Let’s say you stumble into a church on a Sunday morning. How could you tell if the worship service is Lutheran or not? That’s a tricky question to answer. While there are some within my little corner of Lutheran land that believe that there’s only one valid form of worship…
For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been reviewing the Lutheran understanding of Law and Gospel, as well as the three uses of the Law. This has been leading up to one of my favorite subjects, namely that of Lutheran homiletics. Or, if you’re not impressed by the fancy eight-dollar…
Last week, we touched on the Lutheran understanding of Law and Gospel. But this teaching goes a little deeper than what I said in the previous post. More specifically, we understand that the Law has three distinct uses within Christian life. According to us Lutherans, the Law can be used…
Several weeks ago, I touched on the idea of sola scriptura, the idea that Lutherans base our beliefs first and foremost on the Bible. All other writings (such as the various Lutheran Confessions) are seen as expositions and explanations of what the Bible has to say. When I wrote that…
So let’s take a brief moment and talk about the Office of the Keys. If you’re not familiar with this term, it comes from Matthew 16, specifically this verse: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in…
One easy way of riling Lutherans (well, some of them, anyway) is to whisper the word katolisch at them. That’s “Catholic” in German. Given the rather antagonistic relationship between those two branches of Christendom, it’s easy to understand why we Lutherans aren’t always keen on being identified as Roman Catholic. Personally,…
You’d think that, since this is the actual anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, I’d have some long, drawn out post as part of my on-going series about Lutheranism. Yeah, I don’t. Part of that is because, well, I already wrote a post about what the whole nailing-of-the-95-theses was all about.…
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve discussed the Lutheran sacraments, namely Baptism and Holy Communion. For Lutherans, these are not symbolic gestures, but ways that God has chosen to distribute the grace that is ours through Christ. Baptism adopts us into His family. Communion is the way He feeds…
This post is likely going to be a bit on the short side, and mostly because I probably gave away the entire point of the post in the title. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve talked about how Lutherans understand communion. It’s not a symbol. We believe that “is”…
There’s an important concept tucked away in the Words of Institution. It’s so important that Jesus says it twice. See if you can spot it: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took…