Free to be Faithful Essay Contest - Redeemer...

2014Free to be Faithful

Essay Contest

2014 FTBF Essay Contest Winners | 3

2014 Free to be Faithful Essay Contest Winners

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synodwww.lcms.org/freetobefaithful

TABLE OF CONTENTS

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM WINNER

Land of the free, home of the brave? Defending religious liberty, blessing those who seek to take it by Rev. Peter Speckhard .......................................................4

LIFE WINNER

Proclaim Life! by Rev. Philip H. Young ..................................................................................................9

MARRIAGE WINNER

What is Marriage by Rev. Richard C. Eyer .........................................................................................14

http://www.lcms.org/freetobefaithful

4 | 2014 FTBF Essay Contest Winners

Land of the free, home of the brave? Defending religious liberty, blessing those who seek to take itby Peter Speckhard

When we sing our national anthem, we end with a question: “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” It

is fitting that something so symbolically entwined with our nation’s identity should end in the form of a question. It is a question than can never be answered permanently, because it is always being asked anew. Every nation is really nothing more than a tentative, provisional answer to the more lasting question of how we shall order our lives together. Empires rise and fall, systems of government work for a while and then collapse, earthly nations come and go. None, including the United States, lasts forever. But Americans always have a chance for renewal, because our very patriotism obligates us to question our government.

The question in our national anthem expresses two things clearly. It shows that Americans, in principle if not always in practice, value freedom above many other good things. Freedom is more central to our nation’s reason for being than other political virtues. We don’t ask whether our flag still waves over the wealthy and secure, or the well-educated and peaceful, or the diverse and industrious. Those are great things for any people to be, but what matters most to Americans is whether or not we are still free.

Second, by asking the question in our anthem, we acknowledge that it is indeed a question, not a given. The flag can stop waving over the free and the brave, either because we have been conquered by a foreign power (which hardly seems likely to us today but was the clear and present danger when the anthem was written) or because we over

whom the flag waves have traded our freedom for something we have decided we value more, in which case we ourselves become the conquerors rather than the inheritors of the free nation Francis Scott Key wrote about. The threat that we will fail our own test is always a clear and present danger, because we’re always tempted to trade away freedom for something else, like national security or economic equality or social progress. So every time we sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” we put the current state of our nation on trial again. Though we’ve never lived up to our values perfectly, we con-stantly question ourselves, judge ourselves, and we’ve even gone to war with ourselves to ensure that freedom for everyone remains our nation’s chief promise and constant goal. The little word “yet” in the question implies the need for vigilance. Does the banner “yet” wave over the free and the brave? When we implicitly answer

L u t h e r a n s d e f e n d r e l i g i o u s f r e e d o m w h i l e g i v i n g t h a n k s f o r i t.


in the affirmative, then we acknowledge, to paraphrase Aragorn from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, that there may come a day when the American flag does not wave over a free people, but it is not this day. Not only do we remain unconquered by a foreign power, but we still we seek freedom first (though not exclusively) in ordering our lives together.

A nation founded on religious freedomAt the heart of the freedoms our nation was founded upon is religious freedom. Long before the Statue of Liberty beckoned the immigrant waves of tired and poor with the promise of political freedom and the economic opportu-nities that come with being free, the shores of America offered refuge to those seeking freedom to worship without fear. To paraphrase text found on the Statue of Liberty: “Give us your heretics, your nonconformists, your Old Believers. Give us your schismatics, your zealots, your visionary prophets on fire with their grand and quirky visions. In freedom let them build a vast Babylon of little New Jerusalems.” Puritans and Quakers, Unitarians and Anabaptists, impassioned preachers of fire and brimstone could come to these shores and breathe free, free especially from secular interference.

The resulting array of religions and religious practices in our culture still dominates the American landscape. There is a reason the Puritans set sail instead of staying home, and that reason was the popular request that they leave. There is a reason portions of the Midwest are covered with Amish farms; the Amish were not welcome in Europe. Freedom of religion even produced a home-grown taste for home-grown new religions, causing Mormonism, Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witnesses to flourish here. This freedom was also the beacon to those who founded The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. They did not come here because they were tired and poor. They came here to find a government that would protect their freedom to live their Christian vision as they saw it, which was against the law in the various German kingdoms. Before leaving Europe, some of those who would later found the LCMS wrote an “Emigration Code” describing their religious troubles in Europe and their goals in America:

“[The Saxon Lutherans] are, therefore, constrained by their conscience to emigrate and to seek a land where this faith is not endangered and where they consequently can serve God undisturbed … A land such as they seek is the United States of North America, where complete religious

and civil liberty prevails, and energetic and effective protec-tion is given foreign countries as nowhere else in the world. These States they therefore have chosen as the goal, and indeed the only goal of their emigration and consequently their new home.1”

So for us in the LCMS today, the question becomes whether or not our country remains the land those immigrants sought, and what would we do about it if we determined it was not? Migrate somewhere else? Where? The world has run out of West. We don’t have the same options those Saxon Lutherans had. But even if we did, we can probably rule out the possibility of simply relocating, partly because there is not a more promising place to go and partly because we’ve grown soft, having lived so long in comfortable freedom. Most of us simply are not up for the prospect of uprooting our lives to live as strangers in a strange land someplace else. But despite our softness, or perhaps because of it, our own land may very well change around us, rendering us strangers here, whether we like it or not. Thus, staying here responsibly means standing up for religious freedom.

Nationalism versus ChristianityIn working to safeguard religious freedom, we must not let our nation become our idol. The political task is important but never the primary Christian vocation. If our flag stopped waving, if the United States were invaded and conquered tomorrow, our Christian mission would remain entirely intact. If we could not worship and live in freedom and safety, then we would have to worship and live in danger. So? Of all the Americans who have worshiped their various gods in freedom and safety over the years, we who do so week after week in the presence of the martyrs should know that freedom and safety are indeed great blessings but hardly essential for a life of following Christ. We give God thanks for the blessing of freedom, and we work to preserve it and pass it on, but we dare not become addicted to it, lest we citizens of an eternal kingdom tether ourselves too tightly to an earthly realm and our faithful-ness wane with it.

Faithfulness is a spiritual quality. Therefore, this simple fact cannot be stated strongly enough: a worldly govern-ment lacks not only the authority but the power to take away anyone’s freedom to be faithful. It is impossible. A government can only help determine just how uncomfort-

1 Walter O. Forster. Zion on the Mississippi: The Settlement of the Saxon Lutherans in Missouri, 1839–1841 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), p. 567.


able being faithful will make us. A government can change the face of Christian faithfulness from that of normal upstanding citizen to stranger in a strange land, from insider to outcast, or from lawmaker to prisoner, but it can’t force anyone to be unfaithful. St. Paul could faithfully invoke the privilege of his Roman citizenship to appeal to Caesar, and he could also faithfully languish in Caesar’s dungeon. His freedom to be faithful was untouched either way. Joseph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon — it is the same story along with countless others. We, too, can live faithfully, whether freely in a country steeped in Judeo-Christian tradition or without religious freedom amid secular decadence and tyranny. Our freedom to be faithful is not at issue in a political debate and never can be, because it is a freedom and vocation given us in Baptism.

So what shall we do if for any reason we find ourselves less polit-ically free to act on our faith due to government interference? In a political sense, we must consider even the smallest injustice or infringement on freedom of religion intolerable. This is our duty to our neighbor and to posterity. We dare not sit idly by while some law erects even minor or token barriers against anyone’s freedom of religion. We should use the gift of citizenship in such a way that American Muslims, Jews, Hindus and others know they can count on the people of the LCMS to stand up for the religious freedom of all Americans of all religions. As voting citizens, we are each a tiny fraction of Caesar and account-able to God for how we use that measure of power. But there are no guarantees of success. Beyond fulfilling our duty and privilege of voting there is very little else we can do about some of the threats to religious liberty we might face in the future.

Be wary of exaggerated threats to religious freedom As we fight against every infringement on freedom of religion, we should be wary of developing a martyr complex and comparing our plight here to the plight of God’s people in many other times and places, who worshiped in genuine fear for their lives. Having never

faced any genuine persecution, we can be easily tempted to think of facing minor annoyances as being persecuted. But if we found ourselves talking face-to-face with people who have fled their homes, whose families have been butchered for being Christians, would we really bring up the fact that our government tried to take away the clergy housing allowance tax deduction or that it forced us to change the structure of our health insurance plans? If we

did, I picture the genuine Christians martyrs saying, “Yeah, that’s rough,” then looking away in embarrassment for us.

If we want anyone to take us seriously when we argue for religious freedom, we also must show why it is important to us. At the very least we should be active in our own churches, and our churches should be active in the world through us. If we can’t be bothered to attend church when there is absolutely nothing standing in the way of our doing so, can we credibly complain if it becomes slightly more difficult to attend the church we weren’t attending anyway? It will only sound like so much

whining and political posturing in the ears of those we’re arguing against. If we don’t worship in freedom, how are we threatened by the prospect of worshiping in fear? If we don’t live faithfully when the wood of religious freedom is green, what will we do when it is dry? As Christians, we have to be faithful in the small things first. If we refuse to come to church unless the music is to our taste, unless the pastor does much more than just proclaim the boring old Word of God; if we explain away low attendance when the weather is too hot, too cold, too rainy, or too nice to be inside on a weekend; if we think it is a legitimate concern that 8:00 is too early and 10:45 is too late, then we aren‘t to be taken seriously anyway. Frankly, it is tough to worry about whether such people lose religious freedom when it would devastate them far more to lose their regular brunch table.

Defending religious freedom in the political sphereIn defending religious freedom in the political sphere, we must also prepare for the inevitable accusation that all we

If we want anyone to take us seriously when we argue for

religious freedom, we also must show why it is important to us. At the very least we

should be active in our own churches, and

our churches should be active in the world

through us.


really care about is preserving a position of privilege for ourselves. This accusation is simply the default argument for people who can’t conceive of any conflict except in socio-economic terms of class and power and see everything through that interpretive lens. The gist of the argument against us will take the form of, “There go those largely white, middle class Protestants worrying that they won’t occupy the head of the table in American culture anymore.” This misguided accusation is predictable but hard to answer, because it really serves as an unarguable assumption the critic takes into the discussion rather than as a conclusion. This means we who are constantly subjected to such criticism must go out of our way to demonstrate with our actions that such criticism is unfair, which we can only do by living our faith publicly while zealously defending the freedom of other religious groups to do likewise.

But enough of such practical concerns — the primary danger is and always has been spiritual. Will we be goaded into hating those who oppose us? That is the ever-pres-ent test for Christians. Jesus prayed for those who were crucifying Him. Stephen begged God to pardon those who stoned him. But despite these examples, we remain in danger of hating people and institutions opposed to us. When this happens, we lose the battle in a completely different way than the one of our original concern — not to some bogus law against faithfulness but to a simple temptation toward unfaithfulness. Facing genuine perse-cution from a genuinely anti-Christian government in the Soviet gulags, the Soviet writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn recognized that the real danger is not in the loss of freedom but in the temptation to draw the line between good and evil between ourselves and our enemies, rather than through every human heart.

So even as we thank God for the blessing the United States has always been to The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and even as we hope, pray and work to see that the star-spangled banner yet waves o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave, we must pray all the more fervently that God grant us the faithfulness to love our enemies and to pray for them. We will never bless those who persecute us if we can’t even bless them when they irritate us. The earliest Christians rejoiced when they were counted worthy of suffering for the faith. Inheriting the promise of the martyrs’ faith matters more than inheriting the promised freedoms of America. As citizens and as a fraction of Caesar, we work to secure religious freedom

for everyone. But whether or not our nation remains a blessing to us and a beacon of religious freedom to the world (and it won’t forever), we citizens of an eternal kingdom have nothing to lose and nothing to fear, as we witness to Christ in whatever context we find ourselves. We are always free to be faithful.

The Rev. Peter Speckhard is pastor of Saint Paul Lutheran Church, Munster, Ind.


Religious Liberty BiBle Study QueStionS

1. The first verse of our national anthem ends with the question, “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” Why, according to the author, must this question always be asked anew?

2. What two things does the question express?

3. Though nations can be conquered by foreign powers, the author gives another reason for the loss of freedom in the United States. What is it?

4. What does the little word “yet” imply?

5. What important reason does the author give for Unitarians, Anabaptists, Puritans and Lutherans migrating to the West? Why must Christians continue to value this reason?

6. Religious freedom is a bedrock characteristic of this nation. However, the author warns against idolizing freedom. What results when freedom is idolized?

7. The author writes: “Freedom and safety are indeed great blessings but hardly essential for a life of following Christ.” What point is he making by this statement?

8. Why is our freedom to be faithful ultimately not a political issue?

9. Citizenship is a gift that should be used rightly. Using it to suppress one religion over another contradicts the religious liberty belonging to all Americans. Why must Christians, specifically members of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, stand up for the “religious freedom of all Americans of all religions”? What are the potential consequences if we “sit idly by” while laws are established to erode one’s religious freedom, even if not our own?

10. The author writes: “As Christians we have to be faithful in the small things first.” Do you think secular society should take Christians seriously when they rarely go to church or refrain from going due to trivial reasons?

11. What is the “martyr complex,” and why should we be wary of it?

12. It’s inevitable that in a sinful world there will strife and conflict between those fighting for religious liberty and those striving to suppress it. Throughout these struggles, how should Christians regard the enemy? When it seems as if the enemy is prevailing and persecution increasing, how should the baptized child of God regard his or her status in this world?


Proclaim Life!by Philip H. Young

When the first child was born into this fallen creation, mother Eve proclaimed life. She proclaimed for all (for God and Adam) to hear, “I have gotten a man with the

help of the Lord [Yahweh]” (Gen. 4:1). The name “Cain” sounds like the Hebrew verb “get” or “gotten,” so the child’s name was itself a shorthand proclamation of life gotten with Yahweh. Now Eve had received her own name, from Adam, “because she was [to become] the mother of all [the] living” (Gen. 3:20). The name “Eve” means “life” or “living,” yet when it came time for Eve to give life, she proclaimed life with the help of Yahweh. The birth of her child was uniquely the work of Yahweh, the true God. Though Eve was the mother of all the living, she was not the Creator and could not claim her baby as her creation. Instead, she confessed the wonder of life from her womb with the help of the Lord.

Down through the millennia, new mothers and fathers have also announced the wonder of life coming from their bodies. They have cried tears of joy and called others to rejoice with them over the mystery of life. Even some who denied God or who exchanged him for idols announced and extolled life at one time or another. But in the pattern of Eve, the people of God proclaim human life as a sacred gift from the Lord. The people of God give thanks to the Almighty and properly fear the Lord of Life.

Eve’s confession of childbirth as Yahweh’s work was not delivered against a culture of violence. But when our culture of violence did begin to manifest itself (tragically, through Cain), it made bold confession of the work of the Creator that much more important, if nothing else than to shine the light of truth on those who would attempt to deny the natural knowledge of the Law and cheapen the worth of a person’s life.

By the days of Noah, the faithful confes-sion of life given from Yahweh was down to a whisper. Noah alone “found favor in the eyes of the Lord” and was called “a righteous man, blameless in his generation … Noah walked with God” (Gen. 6:8–9). But as for the rest of humanity, “the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence” (Gen. 6:11). The wickedness of man was so great, God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Gen. 6:13). The voice of Abel’s blood (Gen. 4:10) that had cried out to the Lord from the ground now was a din in God’s ears!

After the flood, after Noah and his family had come out of the ark, then God once again proclaimed life as His work. To Noah and all his descendants, God said, “For your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his

W e d e f e n d l i f e a m i d c h a l l e n g e s t o l i f e ’ s s a c r e d n a t u r e .


fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen. 9:5, 6). The life of each person was precious to the Creator and was not to be taken lightly, for God made man in His own image. As the people of the earth were sure to go back to their violent ways, they were not to misunderstand the origin of and the significance of human life.

Even without God’s specific proclamation, and even without the confession of the righteous, the natural knowledge of the Law written on the heart still speaks to individuals about the sacredness of human life (Rom. 2:15). And where the natural knowledge is perverted or ignored, God has ordained governments to uphold His Law and to protect life. As Lutherans, we give thanks for the civil order, the kingdom of the left, under God. The Word of the Lord is clear:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God . . . for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he [government] is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer (Rom. 13:1, 4).

A call to confess lifeGovernment is to punish the evildoer and be a “servant of God” in protecting innocent life. Therefore, “good gov-ernment” retains its place in the petition for daily bread as Luther’s Small Catechism reminds us. But what if gov-ernment is not altogether good? What about the current situation in the United States? The natural law, if not the revealed Law (from the Bible), still does exist in some form and has not been totally abandoned in our government. But where the natural law has been perverted by society and the government has acquiesced as, for instance, in the case of abortion, then the life-confessing role of Christians must come to the fore all the more. This is especially true in our country, a nation conceived with a declaration of an individual’s right to life and a Constitution that begins “We the people.” In this government that allows for the election of representatives of the people, Christians must try to call the civil authority back to its proper role of protecting and defending innocent human life under God.

Prior to abortion being legalized by the Supreme Court in January 1973, the people in the congregations of the LCMS likely were not accustomed to wading into matters deemed controversial in the civil realm. But even after

40 years (a generation!) on the learning curve, I find that many congregations of our Synod are still very nervous about becoming too political. The Synod’s current Free to be Faithful campaign has, no doubt, struck some as sur-prising and perhaps inappropriate. Far from being just a comfortable, theological discussion of the Two Kingdoms (sacred and civil, or Church and state), it seeks “to respond to increasing intrusions by government in the realm of the church” and “to educate and move LCMS rostered members and laity to take informed action to protect religious freedom and all the cultural issues that pertain to it” (www.lcms.org/freetobefaithful). In other words, with respect to the cultural issue of the sanctity of human life, this is the call for God’s people to use their voice again and proclaim that infants are conceived and “gotten” with the help of Yahweh!

In the past, our congregation members may have considered their role in “civil matters” as just going to the polling place every two years and pulling the lever for a righteous person. But with intrusions like the Health and Human Services birth control mandate on health–care plans and with federal courts striking down voter-ap-proved laws on abortion restrictions, times have changed. The Church is not even allowed to mind its own business any more. And perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. The world needs to hear our confession of life. In a culture of violence that has embraced death as a friend and as the answer to unwanted children, it’s important for there to be a clear, unambiguous voice warning both government and the individual of their accountability to the God of life. It’s important for there to be a bold voice affirming the beauty and worth of individual lives, especially the lives of little ones with Down Syndrome or some other condition possibly detected in the womb. How important it is also for the Church to remember that while obedience to the government is good and commanded by God, in cases where faith and conscience would have to be denied “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Of course this call to confess life is not a mission to transform the culture or to act before it is too late. All things are under the Lord’s almighty reign, and not one of God’s plans can be thwarted (Job 42:2). Therefore, the call to proclaim life is simply a reminder of what Christians do. Whether it is well-received or vehemently opposed and ridiculed, Christians give thanks to God for life from the womb and hold such life to be sacred from conception. It’s just what we do! We credit Yahweh for the life of each



person. It is our privilege, not a burden, to speak out with the truth. Almighty God can change the culture without us, and he can make the government embrace its role to protect the weakest without us. But God has given us the privilege of having a voice through which he carries out his will in his way.

There was another reason for Eve to begin the role of God’s people publicly extolling life. The “seed” of the woman was to be the Savior who would crush the head of the serpent that led mankind into imprisonment (Gen. 3:15). The Christ would come through childbirth. The promise of salvation was linked to childbirth. In a sense, then, this first Gospel promise sancti-fied all wombs beyond just being the means of how God gives life. And in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4) when our Lord was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, then all wombs were truly sanctified by the flesh of true God. The almighty Son of God became a vulnerable child in the place where all human beings are knit together (Ps. 139:13). God made manifest the sacredness of human life through his perfect Son being born from a woman in order to be our Redeemer. Therefore, both creation and redemp-tion are supported by God’s people affirming life.

Dr. Martin Luther famously put forward the opinion that Eve believed Cain to be the promised seed, the Savior. Luther comes to this conclusion through translating Eve’s confession as having “gotten the man of the Lord.” In his lectures on Genesis Luther says:

Another reason may be gathered why Eve did not call Cain a son, namely, that because of her excessive joy and reverence she was unwilling to call him son but had something greater in mind about him, as though Cain would be the man who would crush the head of the serpent. For this reason she does not simply call him a man, but “the man of the Lord,” of whom the Lord God had promised (Gen. 3:15): “Your Seed will crush the head of the serpent.” . . . But this poor woman deceives herself. She does not yet fully realize her misfortune: that from the flesh nothing but flesh can be born (John 3:16), and that sin and death cannot be overcome by flesh and blood. Then, too, she does not know the point in time when the blessed Seed, conceived

by the Holy Spirit, is to be born into the world by a virgin.1

Thus, according to Luther, Eve’s confession did not merely voice wonder at God’s work of procreation but great joy at God’s work of restoring creation.

Luther also gives a delightful opinion that God kept the first Gospel promise (Gen. 3:15) vague for the reason of tormenting the devil. Luther maintains that because the Savior is only designated as “her Seed,” God is “mocking Satan and making him afraid of all women.”2 In other words, God leaves “the devil in such a state that he suspects all mothers of giving birth to this Seed.”3

How delightful to think of the enemy nervously scanning the population for every woman in labor and worrying that the hour had come for Yahweh to fulfill his promise to mankind with the birth of the Christ!

This brings up an important point. If the devil is forced to acknowledge that every womb and every conception is the realm of Yahweh’s work — if the devil knows that every life is subject to Yahweh’s plan — then why would the Church ever struggle to see life in these same concrete terms? Why should the devil have a better confession than us? Of course, Satan will never publicly proclaim Yahweh as Creator

and rejoice in the giving of life. The father of the lie of evolution will continue to deceive and murder, both in the womb and out of it, and try to silence voices of truth. The devil will not be a public witness for Yahweh. But God’s people can speak and are given that privilege.

So that all believers may liveIt is the particular privilege of God’s people to proclaim the life that comes through the Seed of the woman, that “man of the Lord,” the Redeemer. The Incarnate Son of God was sent from the Father to give abundant life (John 10:10), new life (2 Cor. 5:17) and eternal life (John 3:16). The Lord Jesus came to give His life for the life of the world (John 6:51). In order for Christ to destroy the works

1 Martin Luther. Luther’s Works, Vol. 1: Lectures on Genesis Chapters 1–5, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1958), pp. 241–243.2 Ibid, p. 193.3 Ibid.

God made manifest the sacredness of

human life through His perfect Son being born from a woman

in order to be our Redeemer. Therefore,

both creation and redemption are

supported by God’s people affirming life.


of the devil (1 John 3:8) and redeem us from this hall of death, our Lord offered for us not gold or silver, but His holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death.4 This payment was for the sins of the entire world — for every person. That’s how much Yahweh loves every one of His human creatures. He offered His perfect Son on their behalf. The Father delivered His full wrath to His Son that there could be free forgiveness and the certainty of eternal life for fallen human beings. And the resurrection of Christ proved that the Father has accepted the sacrifice of His Son for the reconciliation of the world. Therefore, all who believe on Jesus by God-given faith will live!

This is the message God’s people proclaim to the young woman who is racked with guilt over her abortion. This is the hope we proclaim to the man who is convicted by the Law of God and believes he is forever condemned for taking his girlfriend to the abortion clinic. There is for-giveness and life in Christ. As Christians speak out for the protection of the unborn, they also offer hope for the other casualties in this culture of death. Planned Parenthood and government agencies offer no comfort for those who regret their choices or false beliefs. But God’s people use their voice and constitutional freedom of speech and freedom of religion to be faithful in proclaiming grace and hope in Christ for the life of every person.

In the beginning, when the first birth occurred, Eve proclaimed life by the grace of Yahweh. May God’s people continue to publicly echo her confession of truth for the benefit of all who walk on this fallen earth.

The Rev. Philip H. Young is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church, Nashville, Tenn.

4 Martin Luther. Luther’s Small Catechism, English Standard Version (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1986), p.16.


Life BiBle Study QueStionS

1. What similarities exist between how the people of God view life today and Eve’s proclamation in Gen. 4:1?

2. The author writes: “Even those who have denied God or exchanged Him for idols have been known to announce and extol life.” How does the Christian’s understanding of human life exceed mere extolment and celebration?

3. After the flood God reiterates to Noah that life is His work and man is made in His own image (Gen. 1:26–27; Gen. 9: 5, 6). How does inborn corruption of man, the doctrine known as “original sin,” distort one’s view of this biblical teaching?

4. The natural knowledge of God’s law is written on the heart (Rom. 2:15) and so man is “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). The author rightly acknowledges that the natural law is at times “perverted” and “ignored.” The great Lutheran theologian Francis Pieper writes that “atheism springs from the suppression and denial of the natural knowledge of God. And this suppression has its source in man’s love of immorality” (Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1, p. 373). What has God instituted to curb the perversion of evil, and how is its role defined in Scripture?

5. The author expresses his viewpoint when he says, “I find that many congregations of our Synod are still very nervous about becoming too political.” What is the opposite of being “too political”? What are reasons for Christians becoming engaged in politics?

6. Read Luke 21:12–19. The author suggests that government intrusion might be a “blessing in disguise.” Why might such intrusion be a blessing for the Church?

7. We hope and pray for unbelievers to be brought to repentance and faith in Christ upon hearing the Word of God. We also desire government officials to honor their God-given vocations and not exceeded crucial boundaries between church and state. However, we’re not commanded to transform the world into a kingdom that Christ says “is not of this world” (John 18:36). World and culture are distinct from the Church. Read John 15:18–25 and John 17:14–16. What reason(s) does the author give for Christians neither being on a quest to transform culture nor speak before it’s too late?

8. How exactly are creation and redemption supported by God’s people affirming life?

9. According to Luther, why did God keep the first Gospel promise vague? What is the author getting at when he asks: “Why should the devil have a better confession than us”?

10. In the second-to-last paragraph, what important reason does the author give for the Church to confess the saving work of the incarnate Son of God?


What Is Marriage?by Richard C. Eyer

How shall we define marriage? Shall marriage be exclusively the union of man and woman or also the union of man to another man or woman to another woman? Shall

marriage be a promise of commitment for life before God and the community with which we are all one, or shall marriage be any two people who choose to live together for sexual reasons without any faithful commitment for life? Shall marriage be the prerequisite for procreation, or shall society affirm any unmarried woman choosing to have a child with the assistance of a fertility clinic providing donor sperm to fulfill her wishes? Is marriage little more than an invention of culture and therefore something needing to be revised from generation to generation? The message of Christians from the Word of God is that marriage is not whatever we choose to make of it. It is what God has made it to be! But that is no longer a popular view these days. In a letter to the editor of a major newspaper in support of gay marriage following the action of the Supreme Court to allow it, one person celebrated with apparent relief, “The dark age of religion is fading away!”

Nevertheless, marriage is what God has made it to be and to remain. The theme of marriage fills the pages of God’s Word as a message about the nature of the relationship between man and woman in this world and the relationship between us and God that lasts into eternity. Christ is the groom, and we as the Church are the bride — married for life. We, who are married to Christ, live in a unique relationship that brings fulfillment on earth and in heaven. Marriage is a one-of-a-kind experience between human beings. No other relationship, either between closest friends or between parent and child, compares with the uniqueness that is found in marriage.

Marriage as a sign of Christ and the ChurchEph. 5:21–33 speaks of marriage, but verse 33 comes as a surprise, as Paul reminds us that what we are really speaking about here is not just marriage, but marriage as a sign of Christ and the Church. Paul uses the word “mystery” (Greek: mysterion) in speaking of marriage. Martin Luther called marriage a mystery that God has made known to us. Martin Luther wrote of this mystery of marriage. It is:

“a sacred sign of something spiritual, holy, heavenly and eternal. … [Marriage] is an outward and spiritual sign of the greatest holiest, worthiest, and noblest thing that has ever existed or ever will exist: the union of the divine and human

H o w d o w e d e f i n e m a r r i a g e i n p o s t - m o d e r n A m e r i c a ?


natures in Christ. The holy apostle Paul says that as man and wife united in the estate of matrimony are two in one flesh, so God and man are united in the one person Christ, and so Christ and Christendom are one body. It is indeed as Paul says [Eph. 5:32] that the estate of marriage truly signifies such a great reality. Is it not a wonderful thing that God is man and he gives himself to man and will be his, just as the husband gives himself to his wife and is hers? But if God is ours, then everything is ours.”1

An illustration from computer technology might help us understand the biblical revelation that is marriage. When you click on an icon, it opens up something behind it, so to speak. Marriage, as God has given it, is such an icon: “An outward and spiritual sign of the greatest holiest, worthiest, and noblest thing that has ever existed or ever will exist.”2 When you “click” on marriage, you see the deeper reality of the relationship between Christ and His Church, the people of God. That is, when you look more deeply into marriage what you see is not just two people with a commitment to one another for life, but also a parallel of God’s commitment to us for life. This is more than saying marriage is an illustration of our life with God; it is rather an earthly enactment of a heavenly reality lived out on earth. Marriage is the sign or mystery that reveals to those who have the eyes of faith to see it that God has wed Himself to us for all eternity.

Society attempts to redefineMarriage is given by God, so it carries a message. Even more than an experience between a man and a woman who promise lifelong faithfulness to each other, marriage mirrors the relationship between God and His faithful people. One of the greatest challenges before us today is the possibility offered through reproductive technologies. Before we can know which of them are compatible with the Christian life, we must assess the implications of our being made in the image of God, as we enter into the one-flesh union of marriage and procreation. For example, in marriage and procreation

1 The Athanasian Creed in: The Lutheran Confessions: A Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord, eds. Paul T. McCain, Robert C. Baker, Gene E. Veith and Edward A. Engelbrecht (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), p. 43.2 Martin Luther. “A Sermon on the Estate of Marriage” in: Luther’s Works, Vol. 44: The Christian In Society, eds. James Atkinson and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), p. 10.

the two literally become one flesh, but with the use of donors or surrogates, someone outside the union stands in for one or both of those whom God has made one. Such standing-in mirrors an adulterous interruption in the marriage. (Oneness does not necessarily mean procreation, but it is challenged and the waters muddied by those who make use of embryos and other means that are not from the same married couple.)

It is not our human prerogative to redefine marriage for the sake of political correctness, social justice or as an accommodation to the changing times. As God does not change, but is ever faithful, so marriage does not change and ever proclaims the faithfulness of God to His people. Marriage is a mysterious proclamation of the Gospel in our world, for God has not left Himself without such witness of Himself in this world. The Gospel proclamation not only forgives sins, it also changes lives! Marriage cannot be whatever a society wants it to be. We as Christians bear witness to the truth and the dark ages of sin will not change it. Rather than argue with those who will not listen, we Christians live out the reality of a good

marriage. We will bear witness to the truth by paying attention to our own marriage and making it an example of truth.

The world around us is always changing. Pastors and parishioners are obligated to educate the world by proclaiming the Gospel and its presence around us as we “speak the truth in love.” Many have never thought nor heard about the

mysteries of God in marriage and in Baptism and Holy Communion. We need to speak tenderly and informatively to our young people, so they can live lives of holiness and purity. Others will notice and will see something different about us that may lead to our love for them in seeing Christ in the midst of it all. That is our calling, in marriage and in all of life.

Marriage cannot be whatever a society

wants it to be. We as Christians bear witness

to the truth and the dark ages of sin will not

change it.


Marriage BiBle Study QueStionS

1. In what way is your attitude toward marriage influenced by what you see and hear about marriage on television or among your friends?

2. What is the argument of those who favor same-sex marriage? Take time to hear and understand these arguments.

3. In regard to the biblical understanding of marriage, what is wrong with each of the arguments in favor of gay marriage? Are you able to articulate them?

4. How would you argue against same-sex marriage from a biblical, Christian perspective? Start with Rom. 1:26–27.

5. What confusion arises for adopted children of a gay marriage regarding role models for life as a man and woman?

6. Read through these biblical passages and practice being able to discuss them with someone else as a witness to the biblical understanding of marriage.

a. Gen. 1:26–27

b. Gen. 2:24

c. Rev. 22:17

d. Eph. 5: 22–33

7. How is marriage a sign of Christ and the Church?


Notes

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synodwww.lcms.org/freetobefaithful


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