Every year on October 31 we celebrate Reformation Day, remembering the day in 1517 that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Church. But many Lutherans don’t know that next Friday – June 25 – is another important day for the Reformation and perhaps more than any other day it defines what we Lutherans are.
On June 25, 1530, the Lutheran theologians presented their carefully written confession to Emperor Charles V at a council held in Augsburg, Germany. The document that they presented, the Augsburg Confession, was the first to officially lay out what Lutherans believe – what it means to be Lutheran. It goes into great detail to describe those areas in which our beliefs agree – and you might be surprised to learn that in some areas we and the Roman Catholic Church are in agreement – but more importantly, it carefully and Scripturally explains where and how our teachings differ from those of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Augsburg Confession was not about breaking away from the Catholic Church or breaking up the Church at all. In the preface to the Augsburg Confession, the reformers wrote:
“We … are prepared to discuss … all possible ways and means by which we may come together … In this way, dissensions may be put away without offensive conflict. This can be done honorably, with God’s help, so that we may be brought back to agreement and concord … we are all under one Christ and do battle under Him. We ought to confess the one Christ and do everything according to God’s truth. With the most fervent prayers, this is what we ask of God.” (AC Preface 10-11)
Most people don’t understand that the reformers didn’t want to split the Church – they wanted to unite it in the one truth of God’s Word. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. Almost 500 years later the Christian Church is fragmented not just between Lutherans and Catholics – today there are over 200 different dominations that call themselves “Christian.” Yet in our Epistle reading this morning, St. Paul says that we Christians are all one in Christ. Listen again to these beautiful words, Gal 3:26–28: “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Sounds great, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t sound much like the reality of the Christian faith in the year of our Lord 2010. Over 200 Christian denominations. Even though we disagree with their teachings, we’re familiar with some of them – Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian. But we’ve never heard of most of them, churches with strange-sounding names like the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church or the Church of God of Prophecy or one that I ran into during my vicarage in Southern Illinois, the Social Brethren Church. We’d probably be pretty uncomfortable if we were to stumble into one of their church services. It might be pretty difficult to think of them as being one with us.
Even among Lutherans, it’s hard to think of ourselves as one. The ELCA – the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – accepts the Augsburg Confession just as Missouri Synod Lutherans accept it, but more and more that seems to be about the only thing that we have in common with them. You’ve probably heard about some of those differences – their practice of ordaining women to serve in the Holy Ministry and their decision to allow gay men and women to serve as pastors. But you may not know that ELCA practices what is known as full altar and pulpit fellowship with a variety of denominations that have very different teachings than our Lutheran teachings. What that means is that ELCA members and pastors may commune and serve in any of those churches and vice versa. Together these churches have declared a oneness – but that’s also driven Lutheran bodies further apart. The confessors at Augsburg were absolutely right when they wrote, “Our churches teach that the body and blood of Christ are truly present and distributed to those who eat the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 10:16). They reject those who teach otherwise” (AC X 1–2). Yet that contrary doctrine is exactly what these other church bodies still confess – that Christ’s body and blood are not really present in this way in Holy Communion, but only symbolized by the bread and wine. By declaring oneness with them, then, the ELCA has actually moved farther away from The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and other Lutherans who cling to the Augsburg Confession. No, Lutherans are not all one.
Unfortunately, that’s also true within our own Synod. Our synodical convention begins just 20 days from today. The official theme of the convention is “One People – Forgiven” – but the sad reality is that there is great disunity within our Synod as different groups argue over synodical leadership and synodical structure – indeed, even argue about a proposal to change the very name of our Synod. Some of the disagreements have already become bitter and personal. How can we say that we are all one with Christ? Was St. Paul wrong?
The bottom-line reason for our conflicts and disagreements and arguments is sin, pure and simple. Inside every Christian there is a war going on, a war between the believer and the unbeliever. St. Paul said it so well: The good we want to do, we don’t do. The evil we don’t want to do, we do. As long as we’re sinful – as long as we’re Christians – those struggles won’t go away.
Unfortunately, those struggles – those sins – can and do lead to false teachings. The authors of the Augsburg Confession had the God-given courage to stand up and expose those false teachings. God’s Word is absolute – it’s not open to debate, it’s not open to change. When we either approve or ignore false teachings, we are not only condoning someone else’s sin – but we are sinning, too. If we say that it doesn’t matter what someone else believes about the Lord’s Supper, then we sin by not rejecting the sin of that false teaching.
That’s why, for example, our friends – good Christian friends, friends we love—can’t ordinarily be permitted to commune in our churches if they’re members of a church body that holds some false doctrine. We can’t pretend we’re all one when we’re not, even though it seems to be the loving thing to do. When we commune with someone, we’re telling the world we share the same doctrine. And if it’s not true, we’re sharing the false doctrine, the sin. We always pray that those who hold false teachings or practices will understand the truth and repent. But we cannot be one with their sin, so as long as sin remains, there must be some sort of separation.
Sounds pretty gloomy, doesn’t it? Sounds as if there’s no hope that we Christians – even we Missouri Synod Lutherans – could ever be one. But then Paul says to us again, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). Somehow we are one in Christ Jesus. How? Was Paul wrong?
No, Paul wasn’t wrong – because the Word of God can never be wrong. We can never be one with sin, and we’re all sinful, but God has seen to it that all Christians are also separated from sin. Remember the very first expression of the Gospel, way back in the Garden of Eden, spoken for Adam and Eve but actually addressed to the devil? Remember what God said? “I will put enmity between you [Satan] and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring” (Gen 3:15a). The very first expression of the Gospel was that we would be at enmity with evil – enemies of evil, not one with sin.
By sinning, we made ourselves one with sin. But God has seen to it that it didn’t stay that way. He’s driven a wedge between us and evil, the wedge of the cross. And the deeper that wedge, the cross, penetrates, the further we are pushed from sin.
In our Baptisms, the break was made clean. In Baptism, St. Paul says in Romans 6, we died to sin. By Jesus’ cross, given to us personally in Holy Baptism, we are forgiven of all our sins!
So we are one by this forgiveness we have in Christ. “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (3:26–27). Wherever sin remains – as in false doctrine – separation must remain. But where sin is forgiven, we are one.
The beauty of that is that even with Christians from whom we must remain outwardly separate, we are one, because all true Christians – all who truly believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection has saved them—are forgiven, even those many believers whose churches teach false doctrines. We will not be visibly one with them because we cannot be one with their sin. But we know that as we look at one another, inside we are one. As St. Paul wrote: “You are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28b).
The confessors at Augsburg knew this. They knew they weren’t writing a document to start a new Church or for just a small segment of the Church. They were confessing the true Christian faith. The Augsburg Confession, the public declaration of what Lutherans believe, is actually the confession of all Christians, even those who at this time, in their error, deny parts of it, because the Augsburg Confession above all else is a confession of Christ, the one Christ, the one in whom all believers have eternal life, the one in whom we’re all one.
Note: This sermon was freely adapted from one that originally was published in Concordia Pulpit Resources.
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