Ask any Lutheran pastor or consult any book which explains Lutheran doctrine and you will find that Lutherans do not believe in the doctrine of eternal security. What is eternal security? It is the teaching often colloquialized in the phrase “Once saved, always saved.†Many churches confess this as an official teaching of their church. They believe it despite verses like these:
Matthew 25:29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
Hebrews 3:12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.
Luke 8:13 …they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.
Matthew 24:10 And then many will fall away…
I write this post not to point out to those who hold to this teaching how unbiblical it is. Most of them will read this post anyway. I write it to suggest that most of us Lutherans operate as it we hold to this teaching though officially denying it. Functionally, we act as if we believe in eternal security.
This can seen in several realities in our church:
- Our preaching often refrains from laying out the reality that sin not only is bad, but that if it remains without repentance and forgiveness, it necessarily leads to unbelief and eternal punishment.
- The Church rarely practices excommunication in any way.
- We offer Christian burial to people obviously separated from Christ in their life because of some past connection to Christ’s church.
We often end up confessing the possibility of someone falling away while acting the reality of it ever happening. Some may say this is because we are so focused on the activity of God in our lives and that is likely true. But then again, that is what those who officially hold to this teaching appeal to also.
We must act in accordance with what we teach. If one is saved, only God is responsible and gets the glory. But at the same time, any person, believer or unbeliever, can reject this gift through unrepentant sin. We must recognize this not only as a doctrine to be guarded but as a reality we see in the Church and world.
Hey, Phil,
I’m sorry to say this, but if this is being proclaimed in Lutheran pulpits then you have only yourselves to blame. Praxis of the Liturgy has been replaced by a “church-growth” mentality which is nothing more than evangelicalism. When the praxis changes, the doctrine changes. You know, as well as I, lex orandi, lex credendi. The “once saved, always saved” doctrine may be rejected, but tell that to all the Lutheran megachurches out there that use an evangelical praise-band worship style that uses those same evangelical songs with that same damning message!
Also, the emphasis on sola fide within the (modern) Lutheran tradition is such that there is now such a great divorce between works and faith. The two are not opposed; they are different sides of the same coin but have now been separated by a chasm between justification and sanctification. If there is no point in actually practicing what you believe, then is it any wonder that even repentance from one’s sins is now viewed as a secondary or even tertiary concern. It’s important that we just believe. That’s all you need.
Lutherans of the Missouri-Synod need to reclaim their heritage which has been hijacked by the Kiescnikian baptists who ran it for so long. Don’t only restore the divine Liturgy, but also INDIVIDUAL confession and absolution, an active prayer life that is more than simply reading the Scriptures, but actually praying them. You lament that there is no longer excommunication. Fine; start throwing out all those “missional” Lutherans who are more interested in planting churches than actually preaching repentance in the churches that already exist. Give them the chance to come back though.
There’s a myriad of reasons as to why this perverse doctrine has found itself in Lutheran churches. You’re not going to get rid of it by being less Lutheran, but more Lutheran…in every single way.
Hey Phil:
Great post – I may actually use it as a springboard to my next Wed. Evening sermon.
Now, I disagree with Chris above; I do not believe that, “mega-churches” are the fault of this. I have been in many, “Traditional” congregations that do not practice these things either. The problem is that many individuals in the L.C.M.S. do not rightly understand our doctrine of baptism. We say things along the lines of, “if you are baptized, then yours is the Kingdom of heaven!” Now, as Lutheran pastors we may mean, “if you are baptized, having the Holy Spirit engendering true faith within you – a faith consistently nurished by Word and Sacrament, with those works proving faith….” But our hearers do not un-pack baptism that way. All they hear is, “hey…I’m baptized….I’m good! :)”
Our congregation has revitalized church discipline. We have excommunicated a member. Yet, I must tell you – such things are very difficult indeed. We all can grow.
God bless,
Chris
Chris,
You’re wrong. My diagnosis was spot on which you missed. I was not blaming “mega-churches” but the mentality which has captivated the modern LCMS. It’s all about mission, mission, mission, while doctrine and praxis have been divorced from one another under the blessing of the amorphous, nebulous cloud of “adiaphoron” (which by the way, the modern translation of open question is really, really bad). Lex orandi, lex credendi. The “traditional” church may have all the accoutrement of the Liturgy and so, but when it has also jettisoned every other praxis and its connection to doctrine, then it’s going towards the same end, only slower.
Chris
Yah, here is that “damning message” from one of those “praise band” worship songs. Pretty bad huh?
O the blood, crimson love, price of life’s de – mand
Shameful sin, placed on Him, the hope of ev’ry man
O the blood of Jesus washes me, O the blood of Jesus shed for me
What a sacri – fice that saved my life, yes the blood, it is my victo – ry
Oh what love, no greater love, grace how can it be
That in my sin, yes even then, He shed His blood for me
O the blood of Jesus washes me, O the blood of Jesus shed for me
What a sacri – fice that saved my life, yes the blood, it is my victo – ry
And here is another
There is Love, that came for us
Humbled to a sinners cross
You broke my shame and sinfulness
You rose again victorious
Faithfulness none can deny
Through the storm and through the fire
There is truth that sets me free
Jesus Christ who lives in me
You are stronger, You are stronger
Sin is broken, You have saved me
It is written, Christ is risen
Jesus You are Lord of all
No beginning and no end
You’re my hope and my defense
You come to seek and save the lost
You paid it all upon the cross
You are stronger, You are stronger
Sin is broken, You have saved me
It is written, Christ is risen
Jesus You are Lord of all
Here is my story: I grew up fundamentalist Baptist. I repented of all my sins and accepted Jesus Christ into my heart to be my Lord and Savior at age nine…and again in my early teens…just to be sure. In my early 20’s my family moved to another state where we attended a non-denominational, evangelical mega-church (which taught Baptist doctrine) for several years. In my mid to late 20’s I stopped going to church because I didn’t “feel†God inside me and he didn’t seem to listen when I prayed.
I remained unchurched until I was married in my forties. I started attending liberal churches. When we had children, I started looking again at more conservative/fundamentalist churches, something closer to what I had believed as a child and teenager. We joined a conservative, orthodox Lutheran church. I became very involved in the church. I was happy and content in my orthodox Christian belief system. I read the Bible and prayed regularly.
One day I was surfing the internet and came across an atheist’s website. He was a former fundamentalist Baptist/evangelical pastor! I was shocked! I started to engage him in conversation, and also tried to bring him back to the Faith, to belief in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
However, this man pointed out to me some very big assumptions in my Christian belief system which I had never thought of, such as:
1. Just because there is evidence for a Creator does not mean that the Creator is the Christian God, Yahweh.
2. Our current Bibles contain thousands of scribe alterations, most of them inconsequential, but a couple of them are shocking. Why did God allow scribes copying the original Scriptures to change, delete, add, or alter his inerrant, Holy, Word?
3. How do we know that the books of the New Testament are the Word of God? Is there a verse that tells us? Did Jesus give us a list? Did Paul?
4. Do we really have any verifiable eyewitness testimony for the Resurrection or is it all hearsay and legend?
5. Modern archaeology proves that the Captivity in Egypt, the Exodus, the forty years in the Sinai, the Conquest of Canaan, and the great kingdoms of David and Solomon are only ancient Hebrew fables.
At first I fought him tooth and nail. I fought him for four months. At the very end I had to admit that there are no verifiable eyewitness accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus in the Bible or anywhere else. All we have are four anonymous first century texts full of discrepancies and contradictions. The only thing I had left to attach my faith to was the testimony of the Apostle Paul: why would a devout Jewish rabbi convert to a religion he so hated unless he really saw a resurrected dead man on the Damascus Road?
But after studying the five Bible passages that discuss Paul’s conversion, I had to admit that Paul never says he saw a resurrected body. All Paul says is that he saw a light…and that this event occurred in a “heavenly visionâ€. Visions are not reality…not in the 21st century nor in the 1st.
And as for the improbability that a Jewish rabbi would convert to a hated religion, there is a Muslim cleric in Israel today who not too many years ago was an ardent Zionist Jewish settler and rabbi, intent on ridding the Muslims from Jewish land.
Strange conversions occur. They do not prove that the new religion is true and inerrant.
I was broken-hearted, but I saw my Christian Faith was nothing more than an ancient superstition that had been modified in the first century by Jesus, a good man, but a dead man. There is zero evidence that this first century Jew is alive and the Ruler of the Universe.