(Part 1 of 2)
A soft confessional Lutheran is a contradiction in terms. We are people who have already died. Confessional Lutheran preachers are men who crucify people with Jesus. Men who wear soft clothes are in kings’ palaces. Men who make harmless tweets and go to harmless conferences and say, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace are not confessional Lutherans. If they are, they are men who are selling their birthright. We are called to much more.
The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also
conquered and sat down with my Father on His throne. (Rev. 3:21)
The Church suffers with Christ and dies with Him.
The Church conquers with Christ and reigns with Him.
These two theses not only harmonize with one another; they are different aspects of the same thing. Two Sundays from now, on the feast of St. Michael, we will hear the loud voice from heaven, saying: “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” (Rev. 12:10-11)
We should pay attention to how closely these words parallel one of the passages we use most frequently to comfort the sick, dying, and mourning. . “Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Rom. 8:33-37) No one, not even the highest angel, may bring a charge against us or condemn us, since Christ has justified us with His blood. It isn’t that we are saved in spite of tribulation and distress and death. It is in the very midst of being killed all day long that we are more than conquerors.
It is not an unusual thing when a Christian dies with Christ. Every last Christian in his final hour is being crucified with Christ, shouting in triumph with our Lord at His last breath. We died with Him in Baptism, and we die with Him daily in repentance. Or we save our lives in this world only to lose them, and death ceases to be a triumph and becomes eternal defeat. But if we suffer and die in our callings on earth, we should also expect that we will conquer—not just a difficulty or two, but the devil and the whole world.
In recent years, the Luther’s distinction between the theology of glory and the theology of the cross has been twisted into something it was never meant to be. The reason a theologian of glory looks for God in the things that are seen is because he boasts in his flesh and wants to strengthen his flesh. A theologian of the cross finds God in suffering and death not because weakness and losing are themselves good, but because the death of our sinful nature is good. In the death of our old Adam we live and reign with Christ by faith. But we have turned it into a perverse strengthening of our flesh. When our churches have declined in numbers and closed, instead of mourning over our failures, we have told ourselves this is a mark of our faithfulness. If that were true, the Reformation would have been a failure, and the apostles would have mourned in the early chapters of Acts as the word of the Lord continued to increase (Acts 6:7).
The book of Joshua is a helpful corrective for us. We should read it again. Pastors should teach it to their bible classes.
In the book of Joshua we see that only two men from the first generation of Israelites were able to go in and possess the inheritance promised to their fathers. That was because they were the only two who believed that God could not lie, and He would fulfill what He had promised hundreds of years before. They reached out and seized the promise of God.
And the rest of that great host that came out of Egypt died in the wilderness. The evidence of their unbelief was their fear to enter battle. Like the hosts of Saul’s army quivering before the giant, they looked upon what was seen, not what was unseen. So they perished in the wilderness.
We have been given a much greater promise by God, and begun to enter into battle to obtain it. Our battle is not to cross swords with a few tribes in the Middle East, but to die with Christ and conquer the world and the devil in so doing. And we say we want to win that prize, but we are afraid to lift up our voices to pastors and congregations whose practice is unfaithful to our Confessions? We are afraid of the hostility of our neighbors and the government—as we manifestly were during Covid—but we pretend we have no fear about the hostility of the devil?
I understand why it has come to this very well. Many of us are timid to begin with. Maybe we have never done anything bold or daring in our lives. Others have tried, only to find some other part of our life was not in order, so we backed away from being bold in public supposedly to get our private lives together, but found that they were never together enough to take the risk. Many pastors came out of seminary breathing fire, and quickly ran into resistance or immovable indifference. We told ourselves, as we made compromises, that our sloth was really the wisdom of experience. But then we limped along with a bad conscience, because the only joy in the ministry is found in going with Christ into danger to find the lost sheep. When we are not doing that, when we avoid everything difficult, we secretly feel ourselves to be priests for hire, and it saps all our joy in the ministry.
But we have forgotten that Christ calls us to more. He gave us the right to become sons of God, to share in His glory at the right hand of the Father. And the way to becoming sons of God in glory is to conquer the world by the blood of the Lamb and the word of His testimony.
Admittedly, it may or may not be given to us to see our synod made new. It may or may not be given to us to see our congregations renewed or our lost neighbors return in large numbers to Christ. But it is certainly given to us to make war on the devil and the world. The Spirit that is in us speaks like Caleb: “And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. 11 I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. 12 So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.” (Joshua 14:10-12)
When Joshua had brought the people of Israel through the Jordan, circumcised them and celebrated the Passover, he saw a man standing before them with a drawn sword. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” 14 And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.” (Joshua 5:13-14)
When Christ appeared to Joshua with a drawn sword, He announced that He was neither for Israel nor for the Canaanites. He was present to carry out His own purposes. He had come to execute judgment on Canaan and to plant Israel as the garden out of which His incarnation would come to fruition. So it is with His remnant in the Missouri Synod. It is true that He is not for us, our egotistical goals, our desire for comfort or glory in this world. But He has a war that He wishes to fight. He rides out in His majesty victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness (Ps. 45:4), He girds His sword on His thigh in His splendor and majesty (Ps. 45:3). One thing is certain: our Lord goes out to make war for His pure word and the salvation of souls. He makes war on those who corrupt His Word with the sword of His mouth (Rev. 2:16).
He is not for us if our desire is to have a soft, easy life.
And I have vowed to love and fear Thee
And to obey Thee, Lord, alone;
Because the Holy Ghost did move me,
I dared to pledge myself Thine own,
Renouncing sin to keep the faith
And war with evil unto death. (TLH #298 st. 3)
But if our desire is to fulfill our baptismal vow, we are with Him in His warfare, which He will surely win.
And what concern of ours is it if He grants us victories on earth, or we fall in battle? Either way we win. Since we must win, whether our earthly goals are achieved is only of secondary importance. “It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out, just as the Lord said,” says Caleb. It may be. It may not be, but either way I will be a loyal soldier under the Commander of the Armies of the Lord. This is the way that the saints always speak. They don’t know what the temporal outcome of their efforts will be, only that it is God’s will that they fight. So Jonathan says: ““Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.” (1 Samuel 14:6).
And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say: If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:17).
But David, the man after God’s own heart, with great faith says, “Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.” (1 Sam. 17:36) If God has not given us the faith of David, let us at least speak like Caleb, Jonathan, and the three young men. The Lord is able to deliver us, but even if He does not, we will serve the Lord.
And we will surely find, as they did, that the Lord will be pleased with our warfare, even if we fall short in many things; that He grants us successes in time where we did not expect them. We should not use the Lord’s battles as an excuse to flee from our failures in other parts of our lives. Yet we should not excuse our timidity with the idea that it is for other people who are better than us to fight. For the battle is the Lord’s (1 Sam. 17:47), and we are the Lord’s. We have been enlisted as his soldiers, who are to die and rise again, in Holy Baptism.