Sasse's Deepest Desire for the Lutheran Church in the New Year

Prof. D. Hermann Sasse Erlangen, December 23, 1948[1]

Rathsberger Strasse 4

The Rev. Dr. Siegried Hebart

Principal, Immanuel Theological Seminary

104 Jeffcott Street

North Adelaide

Highly Honored, Dear Brother Hebart!

As I wrote to Dr. Stolz, it was my intention as soon as I could to send you a Christmas greeting. But the great work load during the semester already ended because of the shortage of coal, and the terrible agitation which accompanied the fate of my students who are members of the Schwabach Convent, I failed to write. Thus you receive this greeting in the new year.

May this coming year be for you, your dear wife and for the entire Lutheran Church of Australia a blessed year, an Annus Domini in the deepest sense. If God wills, this year will bring us into the fellowship of work at your seminary. We have prepared ourselves should this be our last Christmas in Germany.

If I could wish only one thing for your church, then it is this, that you very clearly hold the course laid out for you by your origin and your history: to be a Lutheran church clear in Confession, and independent from the political powers of the world, ecumenical and confessionally true in the sense of the 7^th article of the Augsburg Confession, in oder to face the great questions of modern humanity.

That is the deep distress of our American sister churches, that they either live in a ghetto or that they sink into modernistic Americanism. I am deeply troubled over the development of the ULC in respect to theology since the dismissal and death of Knubel. What has occurred in Maywood, Springfield and Mount Airy, which I have visited again, can only cause concern for the future of these important branches of American Lutheranism. And in the ALC the decline is evident since Reu’s death. Bodensieck has taken his place. He’s a dear man but in respect to dogmatics he advocates a Lutheranism which hailed the completely unionistic decisions of Treysa II as a miracle of the Holy Spirit…. You can inquire of Behnken or Elert, if you hear any political slander about me

Your faithful, H. Sasse

---

[1] Huss/Feuerhahn Collection. Trans. MH.

A Gift from Rob Bourassa! And what a gift!

"What should we fear?" F.C.D. Wyneken on the New Year

You exit the old year as one accursed. Will you now enter the new year, still accursed, only to die cursed? O my God, be merciful! Behold the picture once more. Behold the blood of Jesus, [which] cries out still today as mercy for you. The name Jesus calls to you: “Why will you die, you of the house of Israel?” Have mercy also upon yourself and upon your poor soul, and cry out to this man! “O Jesus, Savior and Redeemer, have mercy on me; give me Your grace unto repentance and let me not die in my sins. Turn me and I will be turned! Purify me and I will be pure!” Do this and hold to Him in silence. Flee to repentance and faith, so this year will bring nothing but pure joy and blessing. Here, with His first drops of blood, this little child is guarantor against the Law that judges and condemns, and [He is] the righteousness of god. For the one who has faith in this little child and has held to the name of Jesus can head into the new year with joy and confidence. He is called “Jesus” because He shall save His people from their sins. For this little child, after He completed His work of redemption, sat down at the right hand of almighty God. Through His crucified hands He governs the entire world. His hand sends you everything that will come upon you this year, and His name is the guarantee that out of this hand must flow pure blessings to you.

It is true, He has not promised that no want, plague, or trouble shall befall you this year. to the contrary, He has said to you beforehand: “Unless a man take up his cross daily and follow Me, he cannot be My disciple” [Luke 9:23, Luther Bibel]. Thus, as at Baptism, He has allowed you to be marked by a cross. This is [the case] so that at all times, you think about this cross and about the fact that you belong to the cruciform kingdom of the Crucified One. As His disciples, we must pass through many troubles to enter the kingdom of heaven. As certain as you are a Christian, so certain will you experience cross and need. Indeed, dear friends, seeing the accumulating sin of this nation and the mounting apostasy from the gospel and the horrid rage against it, we can make a calculation on two matters: The judgment of God will finally and all the more harshly come to bear upon this land, proportionate to God’s blessings upon her and to the duration of His patience; finally, open persecution against the gospel and those who confess it will break out in the land that hitherto has been its sanctuary.

But “nevertheless,” it says for us Christians, “nevertheless Israel has god for its consolation.” That gives us assurance for the present, [and] promises protection by the gospel. The circumcision of Christ teaches us who have a Savior that every cause of fear and angst and concern is removed. For the Law with its curses and judgments has been removed. Thus, in the misfortune that may affect us, we no longer see any punishment or anger of god, but rather the disciplining hand of a loving Father. The name Jesus encompasses all compassion, all love, all promises, and all blessedness. It guarantees us that God is with us and is our reconciled Father. As such, He can only let good things come to us. Indeed! What should we fear? The Almighty, who sits on the throne of glory, who rules in the midst of His enemies, before whom all His enemies must bow down, before whom every knee must bow, whether in heaven or on earth or under the earth—He is our Savior, Brother, Bridegroom, and Judge.

Friedrich Wyneken

2^nd President of the LCMS

Sermon for the Eve of the Name of Jesus, January 1, 1868

At Home in The House of My Fathers, pp. 433-34

"The Velvet Fog" sings Good King Wenceslas - Additional Stanzas by Starke

Ah... if "The Velvet Fog" could have sung Starke's verses too!

Pastor H.

Additional Stanzas for Good King Wenceslas

(Sung by all)

Text: Stephen P. Starke, 2007 Tune: Good King Wenceslas, Meter: 7 6 7 6 D Matthew 25:34-40 To the glory of God for LCMS World Relief and Human Care.

1. May our Lord soon bring that day He is yet adjourning

And as Judge to us then say At His bright returning:

“Come ye, by My Father blest, Take what you inherit;

Enter heaven’s endless rest, Made for you to share it.

2. “For you heard My hungry cry And in love you fed Me;

When My throat was parched and dry, To a drink you led Me;

I, a stranger, nonetheless In your home you brought Me;

I, in wretched nakedness Till you clothing bought Me;

3. “I was sick, in need of care, To My ills you tended;

When I was imprisoned there You My shame befriended.

This I say assuredly: What you did for others,

Those good things you did for Me Through My lowly brothers.”

4. Thus, good Christians, one and all, Let us with compassion

Heed our gen’rous Master’s call And in zealous fashion

Labor on, through acts of love, Tender mercy spreading,

Serve our King who reigns above, In His footsteps treading.

"From Heaven Above to Earth I Come!"

Choral Performance in the Reconstructed Frauen Kirche in Dresden

Bach - Christmas Oratorio

Luther: Christ is born to us, and "we are born also unto each other."

Now you might ask how you can know that we have received this child in our heart through true faith as our own and how we can be sure that this birth is effective for us. Therefore we want to say a little about this token, which enfolds this child, which is surely there and results in external works from the heart. This sign is nothing other than that we also receive people to ourselves so that we take on and clothe ourselves in our neighbor's flesh and act toward him as God does to us in this Christ. That is also the sign of a spiritual birth and the making of a spiritual man. For it is in this manner we are born also unto each other.

The Scripture calls our neighbor "our flesh." For Isaiah says [chap. 58], "If you see someone naked then clothe him and do not turn away from your own flesh." He says what the other person is. He is our flesh. For God wants no one to despise another person. Yes, the poorer he is, the more I should receive him in no other way than as if he were my own flesh and blood, my own body. For Christ has born our flesh a even though our flesh was full of sin and filled with every trouble and misfortune.

Luther, Sermon for Christmas Day - Early Service

Baseley, Festival Sermons, pp. 117f.

"Oh, if I had only been there... I would have washed His crib and made His bed."

There are many who think as follows: "Oh, if I had only been there, how well I would have served the infant; I would have washed His crib and made His bed. Oh, if only I were as fortunate as the shepherds to see Him lying in the manger,"and the like. Yes, you want to do that now since you now know how great Christ is. But you wold have done just as little for Him as did the citizens of Bethlehem in their day. Those are childish and foolish thoughts. Why don't you do it now? You have Christ in your neighbor whom you shall serve with good works. What you do for your neighbor who is suffering and stuck in misery, you do for Christ Himself as He will say on the last day to the elect: "What you have done for these My poor brothers you have done for Me." That is why it is so annoying, yes, foolish to hear such childish thoughts. Therefore let us once against open our eyes since we can scarcely find any better example, lest a great calamity come over us.

Luther, Christmas Eve

Luther's Festival Sermons

Translated by Baseley, p. 108

Successfully Doing Nothing Today

The Art Behind the Art

Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Schlafe Mein Liebster

Check out the altar painting by the Cranachs! Appears the Oratorio featured below was performed in Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Weimar. Check out McCain's commentary.

Pastor H.

The Christmas Oratorio (German: Weihnachtsoratorium) BWV 248, is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach intended for performance in church during the Christmas season. It was written for the Christmas season of 1734 incorporating music from earlier compositions, including three secular cantatas written during 1733 and 1734 and a now lost church cantata, BWV 248a. The date is confirmed in Bach's autograph manuscript. The next performance was not until 17 December 1857 by the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin under Eduard Grell. The Christmas Oratorio is a particularly sophisticated example of parody music. The author of the text is unknown, although a likely collaborator was Christian Friedrich Henrici (Picander).

The work belongs to a group of three oratorios written towards the end of Bach's career in 1734 and 1735 for major feasts, the others being the Ascension Oratorio (BWV 11) and the Easter Oratorio (BWV 249). All include a tenorEvangelist as narrator and parody earlier compositions, although the Christmas Oratorio is by far the longest and most complex work.

The oratorio is in six parts, each part being intended for performance on one of the major feast days of the Christmas period. The piece is often presented as a whole or split into two equal parts. The total running time for the entire work is nearly three hours.

The first part (for Christmas Day) describes the Birth of Jesus, the second (for December 26) the annunciation to the shepherds, the third (for December 27) the adoration of the shepherds, the fourth (for New Year's Day) the circumcision and naming of Jesus, the fifth (for the first Sunday after New Year) the journey of the Magi, and the sixth (for Epiphany) the adoration of the Magi. (Wikipedia: Christmas Oratorio)

Quia

Here, with respect to our confessional pledge, opinions are divided even as the churches themselves part company at this point. Here it also becomes clear why the Reformed Churches have not been able to preserve their Confessions. The “pious relativism” of the Reformed Confession finds expression in the quatenus (the “insofar as”) of the doctrinal pledge. Whereas the Lutheran pastor assumes the responsibility of teaching according to the Confessions “because” (quia) they are in harmony with the Holy Scriptures, the Reformed pastor does this only “insofar as” (quatenus) it is Scriptural, and because he regards the Lutheran pledge with the quia as presumption, yea, as an elevation of the Confessions above the Holy Scriptures.[1]

What shall we say to this? First, that the properly understood quatenus (“insofar as”) is self-evident for every church which appears to the Reformation, since no church wants to teach anything which is not Scripture doctrine. It is so self-evident that one does not need to articulate it. Men can and must accept also the Talmud or the Tridentimum [creed of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent] quatenus, “insofar as,” they interpret Scriptures correctly. The quatenus pledge is really no pledge at all. Secondly, the question which comes into consideration in connection with the confessional pledge is simply and solely the question whether the Confessions are Scriptural, whether they are the substance of the Holy Scriptures, as the Formula of Concord expresses it. Only if I am unshakably convinced and that on the basis of most earnest searching in the Scriptures, can I accept it and promise that “I will neither privately nor publicly speak or write anything contrary to it, but by the help of God’s grace intend to abide thereby” (Conclusion of the Solid Declaration).

Sasse, Letters to Lutheran Pastors no. 43, November 1956

---

[1] See Sasse’s “Quatenus or Quia?” in The Lonely Way I. Originally published in AELKZ 71.7 (18 Feb. 1938) pp. 152-154; Feuerhahn no. 201. MH

Wow. Or as they say in North Dakota, "WO-ow."

Well, after reading the first few sermons by Martin Luther in the new volume of Luther's Works from CPH, I can't find the words to express the compelling, direct, "smack between the eyes" preaching of Luther from 1539... This video about sums it up.

Pastor H.

"How far does the validity of the confession go?" Sasse

What, more exactly, does it mean, that this is the confession of our church? In what does its “validity” consist, and how far does this validity go? Werner Elert repeatedly drew our attention to the fundamental difference between the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran understandings about ecclesiastical confessions of doctrine. It consists in this, that the Roman doctrinal confession has the form of an imperative, while the Lutheran has the form of an indicative. Roman dogma is a command of faith; the Lutheran an expression of faith. There, a credendum [something which must be believed] is presented with a command to accept it. Here is expressed, what the church [already] believes: “We believe, teach, and confess.” The difference is deeply-rooted in the concept of faith. Faith, in the Catholic sense, is the supernatural virtue, by the power of which I hold for true that which the church presents to be as the content of revelation:

fide divina et catholica ea omnia credenda sunt, quae in verbo Dei scripto vel tradito continentur et ab ecclesia sive solemni iudicio, sive ordinario et unversali magisterio tanquam divinitus revelata credenda proponuntur.

“With the divine or catholic faith, everything must be believed, which is contained in the written or transmitted Word of God, and is presented by the church as divinely revealed thus as to be believed, whether it be in a celebrated decision of faith, or whether it be by the orderly and general office of teaching.” (Vaticanum, Const. de fide catholica, cap. 3, Denzinger No. 1792).

Thus the objectum fidei, the object of faith, is defined. Corresponding to the concept of faith as “holding something to be true,” the object of faith is, for a Catholic, always dogma, for example the dogma about Christ. Corresponding to the evangelical concept of faith as fiducia, as trusting the divine promise of grace in the gospel, is the fact that, for the Lutheran, the objectum fidei is not the dogma about Christ, but rather Christ Himself; not the dogma about the Trinity, but rather the Triune God; not the Bible as such, but rather God, Who speaks to us in each word of the Scripture.

This important distinction was mis-used, by Ritschl and his school in his time, but then by the entirety of modern liberalism, in order to get rid of dogma in general. What a misuse was created with simply one phrase of Melanchthon’s, his famous phrase that recognizing Christ means recognizing His benefits, but not His natures and form and manner of the incarnation! As if the benefits of Christ would exist without the mystery of His incarnation, His true divinity and true humanity! As if one could believe in Jesus Christ, without believing that he is the God-man! No, the Lutheran church did not set dogma aside, but rather gave to it its proper place, and thereby brought it to be honored, as it is honored in no other church. For the assensus, which, like the notitia[1]—to use the expressions of the old dogmaticians—is indivisibly bound to the fiducia, has indeed a very different import, when it is not merely the obedience of the intellect to the office of teaching and the documents of revelation—Scripture, tradition, doctrinal decisions—presented by this office, but rather the “Yes!” of the heart and of the spirit to God’s own Word.

Ecclesia magno consensu apud nos docent decretum Nicaenae Synodi de unitate essentiae divinae et de tribus personsis verum et sine ulla dubitatione credendum esse. [With great unanimity our churches teach the decrees of Niceae on the unity of the divine essence and the three persons of the Trinity are to be believed without doubt]. This beginning of our confession has only a superficial similarity to the Catholic command to faith, the command to take up the credendum in obedience of the intellect and of the will. Melanchthon, as often happened with the theologians of the Reformation—e.g., in the semper virgo [belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary] of the Latin translation of the Smalcald Articles (S.A. I; Müller, p. 299)—simply retained the catholic [Latin] expression and formed a connection between the word credendum [something to be believed] and the word decretum, which Elert (Morphology, vol. I, p. 178) rightly notes as a mistake.

The German text, which in the case of the Augsburg Confession has indeed the same authority as the Latin, contains nothing which reminds one of a command to belief. The normative character, which is here as in other passages in the Book of Concord ascribed to the confession, is explained by its relation to Holy Scripture. Our churches—the plural here as in the Formula of Concord is explained by ancient Christian linguistic patterns, in which the church consists of individual churches, local churches—teach in great agreement this or that. They do this, because the scripture teaches this or that. The confession is, as Edmund Schlink properly states with great emphasis, “the summa of the Holy Scripture” (Theology of the Lutheran Confessional Writings, 2nd ed., p. 39ff.), as the catechism is, according to Luther, “a short excerpt and copy of the entire Holy Scripture” (introduction to the large catechism, Müller, p. 379). The authority of the confession is therefore derived from the authority of the scripture. The confession is norma normata [the norm which is normed] for the church’s announcement [of the Gospel] and stands thus under the norma normans [the norming norm] of the scripture, but within this limitation it has true authority.

From this, the question is to be answered, how far does the validity of the confession go? It goes exactly as far as it holds to pure exposition of the Holy Scriptures. The scripture is God’s Word, the confession is a human word. The scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, the confession is not, even if it, as is correct preaching, is produced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. The scripture is infallible, the confession is not infallible, its content needs continual supervision vis-a-vis the norma normans of the Holy Scripture. But where the confession as summa of the scriptures accurately reflects the contents of the scriptures, then it participates in the authority of the scriptures, in a similar fashion to correct announcement of the gospel in preaching. In so far as the examination of the confession in relation to the scripture gives us certainty that it “has been taken from God’s Word, and is firmly and thoroughly grounded in it,” we may, indeed, we must own it with the quia of true doctrinal duty. As we do that, we give witness that its teaching, i.e., its recognition of the teaching of the scripture, is correct.

Sasse, Letters to Lutheran Pastors 25 (Pentecost 1952), Translated by Andrew Smith

[This material - and much much more - eagerly awaits publication in "The Lonely Way" vol. 3, CPH.

---

[1] The dogmaticians defined faith as “assent” to the truths of scripture, “knowledge” of the gospel and its articles, and “trust” in Christ as the central and fundamental element. MH

The Repeal of DADT - "The Lie Kills Nations"

The Lie Kills Nations...

The Lie is the death of man, his temporal and his eternal death. The lie kills nations. Through their lies, the most powerful empires of the world were laid waste. History knows of no more unsettling spectacle than the judgment, which comes to pass when men of an advanced culture have rejected the truth and are now swallowed up in a sea of lies. As was the case with fading pagan antiquity, where this happened, religion and law, poetry and philosophy, life in marriage and family, in the state and society, in short, one sphere of life after another, fell sacrifice to the power and curse of the lie. Where man can no longer bear the truth, he cannot live without the lie. Where man, even when dying, lies to him and others, the terrible dissolution of his culture is held up as a glorious ascent, and decline is viewed as an advance, the like of which has never been experienced.

If, according to the irrefutable testimony of history, this is the judgment of God on the lie, should God then not also punish the lie in His church? Truly He who is the Judge of all the world will do this! For the power of the lie extend even into the church. Since the days of the apostles there has been lying in the church as in the rest of the world. For people in the church too are and remain poor sinners until their death.

Lies have been told in the church because of cowardice and weakness, vanity and avarice. But beyond all these there is in the church one particularly sweet piece of fruit on the broad canopy of the tree of lies. This is the pious lie. It is the hypocrisy by which a man lies to others, and the intellectual self-deception by which he lies to himself that he believes. “In our time too the proclamation of the Word in assumed orthodoxy is unfortunately not an infrequent occurrence of this lie.” Thus the greatest ethicist of our church once spoke, warning theologians of his and our time about the most grievous sin, the lie to God.

The most fearful thing about the pious lie is that it will lie not only to men, but also to God in prayer, in confession, in the Holy Supper, in the sermon, and in theology. The pious lie always has the propensity to become the edifying lie. It was once expelled from the church when it existed in the form of the legends of saints and the fraud of relics. Then in full view of pious eyes, it returned in a new form, such as in the Luther legends, or in pietistic times in the form of almanacs and tracts containing the accounts of miraculous responses to prayer and equally miraculous conversions, which either never happened, or in which the kernel of historical truth was no longer discernible. This “edifying” lie even forces it way into the sphere of the church, which teaches revealed truths of revelation. After sufficient preparation it can obtain the status of “doctrinal maturity.” Thus it becomes the dogmatic lie.

We ask our Roman Catholic fellow Christians to believe that it is very difficult for us to use the word “lie” here, and we do not do so to offend them. We know that they affirm a dogma such as the Immaculate Conception of Mary out of deep conviction of faith, and they will accept the yet-awaited extension of Marian dogma from the hand of the ecclesiastical teaching office with the same sincerity. But this changes nothing of the fact that in these dogmas false doctrines are established, and the Roman Church thus finds itself in a guilt-laden error.

This is the biblical, theological expression of the lie; though guilty of falsehood, it belies the truth and proclaims that which is not truth, hiding this guilt before God behind human bona fides. Here the theological expression of the lie is distinguished from that of philosophical ethics. Theology knows that the most dangerous lies are those, which are proclaimed with what the world calls a “good conscience.”

When we speak of the dogmatic lie, we do not, however, have in mind only the celebrated dogmas pronounced by the Catholic Church, though which theories are elevated to the level of ecclesiastical dogma, and have no basis in Holy Scripture, and are not true. We include here also precisely the dogmas with which modern Protestantism has been at pains to correct, to complete, or to replace the doctrine of the evangelical church, such as the false doctrine of Pietism concerning the church, or of rationalism concerning the person of Jesus Christ.

What a fearful thought it is indeed that things are taught in the church which are not true, under the guise of the eternal truth entrusted to her. No atheism, no Bolshevism can do as much damage and destruction as the pious lie, the lie in the church. In this lie the power of one is made evident whom Christ Himself calls a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). And indeed, this is no longer surprising. How can he who in his very essence is a liar passively look upon the fact that in this world of untruthfulness and error, upon the vacillating core of a world of relativity, there could be the “household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (I Tim. 3:15). But since he cannot storm this bulwark in open battle, which God Himself has founded as the columnar et fermamentum veritatis, he slinks in under the mask of piety and occupies a position from which to make his conquest. And he attempts to topple the pillar of truth through the power of the pious lie.

But does anyone think that Christ who is the Truth personified would allow the lie to come into his church with impunity? No, the judgment which He who is Holy and True will render upon all lies of the world begins, as with every judgment, in the house of God.

Among the lies which destroy the church there is one we have not yet mentioned. Alongside the pious and dogmatic lies, there stands an especially dangerous form of lie which can be called the institutional lie. By this we mean a lie which works itself out in the institutions of the church, in her government and her organization. It is so dangerous because it legalizes the other lies in the church and makes them impossible to remove. Such a lie exists, for instance, where the governance of the church grants to those who confess and those who deny the Trinity and the two natures in Christ the same rights in the Church; where the preaching of the Gospel according to the understanding of the Reformation enjoys the same right as the proclamation of a dogma-less Enlightenment religion, so long as the latter appeals only to the Bible…

In place of the objective message of that which God has done in Christ, subjective religious feelings and convictions soon form the essential content of the sermon. Thus the church sinks to the level of an institution for the satisfaction of the manifold religious needs of men and ceases to be the church of Christ, the pillar and foundation of the truth.

It is self-evident that this falling away of the church from the Gospel can also happen where its organization still appears to be in order… But the moment the falling away of the church from the Gospel finds its expression also in church law, and thus is legitimized, the entire awfulness of what we have called the institutional lie appears. For this lie makes the return to the truth as good as impossible.

Hermann Sasse, Union and Confession 1933, translated by M.C. Harrison

Behnken was a Sassedotalist

Because conditions in Germany were in a state of complete chaos, we naturally had a difficult time getting passports and visas. Through the kind aid of Herbert Waltke, a St. Louis businessman and a personal friend of President Truman, we were able to secure the necessary documents and to book passage for the Atlantic crossing on October 8 [1945?].

The NLC group informed us that because of important commitments they could not leave on that date. Dr. Meyer and I decided, however, that we should not delay our departure if we intended to carry out one of the important objectives of our visit. Information had reached us that a movement was under way in Germany, influenced by the Swiss Reformed theologian Dr. Karl Barth and a number of theologians in Germany, to join Lutheran, Reformed, and Unierte (United) church bodies into a single Evangelical Church in Germany. We hoped to reach Germany in time to caution the Lutheran bodies against forming such a union, which in its very essence would involve compromising Lutheran confessional principles.

The organization of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKiD), we learned, however, had been effected before we arrived. Some may be inclined to question whether our testimony would have done much good, but we felt constrained at least to try. We learned too, that a

number of German theologians had raised the very warning we intended to give, among them Dr. Hermann Sasse of the University of Erlangen. So vigorously did this scholarly professor protest the dilution of Lutheranism through this hybrid union that it eventually led to a rift between him and former close friends and associates. Yet he remained true to his convictions.

John Behnken, This I Recall, p. 88-89

Behnken on "major and minor financial crises" in the Church

"In recalling the ups and downs of the various major and minor financial 'crises,' we hold one experience, above others, in grateful remembrance - the remarkable way God's people, impelled by the love of Christ, have responded whenever they were reminded that 'the Lord hath need' of their consecrated dollars. In His name and in the Synod's name I again want to thank them sincerely and voice my prayer that God will continue to bless our church with members who 'abound in this grace also."

John W. Behnken

LCMS President 1935-1962

"This I Recall" p. 86

An Unbelievable Honor

How marvelous to preach this past fall at St. Mary's in Berlin. From left to right are Bishop Em. Schoene, Jonathan Mumme, Yours Truly, Pastor Gottfried Martens, Jacob Corzine, and current S.E.L.K. Bishop Voigt. St. Mary's is a large, vibrant congregation under the superb leadership of Pastor Martens.

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."

"Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be looked upon as a sinner, or to be one." Luther to Spenlein

This is an incredible letter. Every Christian ought have its choicest lines memorized. Indeed: "Christ dwells only in sinners." Thanks be to God for that! Matt Harrison

To George Spenlein

Wittenberg, April 8, 1516

George Spenlein was an Augustinian friar in the monastery at Wittenberg who had recently been transferred to Memmingen. In this letter Luther is reporting on the disposal of some of Spenlein’s possessions. It gives an insight into Luther’s understanding of justification and its implication for the Christian life prior to his controversy with Rome.

Text in Latin: WA, Br 1, 35–36. The following translation, with minor changes, is by Theodore G. Tappert and is used by permission from Luther: Letters. LCC 18, 109–111. Published 1955, The Westminster Press.

To the godly and sincere Friar George Spenlein, Augustinian Eremite¹ in the monastery at Memmingen, my dear friend in the Lord
Jesus Christ
Grace and peace to you from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ

My dearest Friar George:

...Now I should like to know whether your soul, tired of its own righteousness, is learning to be revived by and to trust in the righteousness of Christ. For in our age the temptation to presumption besets many, especially those who try with all their might to be just and good without knowing the righteousness of God, which is most bountifully and freely given us in Christ. They try to do good of themselves in order that they might stand before God clothed in their own virtues and merits. But this is impossible. While you were here, you were one who held this opinion, or rather, error. So was I, and I am still fighting against the error without having conquered it as yet.

Therefore, my dear Friar, learn Christ and him crucified. Learn to praise him and, despairing of yourself, say, “Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, just as I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and have given to me what is yours. You have taken upon yourself what you were not and have given to me what I was not.” Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be looked upon as a sinner, or to be one. For Christ dwells only in sinners. On this account he descended from heaven, where he dwelt among the righteous, to dwell among sinners. Meditate on this love of his and you will see his sweet consolation. For why was it necessary for him to die if we can obtain a good conscience by our works and afflictions? Accordingly you will find peace only in him and only when you despair of yourself and your own works. Besides, you will learn from him that just as he has received you, so he has made your sins his own and has made his righteousness yours.

If you firmly believe this as you ought (and he is damned who does not believe it), receive your untaught and hitherto erring brothers, patiently help them, make their sins yours, and, if you have any goodness, let it be theirs. Thus the Apostle teaches, “Receive one another as Christ also received you to the glory of God.” And again, “Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, [did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped], but emptied himself,” etc. Even so, if you seem to yourself to be better than they are, do not count it as booty, as if it were yours alone, but humble yourself, forget what you are and be as one of them in order that you may help them.

Cursed is the righteousness of the man who is unwilling to assist others on the ground that they are worse than he is, and who thinks of fleeing from and forsaking those whom he ought now to be helping with patience, prayer, and example. This would be burying the Lord’s talent and not paying what is due. If you are a lily and a rose of Christ, therefore, know that you will live among thorns. Only see to it that you will not become a thorn as a result of impatience, rash judgment, or secret pride. The rule of Christ is in the midst of his enemies, as the Psalm puts it. Why, then, do you imagine that you are among friends? Pray, therefore, for whatever you lack, kneeling before the face of the Lord Jesus. He will teach you all things. Only keep your eyes fixed on what he has done for you and for all men in order that you may learn what you should do for others. If he had desired to live only among good people and to die only for his friends, for whom, I ask you, would he have died or with whom would he ever have lived? Act accordingly, my dear Friar, and pray for me. The Lord be with you.

Farewell in the Lord.

From Wittenberg, April 8, 1516

AE vol. 48