The Augsburg Confession: Gathered In
Faith
Pastor Mathew Magera – 6/18/17 – Sermon 233
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I'm not sure if there is a
verse of Scripture that is any more Lutheran than Ephesians 2:8-10. “For it is by grace you have been saved,
through faith.” What a relief that is. What a freeing statement. What a joy
to know that we are saved by grace, God's grace, through faith. To know that it
is nothing that we do but that it is everything God does to bring about
salvation through the faith that is created within us by the Holy Spirit.
In the Augsburg Confession,
right after the first four articles, Philip Melanchthon begins to talk about
faith, the purpose of the church and its ministry. Overall, his task, as it
appears, was to keep the Catholic Church centered on God rather than on
themselves as the actors of faith. There were two up and coming arguments that
the reformers were trying to negate. The first was the argument that a person
decides to become a Christian and must have a personal conversion experience or
asking Jesus into their life. This has developed into what is known as Decision
Theology today and denominations like Baptists, Pentecostals, Evangelicals and
Assembly of God still cling to this theology that the reformers did not agree
with. The second argument was that if a priest was a sinner they would nullify
the effects of the sacraments and God's grace through them would not be
effective, meaning the more sinful a pastor is, the less effective Holy
Communion would be. The reformers did not agree either of these teachings, not
that they were already within the Catholic church, but that they were found in
some places.
Thus, articles 5 thru 8 seem
to explain the point of the verse in Ephesians 2 that says we are saved by
grace through faith. They define God as the external source of faith and reject
the human heart’s ability to create it internally. They show the prominence and
centrality of God's grace. Remember, these articles are not hostile toward the
Catholic Church, but an attempt to prevent the church from moving into these
ways and beliefs that were starting to arise. They have the great ability to
influence us as we consider what it means to be the church today.
THE HOLY SPIRIT CREATES
FAITH
The fifth article of the
Augsburg Confession establishes the ministry of the church and defines just how
we receive this justifying faith that was discussed in the fourth article that
we covered last week. It states that the Holy Spirit creates faith in us through
the preaching of his Word and the proper administration of the Sacraments. This
contradicts faith coming from a human action and as a result raises the
eyebrows of those who believe in a conversion experience or making a decision
for Christ both now and during the times of the Reformation.
However, what the reformers
seek to do with this article is remind us that we are not the central figure when
it comes to faith formation. Rather, God is always the central figure. God is
always the actor when it comes to faith. We are merely that which is acted
upon. In the Small Catechism, Martin Luther says, "I believe that I cannot
by my own reason or understanding believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to
Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His
gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith." (SC, ApCreed, III).
Luther, here, is reminding us of how we are saved by grace through faith, just
like Paul wrote in Ephesians 2. It's always God's grace coming down first. The
Christian church is instituted by God for the benefit of His children. God
created the church as a way for us to receive God's grace and to have faith
created within us by which we are saved. We gather having been sought out by
God, having been called by God. God is the actor, and we are acted upon by Him.
The Holy Spirit creates faith within us, we don't create it.
If we were responsible for
creating our own faith, we would be utterly lost. We have to remember that
problem of original sin which says that our natural condition at birth is to
have no trust or fear of God. Without the fear of or trust in God, we are
sinners who are unable to create faith. It must be done externally by the Holy
Spirit. So, when we feel like we have been affected by God or have become a
Christian, this conversion experience, if you will, it is first God's work that
is done within us that causes us to have that feeling that comes through the
creation of faith already within us.
FAITH AND
WORKS ARE USELESS APART FROM ONE ANOTHER
This next article teaches us
that faith and good works are important, but cannot work separately. One who
has faith would automatically do good works because of that faith, so faith
cannot be without good works. However, while good works can exist without faith,
good works on their own cannot lead to justification. The good works may feel
good but they have no effect on your eternal destination when faith is not
present. As Lutherans, we love talking about this distinction, faith and works,
quite a lot. We do our best not to let our works become our salvation and we
talk a lot about faith needing to take that priority. Consider the following
illustration that helped me see the relationship between faith and works a bit
more clearly.
Growing up, I loved trains. I
still do. Now, for a train to be a
train, you need two things. You need the train cars carrying people or freight.
But, you also need the locomotive that can move those cars from place to place.
Imagine a train separated into to these two pieces, the locomotive and the cars
it carries. The locomotive on its own has power to move as it wills over the
track, but its purpose is to carry train cars that do not have such power. You
just don't see locomotives driving around on their own across the country. They
pull things, they drive things. The train cars, on the other hand, have no
power to move. They cannot get from here to there without a locomotive, a
source of power. We need to get from Sin Station all the way to Justification
Junction. The locomotive symbolizes our faith and the cars represent good
works. Faith drives good works. They are useless apart from one another. Good
works cannot get you to Justification Junction, but driven by faith, we can reach
it. The reformers want to encourage good works from the faithful church but want
to remind us that good works cannot merit justification. It is the faith that
God has created within us that saves us and good works happen to be a
by-product of faith.
FAITH IS
NURTURED THROUGH WORD AND SACRAMENT
Now, after the use of faith
is discussed, the next two articles consider the church body and the question
comes up, what keeps us together as a church that is worldwide? How do we
maintain church unity? How is unity maintained when each church context is
different? We can ask the same question today. When one church does one thing
and another church does something else, we must find unity. When certain
beliefs divide churches, unity must be found. So, Melanchthon defines the church
as the assembly of saints gathered where the Word is properly preached and the
Sacraments are rightly administered. This sounds familiar because we had just
talked about how faith is created through the preached Word and the Sacraments.
So, it is only right that the church be unified around these two things.
The Catholics rejected this.
They couldn't understand how a church can be unified only by these items. What
about this practice? What about that belief? What about this understanding? Much
like we think about the different practices of various denominations
today. The problem was that they were
thinking about the physical church, not the spiritual church. The point that
Melanchthon and the reformers were trying to say that we as Christians are
unified in Spirit with everyone in the world by the Word and Sacraments. When
we receive Holy Communion, we receive it with those around the world. When we
hear God's Word, we hear it with those around the world. If we stand up to sing
but the church down the road sits down to sing, we're still united by Word and
Sacrament. Some in the Roman Catholic Church were becoming too inward focused
and too centered on the physical structure of the church that they even said
that priests who were sinners were nullifying the effects of the Word and
Sacrament. The Catholic Church agreed with the reformers about this one easily
because everyone is a sinner. Word and Sacrament would have absolutely no
effect on people if priests were required to be sinless because it is
impossible for that to take place. In other words, they are saying, "your
pastor is not perfect, and that is okay." Believe me, I'm a sinner just
like you. I'm tempted daily just like you. But, if we believe that God's
effectiveness in reaching us is determined in how sinful or not our pastors
are, then we are again forgetting about the power and centrality of God here.
God cannot be held back by something that we have done or failed to do. God
must remain central and that nurturing of our faith must come fully from God
through Word and Sacrament.
* * *
Okay, so now we've come to
that point, why does this matter? You've probably heard, it's not about what's
on the outside but what's on the inside that counts. Well, for the church, it
is the exact opposite. It is not about what is within us, but actually what
comes from outside of us. The Church is not an internal or physical institution
but rather an external spiritual institution. When Jesus says, “my kingdom is
not of this world” he means that the church on earth is not bound by laws or
borders or constitutions. His church is literally not of this world.
This is where we often get
thrown out of whack even today. What does the constitution say? Roberts Rules
of Order. What is the definition of membership? We need to remember to calm
ourselves down. Do not let ourselves get caught up in the internal structure of
the church and forget the external foundation. Ephesians 2:10 says, "For
we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works." Part of
those good works are the institution of the physical church but that must come
first from being created in Christ, our true foundation.
If it hasn't been clear yet,
this external foundation is the good news that we need to hear. In the cases
where we mess up, where the constitution fails us, where we are left in a rut,
when we find ourselves in conflict with one another over one thing or something
else, we remember that our hope comes not from our by-laws, not from the
integrity of the building that we worship in, not from our attendance or
financial records, but from God alone. And just as our faith comes from God,
forgiveness also comes from God. Forgiveness from altering our focus,
forgiveness for failing to give the power to God, forgiveness for not being the
church that God instituted us to be. Only God can grant that. And only God
does.
This means that God has the
ability to renew the church, to reorient us, to recreate faith within us, for
us to allow that faith to produce good works and to grow the church. It gave
strength to the reformers in the 1500s to speak to the centrality of God and
Christ and this good news gives us strength to continue to advocate for a
Christ-centered church, formed by faith, tasked with good works and nurtured by
Word and Sacrament. May God continue to sanctify His church in these ways and
may we be encouraged to be His church, steadfast in faith, in a vast and
evolving world. To God be the glory now and always. Amen.