What is Expected of You
Via “The True Visible Church of God on Earth”
You all, my friends, want to become servants of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Office of the Ministry. Therefore, picture in your mind what the Lutheran Church demands and expects of you. The Lutheran Church expects of you that you are moved to belong to the Church, not merely outwardly and by means of external circumstances, but from your heart. It expects of you that you serve the Church not merely half-heartedly, or even with a bad conscience, but that you serve in its midst with great joyfulness. The Church expects of you that you do not look upon the service in its midst as a burden, but as a joy. You should think of it that with it God has bestowed upon you a great privilege that you may conduct the Office of the Ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. It expects of you that if you had the choice between a small, poor Lutheran congregation which may only consist of manual labourers and meets in a barn-like building and between a big, rich, sectarian congregation which consists of nothing but people respected in this world and holds its religious meetings in a chapel made of marble and sparkling with other precious stones, that you would then without a second thought choose the service at the poor and small Lutheran congregation. Indeed, the Lutheran church expects of you that you would sooner part with life and limb than to become unfaithful to the service in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The Lutheran Church expects you to be zealous for the Lutheran Church, but not with a carnal, fanatical, party-spirit breathing zeal, but with an eagerness which is founded on a true knowledge and which the Holy Spirit inspires (fans) and maintains in the heart.
That is what the Lutheran Church expects of you as the future servants of the same; and that you can achieve this must be your own singular, ardent desire, because only in this way will you serve God rightly in the Lutheran Church and be happy in the Office of the Lutheran Ministry. But you will accomplish this only if you are by God’s grace convinced that the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as it is presently called, is the orthodox church, or, what is the same thing, the true, visible Church of God on earth. Therefore, we will occupy ourselves in these evening hours with the proof that the orthodox, or the true, visible Church of God on earth, is the Evangelical Lutheran Church. But we must first take care of a few preliminary questions.
Modern theology, which is unionistic through and through, holds in opposition to us that the above-mentioned conclusion is not at all convincing. It says: “The Lutheran Church may for all that be the orthodox church, but God also wanted to have other tendencies alongside it in the church; therefore it does not follow, that one must set one’s heart so completely on the Evangelical Lutheran Church.” In order to refute this objection I direct your attention above all to the truth that God wishes to have only one orthodox church on earth, that is, one such church as believes and confesses all the doctrines revealed in the Holy Scriptures; that, on the other hand, heterodox church bodies which in certain points depart from the truth revealed in God’s Word, will only be tolerated by God, as is every other sin. I draw your attention to the following main reasons why Orthodoxy is the outward form of the church ordained by God:
Rembrandt, "Ascension" (1636)
In the first place, God commands all preachers, who mount the pulpit within His church, to preach His Word and only His Word; the preachers shall neither take away anything from His Word nor add anything to it. – When, before His ascension to heaven, the Lord Christ gave His Church the command: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), according to the statement of the Evangelist Matthew He then added very explicitly to it: “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt.28:20). God further commands: “He that hath My Word, let him speak My Word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat?” (Jer. 23:28) [Luther: What has chaff in common with the wheat? Ed.]. With these words spoken through the prophet Jeremiah God forbids all preachers to proclaim together with God’s Word at the same time also their own thoughts, thus the word of men. According to the Holy Scriptures, it is the greatest praise for a preacher if he preaches God’s Word, as it is revealed, undiminished and unfalsified. The Apostle Paul thus speaks of himself (2 Cor. 2:17), “We are not as many, which corrupt the Word of God.” And contrariwise, it is an offense before God if preachers take the liberty to corrupt the Word of God, that is, to take away from God’s Word or to add something to it. Thus God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah (23:31,32): “Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use their tongues, and say, He saith. Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause My people to err by their lies, and by their lightness [Heb. proud boastings, Ed.]; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them.” In Matt. 5:19 the Lord Christ Himself threatens all teachers: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven;” that means he will not even get into the kingdom of heaven. According to God’s will, false teachers have so little right to exist in the church that God in the Old Testament, where He dealt more with bodily punishments, gave orders to kill the false teachers. Hence we read at the noteworthy place, Deuteronomy 13:6ff: “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die.” (Deut.13:6-10). In the New Testament God does not deal with bodily punishments like that any more; indeed, He has specifically forbidden His Church to fight against the false teachers with physical punishments and with physical force in general. Through the Holy Spirit St. Paul must remind us: “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal” (2 Cor.10:4). But in the New Testament God has nevertheless very clearly described the business of the false teachers as the gravest sin, as a business upon which he lays His curse and threatens with temporal and eternal punishment. Thus writes the apostle
Paul through the Holy spirit in Galatians 1:8: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed!” But we must now say: Since God’s Word commands all teachers that they should teach only the right thing in the Church; and since God has most severely forbidden all false teachings, which depart from God’s Word, it is thereby proven that God wants to have only one orthodox church and not also a heterodox church as well. That there are heterodox churches is merely a matter of God’s permission, just as God also permits other sins.
But further: That God wants to have only one orthodox Church follows not only from the command God has given to the preachers who have to teach in the Church, but it necessarily follows also from the command God has given to all Christians without exception. God commands all Christians without exception to hear only such preachers as preach God’s Word undiminished and unadulterated. In John 10:27 the Lord Christ Himself says: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them and they follow Me.” He says in John 8:31, “If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed.” And it is said in praise of the congregation at Jerusalem in Acts 2:42, “And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine.” On the other hand, according to God’s explicit and first commandment, the Christians should avoid such preachers as falsify God’s Word. In John 10:5 the Lord says of the Christians: “And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him.” He Himself commands in Matthew 7:15, “Beware of false prophets.” He commands through the Apostle Paul, Romans 16:17, “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to [alongside of, Ed.] the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.” He commands through the Apostle John (2 John 10), “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine (namely, the teaching of Christ), receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed (namely, as your brother in faith).” In the Holy Scriptures it is very often impressed upon the Christians to bear with each other’s weaknesses, but you can read through the entire Holy Scriptures from beginning to end and you will find no place, where God commands the Christians or even only allows them to bear with or tolerate false teachers; the Christians should turn away from false teachers, avoid them, flee from them, and have nothing to do with them. So if God expects all His Christians to listen only to the true teachers and to avoid all false teachers, then it is therewith proven again that God wants to have only one orthodox Church. Admittedly, since there are, in fact, many Christians even in the heterodox church bodies, there are, therefore, also many Christians who really do not follow the command of the Lord to avoid all false teachers. We Lutherans, we who claim that the Lutheran Church alone is the orthodox Church, admit with thanks to God and on the basis of God’s Word that there are also true Christians in heterodox church bodies, true children of God, namely insofar as essential parts of God’s Word are still proclaimed, even if mixed with errors. But in this we stand firm, that for all Christians, even for those Christians within heterodox church bodies, the command of God to avoid all false teachers remains in force. That Christians do not comply with this command is and remains a sin, which, of course, will be forgiven them, as long as they sin out of weakness and lack of the right knowledge.
