Category Archives: Law

Pastors standing in the way?

19 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Church, Ecclesiology, Grace, Law, Personal, Preaching

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THIRTY-FIFTH EVENING LECTURE
September 18, 1885

Jesus says regarding Himself in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Peter confirms this statement in Acts 4:12 when he declares before the Jewish Sanhedrin, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Paul adds his testimony by telling his Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2:2, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Truly, then, it is a great and awful sin not to draw any soul that has been entrusted to us for instruction to Jesus and not to tell that soul again and again what a treasure it has in the Lord Jesus, its Savior. To keep someone from believing in Christ is such an awful sin that words cannot express it. A preacher who restrains a soul from confidently laying hold of Christ, whether he does it consciously or unconsciously, purposely or from blindness, through malice or as the result of a perverted zeal for the salvation of souls, deprives that soul, as far as he is concerned, of everlasting life. Instead of being a shepherd to that soul, he becomes a ravening wolf to it. Instead of being its physician, he becomes its murderer. Instead of being an angel of God, he becomes a devil to that person. Alas, so many preachers have not realized until their dying day how many souls they have kept away from Christ by their unevangelical preaching and by their own fault have caused the souls entrusted to them to die of spiritual starvation. The result was that these unhappy preachers shortly before their death have had a severe soul battle to fight with self-accusations and despair, and not a few of them have departed this life without consolation, in anguish, misery, and despair.

The worst offenders in this respect are the so-called Rationalistic preachers, who with devilish audacity mount Christian pulpits and instead of preaching Christ, the Savior, to all sinners, recite their miserable moral precepts for a virtuous life and fill the ears of the people with their empty blather. To these Rationalistic mercenaries, “Whose God is their belly” as it says in Philippians 3:19, the terrible woe is addressed, even in our day, which the Lord denounced in Matthew 23:13 saying, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.” What terror shall seize these preachers who used to call themselves friends and adorers of Jesus Christ when they must appear before His judgement seat and hear Him address them in words of flaming anger, “And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Matthew 7:23

- C. F. W. Walther

In two paragraphs Walther explains why I left my church. If a pastor isn’t preaching the Gospel, but instead replaces it with life tips for living well, how to have a better sex life, how to make every day a Friday, etc., he is leading people to hell rather than leading them to Christ who is offering far better than any of these things. Not only is this pastor a distraction, but he is a hindrance, opposing people who would look to Christ.

The Law

18 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Forgiveness, Grace, Law

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God has blessed me with the amazing privilege of teaching junior high and high school students the bible once a week. Over the last month this opportunity has been used to expose the students to the book of James.

While grace is touted in many churches, it seems the law is often ignored. Or, at least it isn’t used for what it was meant to be used for. The law can’t make us righteous, because we can’t keep it perfectly. In fact, we can’t keep it at all.

In the book of James one is shown the law, and one is practically beat up by it, or even killed by it as the bible says, if they consider the consequences of what James has to say regarding the law. He compares the law to a mirror. We can use the law to see what we look like spiritually, just as a mirror shows us what we look like physically. Paul says elsewhere that it is by the law that we come to a knowledge of sin.

10 God Man The Law

Looking at the commandments we can see ourselves as we are before God’s eyes. We are idolaters, blasphemers, adulterers, thieves, liars, covetous, and even murderers. Lest we think we are somehow okay with some of them Jesus explained that to look upon a woman lustfully makes one guilty of adultery, and to be falsely angry with someone makes us murderers. To make matters worse, James says that to break even one of the commandments is to make us accountable for the whole law. It is clear, we are sinful, and that we have no hope of keeping the law ourselves. The bible says that we are dead in sin.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. God provided the offering needed to pay for our sin and to cleanse us from it. And then He even gifts us with the faith to trust in His Son whom He provided for us.

We are nothing but sinners dead in sin, already condemned, but God provided the way out. A healthy view of the law gives us a basis to understand God’s wrath against sin, and against us, sinners. And the law helps us to understand just how much we need God’s grace and mercy to set us free.