Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions

by Paul Timothy McCain

We believe, teach, and confess that no true believer’as long as he has living faith, however weak he may be’receives the Holy Supper to his judgment. For the Supper was instituted especially for Christians weak in faith, yet repentant. It was instituted for their consolation and to strengthen their weak faith [Matthew 9:12; 11:5, 28].

We believe, teach, and confess also that no church should condemn another because one has less or more outward ceremonies than the other, for those are not commanded by God. This is true as long as they have unity with one another in the doctrine and all its articles and in the right use of the holy Sacraments. This practice follows the well-known saying “Disagreement in fasting does not destroy agreement in faith.”

First, ‹we receive and embrace with our whole heart› are the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the pure, clear fountain of Israel. They are the only true standard or norm by which all teachers and doctrines are to be judged.

It is not only necessary that the pure, wholesome doctrine be rightly presented for the preservation of pure doctrine and for thorough, permanent, godly unity in the Church, but it is also necessary that the opponents who teach otherwise be reproved (1 Timothy 3; [2 Timothy 3:16;] Titus 1:9).

Faithful shepherds, as Luther says, should do both things: (a) feed or nourish the lambs and (b) resist the wolves. Then the sheep may flee from strange voices (John 10:5–12) and may separate the precious from the worthless (Jeremiah 15:19).

So we are by nature the children of wrath, death, and damnation, unless we are delivered from them by Christ’s merit.

In spiritual and divine things the unregenerate person’s intellect, heart, and will are utterly unable, by his natural powers, to understand, believe, accept, think, will, begin, effect, do, work, or concur in working anything. They are entirely dead to what is good [Ephesians 2:5].

No person can prepare himself for God’s grace or accept the grace God offers. A person is not capable of grace for and of himself. He cannot apply or accommodate himself to it. By his own powers he is not able to aid, do, work, or agree in working anything toward his conversion. He cannot do this fully, halfway, or even in part’not even in the smallest or most trivial part. He is sin’s servant (John 8:34) and the devil’s captive, by whom he is moved (Ephesians 2:2; 2 Timothy 2:26). Therefore, the natural free will according to its perverted disposition and nature is strong and active only to do what is displeasing and contrary to God [Genesis 6:5].

The Scriptures deny to the intellect, heart, and will of the natural man all readiness, skill, capacity, and ability to think, to understand, to be able to do, to begin, to will, to undertake, to act, to work, or to agree to work anything good and right in spiritual things from himself. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God. (2 Corinthians 3:5) Together they have become worthless. (Romans 3:12) My word finds no place in you. (John 8:37) The darkness has not overcome it [the light]. (John 1:5) “The natural person does not accept [or, as the Greek word properly signifies, grasps not, comprehends not, accepts not] the things of the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:14). This means he is not capable of spiritual things. For they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them. [13] Much less will he truly believe the Gospel or agree with it and regard it as truth. || For the mind that is set on the flesh [or the mind of the natural man] is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. (Romans 8:7)

In a word, what God’s Son says remains eternally true, “For apart from Me you can do nothing” [John 15:5]. Paul says, “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” [Philippians 2:13]. To all godly Christians who feel and experience in their hearts a small spark or longing for divine grace and eternal salvation this precious passage is very comforting. For they know that God has kindled in their hearts this beginning of true godliness. He will further strengthen and help them in their great weakness to persevere in true faith unto the end [1 Peter 5:10].

After God (through the Holy Spirit in Baptism) has kindled and caused a beginning of the true knowledge of God and faith, we should pray to Him without ceasing [1 Thessalonians 5:17]. We should ask that through the same Spirit and His grace, by means of the daily exercise of reading and doing God’s Word, He would preserve in us faith and His heavenly gifts, strengthen us from day to day, and keep us to the end. For unless God Himself is our schoolmaster, we can study and learn nothing that is acceptable to Him and helpful to ourselves and others.

The natural or fleshly free will in St. Paul and in other regenerate people strives against God’s Law, even after regeneration. Was it not much more stubborn and hostile to God’s Law and will before regeneration? Therefore, this is clear (as it is further declared in the article about original sin, to which we now refer for the sake of brevity): (a) the free will, from its own natural powers, cannot work or agree to work anything for its own conversion, righteousness, and salvation, nor follow, believe, or agree with the Holy Spirit, who through the Gospel offers a person grace and salvation; (b) from its inborn, wicked, rebellious nature it resists God and His will with hostility, unless it is enlightened and controlled by God’s Spirit.

In worldly and outward affairs, which apply to the livelihood and maintenance of the body, a person is cunning, intelligent, and quite active. But in spiritual and divine things, which apply to the salvation of the soul, a person is like a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife [Genesis 19:26], indeed, like a log and a stone.

This is teaching incorrectly: to assert that an unregenerate person still has so much power that he can desire to receive the Gospel and to be comforted by it, and that the natural human will cooperates somehow in conversion.

For a great difference can be seen among Christians. Not only is it true that one is weak and another strong in the spirit, but each Christian also experiences differences in himself. At one time he is joyful in spirit, and at another fearful and alarmed. At one time he is intense in love, strong in faith and hope, and at another time he is cold and weak.

On the other hand, the enthusiasts should be rebuked with great seriousness and zeal. They should not be tolerated in any way in God’s Church. They imagine that God, without any means, without the hearing of the divine Word, and without the use of the holy Sacraments, draws people to Himself, enlightens, justifies, and saves them.

There still remains also in the regenerate a rebelliousness of which the Scriptures speak: “the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit” [Galatians 5:17]. Also of “the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” [1 Peter 2:11]. And, “in my members another law wages war against the law of my mind” (Romans 7:23).

A poor sinful person is justified before God, that is, absolved and declared free and exempt from all his sins and from the sentence of well-deserved condemnation, and is adopted into sonship and inheritance of eternal life, without any merit or worth of his own. This happens without any preceding, present, or subsequent works, out of pure grace, because of the sole merit, complete obedience, bitter suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord Christ alone. His obedience is credited to us for righteousness.

(For all Christians are temples of God [1 Corinthians 3:16–17] the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who also moves them to do right.)

In our churches it is acknowledged among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession that all our righteousness is to be sought outside the merits, works, virtues, and worthiness of ourselves and of all people. Our righteousness rests alone on Christ the Lord. Therefore, how Christ is called our Righteousness in this matter of justification must be carefully considered. I mean, that our righteousness rests not on one or the other nature || in Christ, but on Christ’s entire person, who as God and man is our Righteousness in His only, entire, and complete obedience.

In other words, when the word necessary is used, it should be understood not as force, but only as the order of God’s unchanging will, whose debtors we are.

However, it by no means follows that we are to say simply and flatly: “Good works are harmful to believers’ salvation.” In believers good works are signs of salvation when they are done from true causes and for true ends. That is, in the sense in which God requires them of the regenerate (Philippians 1:20).

In its proper sense, Gospel does not mean the preaching of repentance, but only the preaching of God’s grace. This follows directly after the preaching of repentance, as Christ says, “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

For the Gospel and Christ were never ordained and given for the purpose of terrifying and condemning, but for comforting and cheering those who are terrified and timid.

God’s Law is useful (1) because external discipline and decency are maintained by it || against wild, disobedient people; (2) likewise, through the Law people are brought to a knowledge of their sins; and also, (3) when people have been born anew by God’s Spirit, converted to the Lord, and Moses’s veil has been lifted from them [2 Corinthians 3:13–16], they live and walk in the Law [Psalm 119:1].

The Law is a mirror in which God’s will and what pleases Him are exactly portrayed. This mirror should be constantly held up to the believers and be diligently encouraged for them without ceasing.

Because of these fleshly lusts, God’s truly believing, elect, and regenerate children need the daily instruction and admonition, warning, and threatening of the Law in this life. But they also need frequent punishments. So they will be roused, ‹the old man driven out of them,› and they will follow God’s Spirit, as it is written: It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn Your statutes. (Psalm 119:71) But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:27) If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. (Hebrews 12:8)

Therefore, as often as believers stumble, they are rebuked by the Holy Spirit from the Law. By the same Spirit they are raised up and comforted again with the preaching of the Holy Gospel.

I regard them all as being cut from the same piece of cloth, as indeed they are. For they do not want to believe that the Lord’s bread in the Supper is His true, natural body which the godless person or Judas receives orally just as well as St. Peter and all the saints. Whoever (I say) does not want to believe that, let him not trouble me with letters, writings, or words and let him not expect to have fellowship with me. This is final.

Nothing has the nature of a Sacrament apart from the use instituted by Christ or apart from the action divinely instituted. This means, if Christ’s institution || is not kept as He appointed it, then there is no Sacrament.

It is not our faith that makes the Sacrament, but only the true Word and institution of our almighty God and Savior, Jesus Christ. His Word always is and remains effective in the Christian Church. It is not invalidated or rendered ineffective by the worthiness or unworthiness of the minister, nor by the unbelief of the one who receives it. This is just like the Gospel. Even though godless hearers do not believe it, the Gospel is and remains nonetheless the true Gospel, only it does not work for salvation in the unbelieving. So whether those who receive the Sacrament believe or do not believe, Christ remains nonetheless true in His words when He says, “Take, eat; this is My body.” He makes Himself present not by our faith, but by His almighty power.

1. The papistic transubstantiation. It is taught that the consecrated or blessed bread and wine in the Holy Supper entirely lose their substance and essence. They are changed into the substance of Christ’s body and blood in such a way that only the mere form of bread and wine is left, or the accidents without the object. The bread is no longer bread. According to their assertion it has lost its natural essence. Christ’s body is present under the form of the bread even apart from the administration of the Holy Supper [e.g., when the bread is enclosed in the pyx or is carried about for display and adoration). For nothing can be a Sacrament without God’s command and the appointed use for which it is instituted in God’s Word, as was shown above.

Transubstantiation

Likewise, when there are useless, foolish displays that are not profitable for good order, Christian discipline, or evangelical practice in the Church, these also are not genuine adiaphora, or matters of indifference.

For this reason Christ causes the promise of the Gospel not only to be offered in general, but He also seals it through the Sacraments. He attaches them like seals of the promise, and by them He confirms the Gospel to every believer in particular.

On this account, as the Augsburg Confession in Article XI says, we also keep private Absolution. We teach that it is God’s command that we believe such Absolution. We should regard it as sure that, when we believe the word of Absolution, we are as truly reconciled to God as though we had heard a voice from heaven [John 12:28–30], as the Apology also explains this article.

The reason why not all who hear the Word believe, and some are therefore deeply condemned, is not because God had begrudged them their salvation. It is their own fault. They have heard the Word in such a way as not to learn, but only to despise, blaspheme, and disgrace it. They have resisted the Holy Spirit, who through the Word wanted to work in them, as was the case at the time of Christ with the Pharisees and their followers. [79] Therefore, the apostle distinguishes with special care the work of God (who alone makes vessels of honor) and the work of the devil and of people. By the instigation of the devil, not God, a person has made himself a vessel of dishonor. For it is written, “[God] endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:22–23).