Oct 23 - Acts 20:32

The Apostle Paul said,

"Now I commit you to God

and to the word of his grace,

which can build you up and

give you an inheritance among

all those who are sanctified."

Acts 20:32

For me, two words define being Lutheran: Word and Grace.

Martin Luther grew up at a time when God was painted as an angry God. Biographers say that church leaders heated up the fires of hell. Why? By worrying parishioners with threats of hell and loved ones rotting in purgatory, selling the forgiveness of sin (indulgences) became a source of great revenue. In Luther's age it funded many great cathedrals.

Luther himself was haunted by God's wrath. One day when he was walking to his hometown after a season in college, a blast of lightning struck terrifyingly close. He cried out in fear, "Saint Anne help me, and I will become a monk." (Luther's father was a miner, and Saint Anne was the patron saint of miner.)

Now, if you or I had cried such a thing, we would find a way to go back on that "promise"! But Luther couldn't. He'd been taught to be terrified of God.

As a young Monk, it didn't get any better. Luther would spend hours every day confessing every piddly little sin; then he would lay awake all night, wondering what he had forgotten to confess.

Finally Luther's Father Confessor got fed up! He said to Luther, "Why don't you go out and do something worth confessing!" Actually, faithful Father Staupitz did something that would change the world. He sent Luther out to do something practical. He sent him out to teach the Scriptures.

In those days, access to the Scriptures was relatively rare - Bibles still had to be copied by hand. So as Luther begin to focus fully on the Word of God, as he turned most fully to Romans and the theology of St. Paul, he "discovered" a new, foreign, and powerful word: Grace.

And Luther was set free!

"We are justified by God's grace ... effective through faith ... apart from works prescribed by the law" - Romans 3:23ff.

The young monk who once spent hundreds of  sleepless nights cowering in fear, suddenly was transformed into the bold reformer who stood up to the threat of execution. He boldly proclaimed God's grace. And he championed the authority of God's Word - over human traditions.

Word and Grace. If we are to be authentically Lutheran - indeed, if we are going to be authentically Christian – we too need to champion those precious two things.

God's Grace speaks of a love that is extravagant and undeserved. And God's Word - not human traditions, not human philosophies, not cultural norms – is where we find God's Truth. The Bible is not a godly word by godly people, written to their time and place and context - and thus, able to be reinterpreted by us "godly" in our time and place. No, it is literally God's Word - given by God to explain the Truth, the world, and His ways. Yes, it was written by human hands – like those of David, Isaiah, Matthew, and Paul - but it was fully under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit!

Thus, Word and Grace define what it means to be a Lutheran, because if it wasn't for Martin Luther's "rediscovery" of God's Word, we might still labor under the crushing weight of human traditions and we might never have known of God's amazing Grace. Or, as St. Paul said, “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified."

In Christ's Love,

a guy who loves

two sets of two words:

1) Mary 2) Louise and

1) Word and 2) Grace