a recently gained insight. You can try this at home, or with your friends, neighbors, or coworkers. Ask them, Where is your home? Not their house, which has an address and is important in its own right. Where is your home? We have a saying, “Home is where the heart is.” It reminds us that our houses are locations for home, but they are not necessarily home itself. For something to be home, it needs to have a heart, which means people, relationships, shared experiences, life together as family.

The insight is this: Home is where the wife and mother are. She is the location of the home. She is the person in whom the marriage bond, with all of its profound and intimate affections, and the maternal bond, with its life-giving and lifelong affections, are united. She is the guardian and caretaker of the tangible and intangible household goods: food, clothing, comfort, family affections, memories, in short, the family culture. And she is not only the location of the home. She is the homemaker. She makes the house, the apartment, the camper, the tent, the hard patch of ground, into a home.

Where are the homemakers? We are observing two very powerful warning signs in our congregations today. The first warning sign has had our attention for more than a quarter century already. It is the abandonment of home and marriage by wives and mothers. The second is more recent and may be seen in the abandonment of the society of the church by many of our young women.

I saw the first warning sign as a young pastor, and like many of our pastors, I was not prepared for it. I had assumed that most divorces were driven by men who were having affairs, or who were looking for a younger wife, or who had simply tired of the work needed to maintain the marriage. But I have heard from many pastors across the Synod that the vast majority of the lawless divorces they struggle with are due to the wife, not the husband, abandoning the marriage.

Within the broad category of lawlessness, many reasons can be identified for this phenomenon. Men can be very difficult to live with. Many men exhibit all the vices of our unkind, self-centered, pornography-drenched culture. A loveless marriage to such a spiritually juvenile partner is truly a sore trial for any Christian woman. What’s more, for decades now our girls have been enculturated to prioritize personal autonomy, self-realization, independence, and career above the traditional priorities of marriage, childbearing, child-rearing, and homemaking. When marriage and children are perceived to interfere with these priorities, they are often refused or abandoned. The prospect of economic independence removes the last barrier to a lawless divorce.

The second warning sign has been creeping up on us for some years now, but has only recently become impossible to ignore. I have been visiting with pastors at our LCMS campus churches. To a man they have the same complaint: Our young women are not attending their congregations. The young men are starting to come and are coming with a remarkable zeal and eagerness, but in some cases there are no women at all—no women to worship with, no women to date, no women to marry. This is an astonishing development! Some sixty percent of the college undergraduates nationally are women. In theory, they should outnumber the men in our campus congregations. Where are they? Where have they gone?

Ministry to our young men and women at college has been both urgent and difficult for a long time. Some go home on weekends. Some have drifted into heterodox congregations or even into cults. Many have simply dropped out of the faith altogether. But in the past, we could observe these problems in both sexes, with the men usually being the less faithful sex. And we could always count on the mutual attraction of the sexes and the desire for marriage to open doors to ministry to both sexes.

Now, this essay requires an acknowledgement: God has given great blessings to our congregations today. I have seen and rejoiced in many, many exceptions to this cultural trend and its inroads into the church. I am surrounded by beautiful and happy marriages with many children and a rich family culture. Contrary to all the cultural pressures around them, many of our Christian women have embraced marriage under the vocation of homemaker.

And one more acknowledgment: There is a godly place for singles in the church. St. Paul even advocates it for churches in times of persecution. “I think that in light of the impending [or present] distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is” (1 Corinthians 7:26). Of course, chastity in heart, mind, and life is expected of the single man or woman, just as it is for the married. And for the single Christian, he is not single—he is never single—just for himself and his own selfish interests. He (or she) is single in order to be concerned about or care for “the things of the Lord,” “how to please the Lord,” and “how to be holy in body and spirit” (1 Corinthians 7:32–35). As Jesus teaches in his discourse on marriage in Matthew 19, some Christians have chosen not to marry “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12).

But this essay is written to praise and uphold marriage, the marriage bed, childbearing and childrearing, the household estate, homemaking, and the woman as homemaker. The church needs homemakers. Christian men need homemakers. If we are to populate and sustain congregations and homes into the future, we will need to restore the high and godly vocation of homemaker.

We can begin by reestablishing in our congregations a culture in which young women once again find great fulfillment and purpose in orienting their lives to home, husband, and children. This exhortation comes from the Word of the Lord: “Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be reviled…, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:3–5, 10).

It is clear that we cannot rely upon the culture of our civil communities to prepare and support our young women in their aspirations to be homemakers, or to honor and encourage married women in the labors of their vocation at home. If the women of our church are to be helped in this matter, that help must come from our Lutheran homes and Lutheran congregations. This means we must speak, act, and organize ourselves in such a way that marriage is restored as the highest earthly aspiration for our boys and girls, men and women, and that the gift of children and the duty to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord is returned to its high honor for the sake of our wives and mothers. It means we must narrate and embody daily the vision of the pious homemaker, praised by her husband, honored by her children, and upheld by her congregation. It may even mean finding ways to bolster the financial capacity of young households so that the wife and mother can give herself fully to being a homemaker.

There is no adequate substitute in the world for this vision. Indeed, the world’s mockery and scorn of Christian homemakers has no place in our midst. Instead, we Lutherans must reassert the “innovation” of the Lutheran Reformation in giving a truly Christian education to our girls and young women as far as their needs, inclinations, abilities, and time before marriage allows. Nor should we scorn a woman’s work outside the home insofar as it does not take away from her duties as wife, mother, and homemaker. But we should openly acknowledge that what the homemaker teaches her children, and the counsel and help she gives her husband, will shape our households and congregations for generations to come.

Indeed, let our households once again become the home of useful industry, beautiful arts, pious and uplifting music, and storytelling and literature that ennobles and inspires the householders to deeper piety and greater service. Let our homes be the seedbed and garden of devout faith, Christian piety, and Christian love and affection under the attentive hand of our homemakers. The hand that rocks the cradle and shapes the inner and outer life of our children gives truly priceless gifts to our communities, congregations, and future homes.

Above all, God has appointed the homemaker, under the spiritual initiative and leadership of her husband, to be His instrument for teaching His Word to the dear and beloved members of His household. For in the Christian home, the homemaker supports, helps, and (in necessity) substitutes for the home provider, her husband, in inculcating a deep love for and daily use of God’s Word in their children (2 Timothy 3:14–17). Together they bring their children to baptism. They bring them to church Sunday after Sunday. They catechize them with the pastor’s help. They instruct and model Christian virtues to them. And above all, they set the work of Christ and His forgiveness before them in word and deed, that their children may dwell with them forever in Christ’s eternal home.

Rev. John E. Hill

Reformation 500: Marriage or Peasants’ Rebellion

The Year of Our Lord 1525 was a monumental and pivotal year for the Lutheran Reformation. We have already seen how Luther was engaging the non-Lutheran reformers on the Lord’s Supper, as he would continue to do for the following three years especially. We will hear more about the Peasants’ Revolt, a violent rebellion against the power and authority being exercised, often unjustly, by the nobility and rulers in civil government. On May 5, 1525, Luther’s great protector and price, Frederick the Wise, died and was succeeded by his brother John the Steadfast (1525-1532). During the war against the Peasants, on June 13, Luther got married. Toward the end of 1525, Luther wrote his greatest academic work, Bondage of the Will, his response in a public and written debate to the great humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam. Luther had also been working at length to revise the Latin Mass into a truly German Divine Service, which was introduced to Wittenberg at Christmas. We’ll take up two of these events in this article: the death of Frederick and the marriage of Martin and Katy.

It is probable that Luther and the Elector Duke Frederick never met, despite their deep influence on each other and their communication through Spalatin, the Elector’s secretary. Frederick had protected his famous professor through all the early years of the Reformation. He forestalled the attacks and demands of the papacy and its army of theologians and judges. He obtained the opportunity for Luther to make his great confession before Emperor Charles V at the Imperial Diet at Worms in 1521. He had Luther “kidnapped” and taken to the Wartburg Castle in secret for protection after Luther was proclaimed a heretic and outlaw. When Luther returned to Wittenberg in March 1522, he continued to permit Luther’s teaching and reforms.

Frederick died May 5 after a lengthy illness. Before he died, he received the Lord’s Supper in both kinds for the first time, a sure evidence that he had embraced Luther’s Reformation doctrine. On May 10, when the body arrived in Wittenberg for funeral and burial, Luther preached on the resurrection from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (verse 14). He also warned that Frederick’s death was a warning from God that the times were evil and that Christian’s — addressing especially the students at the University — should avoid the so-called “prophets” who were deceiving and misleading the people and bringing the danger of violence upon them. On May 15 thousands of rebelling peasants, under the leadership of one false “prophet” Thomas Müntzer, were slain in Thuringia by the army of the civil rulers.

Frederick was succeeded in office by his brother John the Steadfast, who became the new Saxon Prince and one of the seven Electors of the Empire. John worked personally and extensively with Luther in those critical years of 1525-1532. Under John’s rule, Luther and the Reformers made valuable changes to Wittenberg University, the structure and visitation of the congregations in Electoral Saxony, and the worship and daily life of the church. The Christian piety and faithfulness of Luther’s three Saxon lords (Frederick, John, and John Frederick) demonstrate the positive role that civil government can and should fulfill on behalf of the Church.

Katherine von Bora (born January 29, 1499) was brought to Wittenberg from the Benedictine cloister in Nimbschen in March 1523. She was the daughter of a minor nobleman. When her mother died, she was taken to the cloister to be educated, and took vows as a nun at the age of 16. When the 24-year-old Katherine arrived in Wittenberg, Luther immediately sought to find her a husband, and he almost succeeded in the following year. She was also willing to marry Luther’s good friend and fellow pastor, Nicholas von Amsdorf, but he remained a bachelor all his life. At age 26, when she married Luther, she was well past the normal age for a woman to get married.

Meanwhile, Luther’s friends also encouraged him to get married. He had long resisted the idea, not because he was opposed to marriage, but because he believed that his life would soon be shorted by a martyr’s death. In March 1525 he encouraged another pastor to marry, citing Genesis 2:18 and writing, “Put any reservations out of your mind, and go forward happily. Your body demands it and needs it. God wills it and compels it” (Brecht II.196). To another he wrote that no normal man should “wriggle out of being without a wife.”

In his travels in mid-April, 1525, Luther especially went to Mansfeld to visit his parents, who also urged him to marry and raise a family. Luther would later describe his marriage as an act of obedience to his parents. He began to make known that he intended to marry Katy. His marriage would be a confession of God’s Word and will. By his marriage he would spite the pope and the devil and give glory to God.

Having made up his mind, and in order to put an end to potential rumors, Luther moved quickly. He became legally engaged (or betrothed) on June 13, and contrary to custom, was immediately married that same day. He postponed the customary wedding feast till June 27, presumably to give time to invite and bring in the guests for the festive celebration. In his invitation to Leonard Koppe, the merchant who had arranged for Katy’s escape from the cloister in herring barrels, he wrote “that I have been entangled in the pigtails of my girl” (Brecht II.199f). When his friend Spalatin married later that year, he wrote and commended him to the dearest hugs and kisses on the marriage bed with this gratitude, “Lo, this being, the best little creation of God, has been given me by Christ, to whom be glory and honor!” (Brecht, II.200). Luther’s life was changed for the better, as he enjoyed a companion at table and awoke with a pair of pigtails on the pillow beside him.

Martin and Katherine brought no house, land, or possessions to their marriage. In fact, Martin was receiving no fixed salary when they married, though the new Elector remedied this problem with a modest salary later that year. The former Augustinian monastery (the Black Cloister) was given over to the Luthers as their parsonage, and it became some combination of guest hostel (or bed and breakfast), diner and pub for guests, dormitory for students, and hospital for the sick and elderly. It was not unusual for Katy to feed up to 25 people at mealtime. Katy and Martin housed and cared for some of the sick who were afflicted in the 1527 plague. After 1529 the Luthers also housed and raised the six children of his two sisters. Katy’s Aunt Magdalena was also a member of the household. God supplied the Luthers with both a vocation of service to others and the means to carry it out.

And though they both married late in life — Luther at 41 and Katy at 26 — God gave them six children. Hans, the oldest, was born a year after their wedding. Elizabeth, the second-born, died in infancy (December 1527 to August 1528). Magdalena, the third-born (1529), died in youth. Martin (1531), Paul (1533), and Margaret (1534) followed. Katy suffered a miscarriage early 1540. Luther was 51 and Katy 35 when their last child was born. The example Luther gave in his work with his earthly ruler and in his marriage and domestic life reinforced and made applicable in a practical way the doctrine he was teaching in his preaching, lectures, and writing. He showed how Christians can appeal to civil government to govern in a way that acknowledges the true God and enables the Church to carry out God’s Word. In his home he demonstrated the great blessings of marriage and set the pattern for the Lutheran parsonage and the Christian household.

Reformation 500: Against the Heavenly Prophets

It was because of Luther’s coworker, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, that Luther had returned from the Wartburg Castle in March of 1522. Karlstadt had proposed rapid and radical changes to the liturgy and church life of Wittenberg. He soon left Wittenberg and became a proponent of a radical reformation. It was especially in the teaching of the Lord’s Supper that he opposed Luther. When Luther realized that Karlstadt’s writings on the Lord’s Supper had become widespread, he decided to respond with the treatise, Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments (AE 40.79–223), published in two parts in late 1524 and early 1525.

Luther begins the treatise by admonishing the reader first to “pray God for a right understanding and for his holy, pure Word,” and second that we “be on our guard” (80). He then sets down five “articles of the Christian faith” as the touchstone for the discussions that follow. First, as a summary of the Second Use of the Law, is “the law of God, which is to be preached so that one thereby reveals and teaches how to recognize sin” (82). Second, when the law has alarmed the conscience with the revelation of God’s wrath, “we are then to preach the comforting word of the gospel and the forgiveness of sins” (82). The next two articles summarize the Third Use of the Law: Third “is judgment, the work of putting to death the old man, as in Romans 5, 6, 7. Here works are concerned, and also suffering and affliction…” (83). Fourth, “such works of love toward the neighbor should flow forth in meekness, patience, kindness, teaching, aid, and counsel, spiritually and bodily, free and for nothing, as Christ has dealt with us” (83). And fifth, the First Use of the Law, “we ought to proclaim the law and its works… for the crude and unbelieving …. Thus they are compelled by sword and law to be outwardly pious” (83).

Part 1: About Images
Luther then turns to the subject of Part 1 of the treatise: On the destruction of images. Karlstadt was advocating the elimination of all religious images: paintings, statues, crucifixes, and the like. He called their use idolatry. Luther’s main response is to teach from Scripture that anything but God that be-comes the object of our worship and trust is an idol, and this idolatry takes place first of all not with imag-es but in the heart and conscience. But the gospel comes “to instruct and delight the conscience,” teach-ing that it is idolatry to have faith in images. And when the conscience is free from such idol-worship, then the images may remain. “But images for memorial and witness, such as crucifixes and images of saints, are to be tolerated” (91).

Karlstadt’s argument against images in church had been, in part, that images were forbidden by the 1st Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Luther simply observes that it was making im-ages into objects of worship that is forbidden—fearing, loving, and trusting images rather than God. He builds on the “five articles” in the introduction, especially the four that address the law, and shows the difference between divine, natural law and the laws given to the Old Testament Jews. “For to have a God is not alone a Mosaic law, but also a natural law, as St. Paul says (Rom 1:20)….” The Ten Commandments “are not Mosaic law only, but also the natural law written in each man’s heart, as St. Paul teaches (Rom. 2:15). Also Christ himself (Matt 7:12) includes all of the law and the prophets in this natural law” (96–97). In the New Testament, whatever goes beyond this natural law in the Mosaic law is “free, null and void” (97) be-cause it was given only to the Jewish people. Included here are the Sabbath Day requirement and the for-bidding of images. Christians may use images as long as they do not in their consciences regard images as gods.

Luther praises the Ten Commandments as God’s particularly “orderly and well written” (98) form of this natural law. He urges the Christian use of the Old Testament because of what it teaches. “Also, Moses tells us about the creation of the world, the origin of marriage, and many precious examples of faith, love, and all virtues. In the writings of Moses we also find examples of unbelief and vice, from which one can learn to know God’s grace and wrath” (99).

Those who wish to destroy or remove images from church should note all the images in Luther’s German Bible and other sound Christian literature. There is no problem with images themselves. In fact, images are an essential part of memory and imagination: “But it is impossible for me to hear [the passion of our Lord] and bear it in mind without forming mental images of it in my heart. For whether I will or not, when I hear of Christ, an image of a man hanging on a cross takes form in my heart…” (99). Just as it is good to have an image of Christ crucified in my heart, so also it is good to have it in my eyes, to see and remember Him in this way.

Luther concludes this first part by addressing other matters involved with Karlstadt. He shows that Karlstadt does not have a rightly ordered call from God in his present service, and so he should be ignored. “For one is not to do evil for the sake of the good (Rom. 8:8). He addresses Karlstadt’s complaint about using the term “Mass” (as we use it in the word “Christmas”—the Christ Mass) to refer to the Lord’s Supper. Lutherans have always rejected the teaching that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice we offer to God for our sins. This is not what “Mass” means. Luther also addresses the liturgical practice of honoring the consecrated elements—the Lord’s body and blood—in the Divine Service, again reminding us that where the heart and mind—the conscience—are right according to God’s Word, the Christian has freedom in such matters, as long as it does not unnecessarily offend the neighbor’s conscience (140).

Part 2: About the Sacrament of the Altar
In the second part of the treatise Luther does some major teaching about the Lord’s Supper, and for this reason this writing is commended to us by name in The Book of Concord (SD VII.91). Luther begins by outlining “the fundamental idea” in this subject so that the Christian can better see the demonic spirit that is denying our Lord’s teaching and gift of his body and blood in the sacrament.

Now when God sends forth his holy gospel he deals with us in a twofold manner, first outwardly, then inwardly. Outwardly he deals with us through the oral word of the gospel and through material signs, that is, baptism and the sacrament of the altar. Inwardly he deals with us through the Holy Spirit, faith, and other gifts. But whatever their measure or order the outward factors should and must precede. The inward experience follows and is affected by the outward. God has deter-mined to give the inward to no one except through the outward. For he wants to give no one the Spirit or faith outside of the outward Word and sign instituted by him. (146)

The demonic, “factious spirit” wants to destroy this order and have us focus on the “inward spiritual” experience. “Do you not see here the devil, the enemy of God’s order?” (147). Luther calls the means of grace “the bridge, the path, the way, the ladder, and all the means by which the Spirit might come to you” (147). The demonic perversion of God’s order extends even to the Christian life, for they “place the mortification of the flesh prior to faith…. No one can mortify the flesh, bear the cross, and follow the exam-ple of Christ before he is a Christian and has Christ through faith in his heart as an eternal treasure.” He continues, “When we acknowledge our sin, we hear of the grace of Christ. In this Word the Spirit comes and gives faith where and to whom he wills. Then you proceed to the mortification and the cross and the works of love” (149).

Luther then proceeds to the main point. He grounds all his argument on the Words of Institution of the Lord’s Supper. “Where Holy Scripture is the ground of faith we are not to deviate from the words as they stand nor from the order in which they stand, unless an express article of faith compels a different interpretation or order” (157). At this point Luther explains the Words of Institution (“This is my body”) point by point and corrects Karlstadt’s errors.

Luther refers to the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper taught in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11. He reminds us that in the Lord’s Supper we participate not in the suffering of Christ, but in his body and blood, as also the unbeliever does when he receives the sacrament (1 Cor. 11:29). We break the bread to distribute it, that is, to distribute the body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16), “so that they all in common and as one receive the one body of Christ and become partakers of it bodily” (181). Furthermore, “whoever eats this bread unworthily is guilty of profaning the body of the Lord because the body of the Lord is eaten in the bread, and sin is com-mitted in the eating and drinking…, it is in the eating of the body and drinking of the blood of Christ that the unworthy one has offended and therein committed evil” (183).

Luther reminds us here that we must stick with the words. “Brother, the natural meaning of the words is queen, transcending all subtle, acute sophistical fancy. From it we may not deviate unless we are compelled by a clear article of the faith…. For it is dangerous to play with the Word of God by which con-science and faith are to be guided. Therefore, interpretations of God’s Word must be lucid and definite having a firm, sure, and true foundation on which one may confidently rely” (190). Luther warns us, “The ultimate goal of the devil is to do away with the entire sacrament and all the outward ordinance of God” (191). Finally, Luther points out how Karlstadt fell into great error because he turned from Scripture to hu-man reason for his doctrine. He gives many examples of the great folly that results from the rationalism of the “heavenly prophets.” They replace God’s Word with their own words. “There you have their theology: Others are to learn outwardly by their word, which they call an external witness. But they themselves are better and superior to the apostles, and pretend to learn inwardly in their spirit without an external Word and without means” (195).

As he refutes the errors of misled reason, however, Luther directs us back to the Word of God. “Even the devil knows full well and recognizes that the body of Christ is given for us, yet this does not help him.” He continues,

The knowledge, however, does help if I do not doubt, but in true faith hold firmly that the body and blood of Christ is given for me, for me, for me (I repeat), in order to take away my sins, as the word in the sacrament affirms, “This is the body, given for you.” This knowledge produces joyful, free, and assured consciences. (206)

In contrast, the devil “makes a pure commandment and law” out of the Word of Christ and turns the sacrament into “a work that we do” (206). But the sacrament is given “for you.”

[This] cannot mean otherwise than that such breaking of bread and body takes place and is instituted that it might avail us and redeem us from sins. For Christ has placed the strength and power of his suffering in the sacrament, so that we may there lay hold on it and find it according to the word, “This is my body, which is given for you for the forgiveness of sins” (210).

Luther comes to the heart of the entire treatise. We “speak the divine, almighty, heavenly, and holy words which Christ himself spoke at the supper with his holy lips and commanded us to speak” (212). He continues,

Our teaching is that bread and wine do not avail. I will go still farther. Christ on the cross and all his suffering and his death do not avail, even if, as you teach, they are “acknowledged and meditated upon” with the utmost “passion, ardor, heartfeltness.” Something else must always be there. What is it? The Word, the Word, the Word. Listen, lying spirit, the Word avails. Even if Christ were given for us and crucified a thousand times, it would all be in vain if the Word of God were absent and were not distributed and given to me with the bidding, this is for you, take what is yours. (212–213)

Karlstadt’s focus on the work of the communicant in the Lord’s Supper rather than the Word and gift of Christ “for you” turns the Lord’s Supper into a “pure work and commandment” which we are to offer to God. There is no gift, no comfort, no life or health or salvation. “To him the words, ‘for you,’ are poison and bitter death. But they are our comfort and life. For they open the treasure to us and allow us to appropriate it” (213). And here he give us the classic description of the Lord’s Supper:

We treat of the forgiveness of sins in two ways. First, how it is achieved and won. Second, how it is distributed and given to us. Christ has achieved it on the cross, it is true. But he has not distributed or given it on the cross. He has not won it in the supper or sacrament. There he has distributed and given it through the Word, as also in the gospel, where it is preached. He has won it once for all on the cross. But the distribution takes place continuously, before and after, from the beginning to the end of the world. For inasmuch as he had determined once to achieve it, it made no difference to him whether he distributed it before or after, through his Word, as can easily be proved from Scrip-ture. (213–214)

If now I seek the forgiveness of sins, I do not run to the cross, for I will not find it there. Nor must I hold to the suffering of Christ, as Dr. Karlstadt trifles, in knowledge or remembrance, for I will not find it there either. But I will find in the sacrament or gospel the Word which distributes, presents, offers, and gives to me that forgiveness which was won on the cross…. Everything depends on the Word. (214)

Luther concludes by acknowledging a good result of this controversy, “For my part I courteously give them thanks from my whole heart and ask for none in return, because they have so greatly confirmed me in regard to this article of faith. For now I see that it is not possible to produce anything in opposition to this article” (222). He warns us against Karlstadt and the “heavenly prophets,” who have no proper call and who boast of the Holy Spirit apart from Scripture. In the end, their teaching utterly fails, because “in no place do they teach how we are to become free from our sins, obtain a good conscience, and win a peace-ful and joyful heart before God” (223). God grant us always to find these precious treasures in his gospel and sacraments for the sake of our dear Lord Jesus. Amen.

The Christian in Community: And Is Man a Lord?

The impulse to give names to things is fully human. God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would call them, and whatever he called them, that was their name. The naming of things obligates us to use words truthfully. We are commanded by God to give things their proper names. And in using such names and words truthfully, we also come to understand what the thing is and what it is for. This is how God teaches us to use words.

It is in the exercise of this lordship that we have also given names to the seasons or eras of human history. We gave the name Modernism to the recent time when man rejected past wisdom for future gain, when he gloried in his ability to understand and use the world around him through applied science. Modernism was the age of science and technology. It was an optimistic season.

But when the two World Wars and the Cold War showed us that science could not solve the evils of human nature, we began to look elsewhere for a better future. We gave a new name to the season that followed: Post-Modernism. Modernism and its optimism is dy-ing. And in its place is a time when man seeks not only to master Na-ture and Technology, but Human Nature itself. Our world recognizes that Man himself must be changed. His language, his customs, his religion, his morality, and Man’s very nature must be transformed. We need a new humanity. Only by such transformation can the evils of human nature and human society be overcome. The world makes this utopian calculation as though there were no God and no divinely revealed wisdom, as though Man were not God’s creation.

Some have thought to call this season of history Post-Christian, because they perceive that Christianity—Christian doctrine and Christian morality—is under attack. An unbelieving world wants to associate the evils of human nature with Christianity, because the Christian Scriptures establish the orders of creation and condemn man’s sin. They blame Christianity for sin’s consequences.

But Christianity has always been under attack. The world has never loved Christ or his Christians. “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the LORD and against his Christ, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us’” (Psalm 2:1–3). Even when Christendom was able to exercise its enormous power to do good, the corruptors of God’s Word were always at work.

Our time is not Post-Christian. It may turn out that this season of the world’s history is as fully Chris-tian as any because of the brightness that the light of the gospel brings to this darkened humanity. Christ has promised that his church will abide until the End. “He who sits in the heaven laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, ‘As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill’” (Psalm 2:4–6). Every season of the world is a Christian season, because Christ our Brother and Lord is seated on the throne of God in heaven and rules over all things for the sake of his Church (Ephesians 1:22–23).

But our times are marked by evils that we should name. Instead of Post-Christian, we might call this season of history Post-Human. We are witnessing man’s efforts to change human nature itself by the applied sciences of psychology, pharmacology, and politics. It is a perilous project, and its end is death (Proverbs 14:22).

C. S. Lewis reminds us that the price of our gaining mastery over human nature is the abolition of man himself. It begins with man’s attempt to conform reality (Nature) to his desires. “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead” (C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, chapter 3).

That is, we are now using science just like one would use magic, to control and subdue reality—the Creation—to our will, like the alchemists of the Renaissance trying to turn lead into gold. It has likely escaped our notice how very much like the magicians we have become in our desire to force Nature and reality to con-form to our own wishes and desires. And we have undoubtedly failed to see how much of our humanity has been abolished in our pursuit of these techniques and technologies. Consider the consequences of the follow-ing otherwise harmless commonplaces of our lives today.

We use the automobile to master the realities of time and distance, but the cost to our humanity is that our bodies deteriorate through lack of walking and exercise. The abundance of time- and labor-saving devices has made us so busy that we have no time or energy left for the truly human activities of eating meals togeth-er, sharing the bonds of family and loved ones, conversing with neighbors, sharing in the community of our congregations, meditating on God’s Word, and the like. The world of people is opened to us through televi-sion, computer, and mobile screens, while we become increasingly lonely, unsociable, and isolated by our de-pendence upon and addiction to those very same screens. Schools have discovered that by locking up stu-dents’ cell phones during the school day, the students are not only more focused on their studies, but they actually start talking to one another again; they regain something of their fading humanity. Or again, internet technologies give us the power of “knowing things” instantly and constantly, while we become increasingly ignorant of true human wisdom and knowledge. In short, the varied inventions of applied science exercise far more power over our humanity than we realize.

Our applied science, like magic, is abolishing our humanity. In our eager embrace of this magical power to subdue Nature to our own will we have long since forgotten how to be disgusted at the mutilation of dead bodies and other such impieties. Our Post-Human world has moved on to perverting marriage with disgusting pseudo-marriage, and the sanctified marriage act with disgusting pseudo-sex. And it seems that even C. S. Lewis did not foresee the wholesale “disgusting and impious” practices of poisoning and dismem-bering living children in their mothers’ wombs or of mutilating and castrating the bodies of little children and teenagers whose hearts and minds have been twisted and crushed by the misadventures of broken families, sexual trauma, chemical side-effects, and other unseen spiritual assaults upon their physical bodies. These powers of science (or magic!) are thoroughly inhuman.

It is prudent for us to remember again that what we call Nature is simply and completely the Creation of the living God, and that we too are His Creatures under His Lordship. We, as Man, are called to lordship over God’s creation in Genesis 1, but we dare never forget that our lordship is under His. We are not com-manded to change the creation, but to be gardeners and shepherds and stewards under the Master Gardener, Shepherd, and Creator-King. Even unenlightened man—without Holy Scriptures—can and should under-stand and conform his life to the realities of the created world and ultimately fulfill his obligation to his and its Creator God (Romans 1).

How much more the Christian, who has been given this divine wisdom in bright, clear, and living col-ors in the Holy Scriptures. After all, we Christians know Divine Wisdom Himself in the Holy Scriptures and in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. We know eternal truths: “I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a pot-ter’s vessel’” (Psalm 2:7–9). The eternal Son of God is the Lord of Creation.

We should never have embraced the optimism of Modernism, even when we benefited in many ways by its technological advances. Nor should we embrace the despair of Post-Modernism or Post-Humanism in its abolition of man. Christians have been given timeless wisdom. We should use the gifts of applied sci-

ence—machine and medicine and screen—with prudence, but not become their slaves. They are not human, nor can they improve our humanity. If we are not careful, we will give them the power of gods, power to di-minish us, pervert us, enslave us, destroy us. If we allow them the power of gods, we should not be shocked if they turn out to have the power of demons.

The orders and seasons of the creation continue as we await our Lord’s return in glory. The creation is still upheld by the Word of him who is the eternally begotten Son of the Father (Psalm 2:7, Hebrews 1:1–3). He is the measure and goal of our perfected humanity (Ephesians 4:13). As we consider the ravages of sin un-der Modernism and in the present Post-Human season, we Christians turn in faith to Christ and his Word, as the Holy Spirit teaches us in Psalm 2: “Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (Psalm 2:10–12).

REFORMATION 500

In 1524 Luther’s productivity embodied the truth in the saying, “If you want to get something done, ask a busy person to do it.” As we have reviewed, Luther translated, improved, and wrote numerous congregational hymns throughout the first half of the year. By late summer his work was published with others in Geistliches Gesangbuchlein, “Little Spiritual Hymnbook.” He was also doing visitations in Lutheran congregations in June and again in Au-gust.

Luther also returned officially to his teaching duties at Wittenberg University that summer. He had been forced to stop lecturing after his trial and bold confession at Worms in April 1521. When he returned from the Wartburg Castle in March 1522 he still was not allowed to give lectures, though in part his attention had been given to translating the Bible. In February 1524 he had begun lecturing to a small “familiar circle” on the book of Deuteronomy, which also resulted in a commentary published in 1525. He lectured students on the Minor Prophets (Hosea through Malachi) Summer 1524 through Summer 1526. Many of these lectures eventually became the basis for published commentaries. Luther’s reengagement with the university also led him to recognize the need for further reforms, and in November he appealed to the Elector on behalf of the university. The request for reform finally received attention in September 1525.

Luther’s important work of Bible translation continued. The New Testament had been completed and published already in September 1522. The five books of Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy) had been published in 1523. Joshua through Esther were published in April 1524. Later in 1524 the third installment of Old Testament books included Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Luther’s life and work became even more demanding in the years following (as we will hear), so that the last books of the Old Testament were not completed till 1532. After he translated the Apocrypha, the entire German Bible was published in 1534 with illustrations.

Luther had recognized from the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation that good preaching was essential to the spread of the pure doctrine and the wellbeing of the churches. Most of Luther’s sermons were transcribed and published after his return to Wittenberg (more than 30 in 1522, more than 25 in 1523). He had started writing postil sermons for each Sunday of the church year. A postil is a book collection of sermons prepared for pastors as models, for study, and for use when no sermon could be pre-pared. He returned to this work in 1524, preparing sermons for the Gospels and Epistles from Epiphany to Easter (see the historic, or one-year, lectionary in our hymnals).

It was also a time of great political and spiritual unrest. In Summer 1524 the Peasants’ Revolt broke out in the southern Black Forest. The conflict became most intense March—May 1525, as we shall hear later. Late 1524 several martyrdoms for the faith took place: Caspar Tauber (a Lutheran merchant), an unnamed bookseller who had been distributing Lutheran writings, and Henry of Zutphen (Dec 10). The latter was a monk who became a Lutheran. He was tortured and burned at the stake by a mob because of his pure preaching of the Word of God. Luther himself expected death at any time, and this expectation led him to resolve not to marry.

Of far greater danger to the Lutheran churches were the errors of doctrine that various teachers were introducing or allowing in the name of the Reformation. Luther had been contending, first in letters filled with warnings and then more strongly in his preaching, against the unreformed worship practices at the Castle Church, the other church in Wittenberg (where Luther nailed the 95 Theses). A clearly exasperated Luther preached strongly against their “prayers to the saints” and their blasphemous “sacrifice of the mass” on the 1st Sunday in Advent. Their liturgy and prayers denied Christ and His atoning sacrifice on the cross. Luther’s sermon was adapted and published as “The Abomination of the Secret Mass” (AE 36.311–328) a few months later. At last, on Christmas Eve 1524, the pastors at the Castle Church eliminated the blasphemous liturgy and used a more Lutheran celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

Meanwhile, Luther’s former colleague Andre-as Karlstadt, who had stirred up great trouble at Luther’s St. Mary’s Church in Wittenberg while Luther was in hiding at the Wartburg Castle, was expounding his errors elsewhere in Germany. He was in Strassburg (southwest Germany) in Summer 1524, and his teaching created confusion and uncertainty. The Strassburgers had three doctrinal questions in particular: the presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, infant baptism, and the use of im-ages (pictures, crucifix, etc.) in worship. They sought guidance from Ulrich Zwingli, who wrongly taught that the bread and wine in communion merely represented Christ’s body and blood, and from Martin Luther. Zwingli would become Luther’s primary theological opponent in the latter part of the 1520s. Luther provided two responses: a brief letter directly to the Strassburgers (“Letter to the Christians at Strassburg in Opposition to the Fanatic Spirit,” AE 40.65–71), and a longer treatise published in two parts at the end of 1524 and beginning of 1525, “Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacra-ments” (AE 40.79–223). We will give more attention to this important work in the coming months.

In his letter to the Strassburgers Luther made a foundational statement about our doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. He had seen the writings advocating a symbolic doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Concerning Christ’s words, “This is My body,” “This is My blood,” Luther wrote, “But I am a captive and cannot free myself. The text is too powerfully present, and will not allow itself to be torn from its meaning by mere verbiage” (AE 40.68). Christ spoke too clearly and powerfully for any Christian to abandon the simple text of the Lord’s Supper. God grant that we too remain captives to God’s Word, that we may hold fast to the words of the Lord’s Supper and all that Holy Scriptures teach us.

The Christian in Community

“What do you have that you did not receive?” Paul asks the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 4:7). We confess God as Creator not only because it is true but because it identifies the ground reality of our lives: We are creatures. We have our bodies and souls with all their powers, and the daily bread to sustain them, as gifts of God. We have Christ our Savior because God “gave His only-begotten Son” (John 3:16) to atone for sinful men. We have the Holy Spirit because God “sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts” (Galatians 4:6) through His Word and sacraments.

“What do you have that you did not receive?” Whatever our children—the next generation—have from us, they have as an inheritance, as gifts received and in turn handed down from their fathers. This is true in church as it is in the home. “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received” (1 Corinthians 15:3), that is, the entire Gospel which we confess in our creeds. “I re-ceived from the Lord what I also delivered to you” (1 Corinthians 11:23), that is, the Lord’s Supper. All good things are from God. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

One generation receives from God and hands it down to the next generation. Parents today, even congregations, have often focused on handing down financial and other material blessings to the next generation: money, houses, church buildings, and the like. These are important. Of even greater importance is the transmission of knowledge, the wisdom and truth of God’s Holy Word, together with all the knowledge of the world needed to fulfill our godly vocations according to God’s Word. This is a great inheritance!

But we have not always attended to the handing down of “just sentiments,” as C. S. Lewis calls them in The Abolition of Man. We often think about training the next generation in right knowledge and in the control of our various appetites, but have we given the same attention to the rightly ordered emotions and impulses? Lewis reminds us that man is not merely cold reason and the animal-like appetite for food and drink and sex. Our minds rule the conduct of our lives through the “just sentiments” of our hearts.

Consider these examples of proper and right sentiments we want to cultivate in our own hearts and in the hearts of our children. The sentiment fits:

• Suffering in others awakens in us feelings of pity and compassion.
• Beauty stirs up admiration and appreciation.
• Unfairness or injustice provokes just anger and the desire for just recompense. But receiving mercy in judgment awakens mercy in our own hearts.
• The mere mention of fornication or sexual perversion stirs up abhorrence in our deepest emotions.
• Respect and due reverence is the proper emotional posture toward parents, pastors, and other authorities.
• The presence of a child in the womb moves deep feelings of love and protection in the heart of the child’s father and mother.
• Holy things and holy places are received with godly fear and holy love.

Sentiments are just when they fit, when they are appropriate to the value of the matter in consideration. (“If the shoe fits, wear it.”)When the young are taught to have just sentiments, then the truths that undergird these sentiments become “self-evident” as they grow into maturity. They should be able to see and feel in their hearts the truths “that all men are created equal, that they endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”

(Preamble to the Declaration of Independence). Such truths are self-evident be-cause they have been written and stamped into the creation, into nature itself (Apology XXIII.12). “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15). The well-trained heart embraces the truth of God’s good law as self-evident.

We must guard and nourish not only the minds but also the hearts of the next generation—and our own. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…” (Deuteronomy 6:5). “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). Much of the danger to the transmission of the inheritance of faith, wisdom, and piety to the next generation is not to the mind so much as to the heart. The electronic media—music, television and movies, social media, images, games, etc.—all want to shape and mold the heart. The dominant culture of our communities and schools is aimed at the heart first of all. Our hearts are sinful by nature (Matthew 15:19), so we are all vulnerable to these attacks. Nevertheless, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

We are creatures of God. Even the virtues of our hearts are received from God through the example and teaching of others. “What do you have that you did not receive?” Neither we nor the next generation are self-made—not by evolution, not by our own works, not by some transitioning magic of our own heart or will or applied science. Our humanity is the creation and gift of God. So much of it is handed down to us by godly parents and family, faithful pastors and fellow Christians, and by the just and humane neighborhoods of the world. These com-munities have a sacred trust from God, each in its appointed way, of handing down to the next generation the good gifts of God: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8). God grant the fulfillment of this duty in our own hearts and that of the next generation!

REFORMATION 500

Martin Luther is often accused, or credited, with the individualism of the
last 500 years. And it is true that he taught what Holy Scripture teaches, that the justification of the sinner takes place by the faith of that sinner in the satisfaction of God’s wrath in the atoning death of Jesus Christ. What’s more, every Christian is called upon to confess this faith: “Here I stand!”

But Luther is misunderstood. He also taught what the Holy Spirit teaches in His Word, that the justified sinner is incorporated into the church through Holy Baptism and the forgiveness of sins. To incorporate is to bring into a body, to be made the member and partaker of all the treasures and goods of that community. Just as men are born into families, so sinners are born again into the church of the living God as living members of it.

And as the sinner is joined to the church, so local churches are joined to each other through their common doctrine and use of God’s Word. By 1528 Luther would apply this truth to the life of the Lutheran church by proposing regular visitations from qualified pastors and others. The purpose of such visitation was to strengthen and encourage Lutheran pastors and congregations, first in their spiritual labors and afflictions, and second in the physical and financial difficulties of the parishes and their pastors. Our own Synod was founded with this doctrine and practice of visitation, and it is the basis for the Wyoming District’s work.

Luther used this practice earlier in the Lutheran Reformation as he addressed the needs of congregations and combatted the false teachers that had arisen in Lutheran lands. August 21–26, 1524 Luther went on a circuit of visitation to Jena, Kahla, Orlamunde, and Weimar to aid these congregations in understanding and rejecting the errors of Thomas Muntzer and Andreas Karlstadt. We will see Luther’s rejection of their errors in coming months through Luther’s writings.

Luther’s example teaches us to treasure the community of faithful churches and those pastors who are appointed to visit and strengthen them. Luther conducted further visitation tours in January and March, and again in April and May, 1525. Others carried out this task in September 1525.

We can distill two general and related purposes for these visitations. One was to strengthen the wellbeing of the congregations through the teaching and application of God’s Word. The second was to combat error and false teachers with God’s Word and thus remove these evils from faithful congregations. In carrying out this work, the visitors were offering a service of love to the church and were assisting in “maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).

Japan Free Conference

I have reported with a smile that it took my wife Angela and me three days to travel to Ja-pan and one hour to return. It’s the first time that I have crossed the date line into the Far East. I was asked by LCMS International Missions, the Asia Region, to be the presenter at a free confer-ence in Niigata, Japan. It was a joy to represent the Wyoming District in serving the Lutherans of Japan. We were in Japan May 18–25 and I presented at the conference May 21–23.

“Free conferences” have a long history for the LCMS. Throughout our Synod’s history, when we wanted to have theological dialogue with Lutherans with whom we were not in fellow-ship, we would hold a free conference. These gatherings were occasions for exploring areas of uni-ty and the areas of division between the participants, without exercising church fellowship in worship prematurely.

You may know that at the 2023 convention the LCMS publicly recognized that we are no longer in fellowship with the Japan Lutheran Church. Our daughter church had been cooperating with the Lutheran World Federation for some time, but hen it voted to begin ordaining women the inevitable became obvious. We could no longer share pulpit or altar with these persistently erring Lutherans. As the Scripture says, “Do not be deceived, ‘Bad company corrupts good morals’” (1 Corinthians 15:34), and, “Watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have learned and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). Many decades of faithful labor were snatched away by the teachers of false doctrine.

Under the leadership and the guidance of our one LCMS missionary to Japan, Rev. Dr. Daniel Jastram, our Synod has determined to renew our work in Japan by starting at the doctrinal foundation. It is hoped that by returning to the biblical basics taught in Scriptures and the Luther-an Confessions the Holy Spirit will once again gather to our Lord Jesus a faithful church in Japan. We currently have one congregation in fellowship with us, Kobari Lutheran Church and their Pas-tor Wakabayashi.

My assignment at the free conference was to give six lectures on “Church and Ministry.” It was a joy to concentrate on the clear teachings of Scriptures and the Confessions without entangling my hearers in the past and present debates of the European and American Lutheran churches. I especially wanted to show how the doctrine of the church and her fellowship, together with her minis-try, are part and parcel—one body—with the full revelation of Holy Scriptures.

Twenty-four participants attended the free conference, including a majority of the confession-al pastors with whom Dr. Jastram works, laity from their congregations, and the English-speaking guests. I read my English text and a translator gave the Japanese. Another translator relayed an English translation of the questions of the participants. I had anticipated that the participants would be reluctant to ask questions, but we enjoyed a lively conversation.

Dr. Jastram and his wife Joan proved to be wonderful hosts. We enjoyed several days of sightseeing in and around Tokyo and Niigata: the Imperial grounds in Tokyo, walks in the cities, a household pottery maker, gardens, Shinto shrines, and Buddhist temples. I ate more raw fish and seaweed in one week than I had in my whole life. We enjoyed a very conservative culture, modest and formal in dress, polite and deferential, clean and beautiful, efficient, with highly organized and heeded etiquette. Greater Tokyo has 38 million inhabitants, but we never felt in danger, nor did we see rudeness, uncleanness, or squalor. The trains were often packed and the train stations were a veritable river of humanity.

Dr. Jastram and I held an eight-day conversation on how to reach the Japanese people with the Gospel. The island nation is less than one percent Christian, though it has had missionaries for centuries. I was mindful of the comparison to three other peoples familiar to us: first, our own country, which is hardening itself against Christianity and Natural Law; the Indian Reservation in our midst, which has a far different culture but a similar hardness against Christianity; and West Africa (Liberia and Sierra Leone where some of our pastors have taught), with another different culture but a great hunger for the Word of God.

From my outsider’s vantage point, Japan has retained so many aspects of Natural Law (and therefore also Divine Law): male-female distinction, modesty, politeness, commitment to raising children, preservation of cultural norms, etc. These virtues are combined with more or less open violations of Natural Law: deliberate limitation or rejection of childbearing, enslavement to pornography, abandonment of so many elderly to “lonely deaths,” and the like. It is quipped that Japanese are born Shinto (their native “nature religion”), are married Christian (using wedding halls designed to look just like churches), and are buried Buddhist (the religion imported from India through the Far East). But they believe none of it. I was told that what is important to them is “being Japanese.” What would it take for Christianity to gain a foothold in Japan?

Here we can see the power of community at a national, cultural level. A strong sense of identity and belonging formed in such community as a conservative, preserving effect, either for good or for ill. In the case of Japan, a conservative social culture is preserved but a hard barrier is created against Christianity. When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and the Holy Spirit says that the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth,” (1 Timothy 3:15), we are being taught that all our communities and cultures must be subjected to the judgment of truth. Those who do not have God’s Word are already judged according to the truth of Natural Law, and those who do are judged by God’s Word.

Here is the truth of Christianity in the midst of any culture: Christianity is transformative: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). “You must become like children” (Matthew 18:3) and learn the Christian culture in the family of your heavenly Father. Christian faith and life, as taught by the Holy Spirit in Holy Scriptures, are the foundation and measure for Christians in America, the Reservation, West Africa, and Japan.

Christianity is transformative. We are justified by faith, but faith is never alone. The faith taught by Scriptures in law and gospel gives us a new heart and a new mind, created and formed by the Holy Spirit according to the truth of God’s Word. God alone teaches us what we are to believe and think. God alone teaches us holy desires, just virtues, good works, and a culture that embodies and expresses these divine truths. Christian culture is separate and distinct from American culture, native Indian culture, West African culture, and Japanese culture. We live in the world, but we are not of the world. To be Christian, our lives must change, transformed by the truth of God’s Word.

We know and believe that God alone breaks through unbelieving hearts and minds, creates faith, and forms a Christian culture in the midst of a dark and unbelieving world. In this confidence, more free conferences are planned for our fellow confessional Lutherans in Japan. God grant to these dear Christians the unity of the truth of His Word! God grant that the Word of God may find access to the hearts and minds of the Japanese people, that they believe the saving truth of His Word and enjoy lives transformed by its brilliant light!

REFORMATION 500

The Reformation of Christian doctrine and piety must be accompanied and taught by the use of sound liturgy and hymns in the congregation. Ever good pastor knows this. This is not a question of favorite tunes and easy melodies, but of sound text and quality music that can be learned and loved by the congregation. Good liturgy and hymns are loved when they are learned well, and they do not wear out with frequent use. Lutheran liturgy and hymns teach Lutheran doctrine and practice and Lutheran piety and good works. These treasures of the Lutheran church put into joyful song the clearest, soundest, and most beautiful confession of the Holy Word of God, encouraging the minds and strengthening the hearts of God’s dear people.

In his introduction to the 1524 Wittenberg hymnal (Geistliche Gesangbuchlein, “Spiritual Hymn Booklet”) Luther taught us that the writing and singing of truly Christian hymns has the command and blessing of God Himself:

That it is good and God-pleasing to sing hymns is, I think, known to every Christian, for everyone is aware not only of the example of the prophets and kings in the Old Testa-ment who praised God with song and sound, with poetry and psaltery, but also of the com-mon and ancient custom of the Christian church to sing Psalms. St. Paul himself insti-tuted this in 1 Corinthains 14:15 and exhorted the Colossians (3:16) to sing spiritual songs and Psalms heartily to the Lord so that God’s Word and Christian teaching might be in-stilled and implanted in many ways. (AE 53:315–316)

As we learned last year, the first Lutheran hymnal (the Achtliederbuch—Hymnal of Eight) was published in Wittenberg in 1523 and contained eight hymns, four by Luther, and included the great justification hymn by Paul Speratus, “Salvation Unto Us Has Come” (LSB #555). Luther’s hymns were para-phrases of Psalms 98 (“Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice,” LSB #556), 130 (“From Depths of Woe I Cry to Thee,” LSB #607, TLH #260), and 14 (“Although the Fools Say with Their Mouth”). Two unauthorized hymnals were published in Erfurt in the summer of 1524, each containing 18 of Luther’s hymns. The Geistliche Gesangbuchlein contained 38 hymns, 24 by Luther. This means that between late 1523 and the summer of 1524, Luther wrote the text and most of the tunes for a hymn every week or two. In some hymns, however, he only translated and strengthened hymns and liturgical verses from the Scriptures or the medie-val church. The hymns were published in a poly-phonic format (4 or 5 parts), designed especially for schools and school choirs to sing the parts and thus teach the hymns to the congregations.

Luther wrote hymns for the church, to be learned by heart and sung by everyone. They were Biblical, rich in sound doctrine, and fitted for regular use in the congregation and home. They summarized the feasts or seasons of the church year and the chief parts of the catechism:

• The Advent hymn, “Savior of the Nations, Come,” a translation of the hymn by Am-brose (c. AD 339–397), LSB #332.
• Two Christmas hymns: “Now Paise We Christ, the Holy One,” translated from Coelius Sedulius (early 5th century AD), TLH #104; and “We Praise You, Jesus, at Your Birth,” LSB #382.
• The Epiphany (or Presentation) hymn and canticle, “In Peace and Joy I Now Depart” (Nunc Dimittis), LSB #938.
• Two Lent and Ten Commandments hymns: “These Are the Holy Ten Commands,” LSB #581; and “Man, Wouldst Thou Live All Blissfully.”
• Two Maundy Thursday and Lord’s Sup-per hymns: “Jesus Christ, Our Blessed Savior,” translated and modified from John Hus (c. AD 1369–1415), LSB #627; and “O Lord, We Praise Thee,” LSB #617.
• Two Easter hymns: “Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands,” LSB #458; and “Jesus Christ, Our Savior True.”
• Three Pentecost hymns: “Come, Holy Ghost, Creator Blest” translated from Thabanus Maurus (c. AD 780-856), LSB #498/499; “To God the Holy Spirit Let Us Pray,” LSB #768; and Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord,” LSB #497.
• Two Trinity hymns, the second one also a Creed hymn: “God the Father, Be Our Stay,” LSB #505; and “We All Believe in One True God,” LSB #954.
• Three more Psalm hymns: “May God Bestow on Us His Grace” (Psalm 67, also a mission hymn), LSB #823; “Happy who in God’s Fear Doth Stay” (Psalm 128, also for marriage and family, Epiphany); and “If God Had Not Been on Our Side” (Psalm 124), TLH #267.
• A death and funeral hymn: “In the Very Midst of Life” (translated from the medieval funeral liturgy, Media Vita), LSB #755.

Most of these hymns are a part of the regular worship life of our congregations and ought to be learned, some even by heart. Here are some observations about Luther’s style as a hymnist. His hymn stanzas are written or translated into simple German. He uses direct language and vivid imagery, unlike the soft and ornate styles of later poets. His texts come sometimes directly from Scriptures, sometimes from traditional liturgical verses and antiphons, and some-times from ancient and medieval hymns. His melo-dies are most often adapted from chant tones and traditional hymn melodies. Overall, his hymns are manly and rugged.

But most importantly, Luther’s hymns convey the beautiful doctrine of Holy Scriptures in words and music. They impress this doctrine in the mind, on the heart, and in the spirit of the Christian. They provided a common language for worship in the Lutheran Church. His hymns, together with his Small Catechism, effectively taught whole households and com-munities the pure doctrine of the Lutheran faith and instilled it in their lives for many generations.

The Christian in Community

The book of Exodus records the creation of a community. It will help us understand what a profoundly important work God is doing in Exodus to observe the contrary impulses of our own day.

It is a sad fact that so many people see each other as objects to be used and then discard-ed, rather than as fellow members of a body or community. Young people hook up for a night or week or month, and then discard the unwanted person. A husband uses his wife until he tires of her and then moves on. Couples see children not as precious gifts placed by God into a divinely ordered community (the family), but as forms of obsessive self-fulfillment, as objects of personal pleasure, as projects to fulfill an agenda, as burdens to be endured—to be rid of as soon as possi-ble, or perhaps never to leave. People today fear commitment, avoid joining groups, isolate them-selves in their work, their play, their private lives. Computers, cell phones, home entertainment centers, and the attending evils of internet pornography, gambling, or gaming addictions make this situation far worse. People resist forming or joining communities.

In Exodus 3 and 4, we find Moses the lonely shepherd, isolated from his people in Egypt. Israel was a slave people. They were like sheep without a shepherd. They lacked the essentials for the formation of a church and a nation: a common purpose, a common leader, a common vision and message, a common law, a common worship, a common structure and form. We have heard that there were pious Christians among them, for example, the midwives who refused to perform abortion and infanticide (Exodus 1). But they were entirely incapable of planning and acting as a community.

Exodus 2 ends with God’s resolve to act on behalf of the people of Israel: “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (24–25). His first act was to call Moses into the Office of the Word of God. Moses would serve as civil ruler, as judge, as priest, as battle command-er. But it was through the Office of the Word of God that God would constitute the “harassed and helpless” Israelites (Matthew 9:36) into His “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), that is, into the church of the living God.

So the Holy Spirit teaches in 1 Corinthians 10:1–4, “For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”

In Exodus 3–4, God called Moses into the Preaching Office. Like other Old Testament prophets (and not a few New Testament pastors), Moses was a reluctant candidate. He did not know what to preach. He assumed his hearers would reject His divine call. He was a poor public speaker. “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (4:13). But God elected him and appointed him, gave him the sermon to preach and teach, established his authority with public evidence, and provided him an assistant.

God’s church, and every one of our congregations, is created and constituted by God alone. “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her by the washing of water with the Word…” (Ephesians 5:25–26). We become the church—God constitutes us as the church—in the person of Jesus, through His death and resurrection, and by the Word of God. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:24–25).

God called Moses to be His preacher, that through the spoken Word of God He might gather to Himself a holy community, cleansed of sin, set apart for His own good and gracious purposes. In the same way God gathers us into the church. He calls pastors through His church, servants of God’s Word, so that by their ministry He may create and constitute the congregations into which we have been called. By this ministry and through His church we are led into a Promised Land far great-er than Canaan. “To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever.
Amen” (Revelation 1:6).

REFORMATION 500

In the spring of 1524 Luther sent out a plea regarding schools that has great significance to this day. “To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany that They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools” (AE 45.347–378) describes the need for truly Christian schools, a curriculum that is appropriate for Lutheran schools, and a plea to collect libraries. To open and fund schools is to invest in the future. It is to preserve Christianity for the sake of the church and the home, and to provide virtuous and capable citizens for our civil communities.

Lutherans today do well to recognize how similar our own situation is to Luther’s. Formerly Christian schools were closing due to lack of funding, lack of students, and heretical preachers who blasphemed by teaching that the Holy Spirit came without God’s Word—without education. The Roman Catholic schools were teaching lies that led the children straight to hell. Luther suggested that it would be better for the children not to be sent to school than that they be sent to schools that would educate Christianity out of them. He recognized that in this matter the devil himself takes a special interest and is “the most dangerous and subtle enemy of all” (351).

We can no longer count on councilmen (i.e. the government) to establish and fund Chris-tian schools. The schools funded and run by our civil government are not Christian; in fact, they are often hostile to Christianity. As they say, the proof is in the pudding: too many of our own children have gone through our government school systems and public universities only to drop out of the church or fail to be of service in starting Christian households. It falls to us Christians, working together through our churches and through Christian homeschools, to educate our children and provide for their future as competent and faithful Christian adults.

Luther described three reasons why the Christians of his day should establish Christian schools. First, he observed how bad things had gotten in Germany and how bad the schools were. He observed that the schools could no longer be counted on to train children to be com-petent Christian adults. He emphasized the goal that “young people… come to maturity in the knowledge of God and…spread his word and teach it to others” (350). He reminded us that our great enemy in this endeavor is the devil.

Second, he pointed out that the time was right. The Renaissance and Reformation had changed things. Europe had rediscovered and recovered the sources of Western civilization in their original Latin and Greek. With the renewal of the languages and the seven liberal arts, the church finally had enough competent men available to teach in Christian schools. He urged his fellow Germans to “make use of God’s grace and Word while it is there!” Here he described God’s Word as a passing shower that does not return once it is gone. The same is true for us in our day. Now is the time!

Third, and most importantly, Luther re-minded us that God commands parents to edu-cate their own children. He referred to Psalm 78, the Fourth Commandment, and Deuteronomy. He observed that “nature itself should drive us to do this, and even the heathen afford us abundant examples of it” (353). He reminded us here, as he does in the Large Catechism under the Fourth Commandment, that the souls of our children are at stake, as well as our own souls. He taught us how seriously Jesus takes the spiritual care of children in Matthew 18:1–14. If we do not train up our children in God’s Word, it would be better to have a millstone fastened around our necks and that we be drowned in the depths of the sea. Luther listed three reasons why parents neglect this duty. First, some parents “lack the goodness and decency to do it,” even if they have the ability to teach their own children. Teachers must be virtuous in thought and life. Second, the great majority of parents unfortu-nately are unprepared to teach their own chil-dren. Luther recognized how difficult this task is. Third, it is also the case that parents often do not have the ability or the opportunity to teach their own children at home, and therefore need the help of others.

For all these reasons, Christian leaders ought “to devote the greatest care and attention to the young” (355) by starting and supporting Christian schools. We dedicate our time and money to many things. Luther observed how much the Christians of his day devoted to business, city affairs, civil defense, luxuries. We like-wise invest in our personal stuff—homes, cars, electronics, entertainment, travel. But our schools often get far less attention. Luther taught, “A city’s best and greatest welfare, safety, and strength consist rather in its having many able, learned, wise, honorable, and well-educated citizens” (356). We ought to “spare no labor or expense to produce and train…intelligent, wise, and competent men, so skilled in every art and rich in experience” (357, 356). He held up the ancient Romans as our example.

What kind of education should Christians receive? Luther immediately took up the anticipated objection to teaching Latin, Greek and He-brew, together with the ancient liberal arts, in our schools. He lamented, “Languages and the arts, which can do us no harm, but are actually a greater ornament, profit, glory, and benefit, both for the understanding of Holy Scripture and the conduct of temporal government—these we despise” (358). But Luther reminded us that we should see the devil’s evil designs in the loss of this Christian education.

Here is what is at stake in teaching the languages: “Although the gospel came and still comes to us through the Holy Spirit alone, we cannot deny that it came through the medium of languages, was spread abroad by that means, and must be preserved by the same means” (358–359). God used the Latin and Greek languages to spread the gospel throughout the whole civilized world of the ancient church. At the time of the Reformation, God revived the languages so that the gospel could be restored and the Reformation take place. “In proportion then as we value the gospel, let us zealously hold to the languages” (359).

God gave his Word to us in Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament). Luther waxed eloquent: “We will not long pre-serve the gospel without the languages. The languages are the sheath in which this Sword of the Spirit is contained; they are the casket in which this jewel is enshrined; they are the vessel in which this wine is held; they are the larder in which this food is stored; and, as the gospel itself points out, they are the baskets in which are kept these loaves and fishes and fragments. If through our neglect we let the languages go (which God forbid!), we shall not only lose the gospel, but the time will come when we shall be unable either to speak or to write a correct Latin or German” (360). Both our spiritual and temporal well-being are bound up with the languages and God’s Word.

Luther recognized that Greek and Hebrew are especially important for pastors and preach-ers. He acknowledged that some preachers may not have a good grasp of the languages. But he also emphasized that “languages are absolutely and altogether necessary in the Christian Church, as are the prophets or interpreters” (363). He ob-served that “where the preacher is versed in the languages, there is a freshness and vigor in his preaching, Scripture is treated in its entirety, and faith finds itself constantly renewed by a continual variety of words and illustrations” (365).

Luther went on to show that, even apart from spiritual and eternal concerns, civil govern-ment and the home still need a good education. God ordained both temporal government and the household. “In order to maintain its temporal es-tate outwardly the world must have good and ca-pable men and women, men able to rule well over land and people, women able to manage the household and train children and servants aright” (368). The goal is that our children “in the fear of God take their own place in the stream of human events” (369). A good Christian education in home and school raises up a new generation of men and women in the full image and stature of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 4, especially verses 13, 15, and 24).

Finally, Luther urged Christian leaders to provide for good libraries. He does not envision large libraries but libraries that have good quality books in them and support a sound Chris-tian education. He focused on six types of books: Holy Scriptures in all the languages; the best commentaries on Scriptures; books “helpful in learning the languages, such as the poets and orators, regardless of whether they were pagan or Christian;” books on the liberal arts and all the other arts; books on law and medicine; and “the chronicles and histories, in whatever languages they are to be had” (376).

We see today that our churches will survive and flourish only if we are able to raise up a new generation of Christians, competent and pious men and women who marry Lutherans, bear children and raise them “in the nurture and ad-monition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), provide for their families, actively fill and support their churches, and serve well in their communities. None of this can be accomplished unless we succeed in training and forming them in God’s Word, in Christian piety, and in the best of all the wisdom and skill that our Christian heritage can give us. God give us the zeal of Luther and many such Christian fathers and mothers in the faith to devote ourselves to this great work!