I have been thinking a lot about the means of grace today (in the few hours I have been awake) and about Walther, most particularly why I cherish his book so very much.  It would be easy to say because it is His truth, but I believe the real answer is that, for me, it is hope.  I do not do that much...hope.

I am better at merely existing, getting through each day.  It used to be each year, then it was just months, now it is, really, each day.  I look to the past and I am frightened by how much I have changed physically, mentally.  I look to the future and I am frightened by what could possibly be with this disease.  And I am so tired, so bloody tired.

I think, however, that I should work harder to cast my eyes not upon my fears, but upon the good things of Christ that I am being given in the midst of them.

A while ago, I wrote Brother Goose a list of all that frightens me.  He asked me to write him a list of that which brings me joy.  On that list, which I promptly set aside instead of tucked nearby as a reminder for this foolish, weak brain of mine, was Walther and the good teaching the Holy Spirit is giving me amongst the pages of his book, his lectures for undershepherds-in-training.  I know that I cannot teach myself all the things I need to know when it comes to Lutheran Doctrine, or even most of them, but I can learn some of the things I need to know so that when a pastor comes along to instruct me once more, or when Papa Dore endeavors to fill in that gap for me, I might better understand, I might build a frame of reference that is not based upon the distorted Gospel retained in the Protestant church that is so very deeply ingrained on my heart.

For I dare to hope, whenever I pick up Walther's book, that the Word can be reshaped, rewritten in its True form, even on my heart.  Are not all things possible in Christ Jesus?

Now listen to a few testimonies from our own confessions.  In the Smalcald Articles, Part III, Article Vii, 10 (Mueller, P. 322; Trigl, Conc., p 497), we read:  "Therefore we ought and must constantly maintain this point, that God does not wish to deal with us otherwise than through the spoken Word and the Sacraments.  It is the devil himself whatsoever is extolled as Spirit without the Word and Sacraments."  The Spirit comes to men by means of the Word.  A person may imagine that he is full of the Spirit to the bursting point, but it is his own spirit of fanaticism.  The true Spirit is obtained only through the Word of God.  In every passage of the Holy Scriptures which recounts the conversion of people we see that God wants to deal with men only through the Word and Sacraments.  (157)

You know what I find a bit silly here, in this most serious, most fundamental paragraph, is how could anyone believe God speaks to us apart from the Word?  I mean, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1)."  Is there anything more clear than that?  But just in case it wasn't read further:  "He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it" (John 1:2-5)

So...through the Word.

The Apology, Art. IV, 68 (Mueller, p. 92; Trigl, Conc., p. 179):  "But God cannot be treated with, God cannot be apprehended, except through the Word.  Accordingly, justification occurs through the Word, just as Paul says, Rom, 1,6:  'The Gospel is the power of God until salvation to every one that believeth.'  Likewise, 10.17: 'Faith cometh by hearing.'  And proof can be derived even from this that faith justifies, because, if justification occurs only through the Word and the Word is apprehended only by faith, it follows that faith justifies."  

This important statement declares that all who do not esteem the means of grace do not believe from the heart that man is saved solely by grace.  For what does their objection to the means of grace amount to?  They argue:  "Is a person really to obtain forgiveness of sins by the mere application of the letter, Baptism, the Lord's Supper, absolution?  That would be too easy."  

But if we are to be saved by pure grace, why should our salvation be such a difficult task—provided it is to be really grace that is to save us?  Just because we are to be saved by grace, God must have arranged matters to that we need nothing but a means by which God offers us forgiveness of sins, grace, and salvation.  When God says to the sinner, "Only believe," He practically says:  "Accept what I give you; have confidence in Me.  What I tell you is the truth.  Only come, lay hold of the gift and take it."  When I hear the Gospel preached to me, I am to believe that it is God who brings me these glad tidings through the preacher who is proclaiming them to me.  God at the same time says to me:  "Why are you toiling to accumulate meritorious works?  Christ has acquired all that you need.  Only believe, and all is yours.  I am not telling you a lie."  That is what God says. (157-158) [Paragraphs breaks added.]

Too easy.  Yes, too easy...yet also too hard...for believing means not being a Doer of the Word.  We humans, we want to do, to act, to accomplish stuff.  Oh, how easy it is to forget that all the doing, all the acting, all the accomplishing has already been completed.  Yet, but, oh, my, what peace and rest there is in knowing that I need not store up any meritorious works.  I know my sin.  Meritoriousness on my part is not really possible.

Now, anything that is predicated of the Word of God is predicated, as a matter of course, also of the Sacraments; for they are also means of grace.  They are the visible Word.  The Word of God, the Gospel, is only audible, but the Sacraments are also visible, for they are acts attached to objects of sense.  Therefore it is a very horrible error, fostered in our time particularly by so-called modern, or up-to-date, believers, viz., that the Word has an efficacy peculiarly its own, that Baptism is a special remedy for other ills, and the Lord's Supper for still others.  But these are vain human speculations, of which there is not a word to be found in the Scriptures.  Let us hear our confessions on this matter.

In the Apology, Art. XIII, 5 (Mueller, p. 196' Trigl. Conc., p. 309), we read:  "But just as the Word enters the ear to strike our heart, so the rite [Sacrament] itself strikes the eye in order to move the heart.  The effect of the Word and of the rite is the same, as it has been well said by Augustine that a Sacrament is a visible Word, because the rite is received by the eyes, and is, at it were, a picture of the Word, signifying the same things as the Word.  Therefore the effect of both is the same."

This is an important point.  To a hearing person I can preach the Gospel by words.  In the cases of a deaf person, whom I cannot teach by that method, I may take a picture representing the birth of Christ with the angels coming out of heaven or one that represents the crucifixion.  By way of pantomime I can explain the picture and instruct the deaf without speaking a word to him.  That is what God does by means of the Sacraments, which show us in a picture, so to speak, what God proclaims audibly in the Word.  "The Sacraments are the Visible Word,"  that is an excellent axiomatic utterance of Augustine.  A person, therefore, who speaks of the Sacraments in terms of depreciation and contempt says the same things against the Word and does not consider the terrible guilt that he assumes.  He ridicules God, turning Him into a wretched master of ceremonies, who has prescribe all sorts of pantomimes for us merely for the purpose of exercising our faith.  No; God is not occupied with such paltry things, now that the era of types and figures is past.  The body itself and the essence of God's gifts have arrived, now that the time of the Old Testament is past. (158-159)

Pictionary for humans!  I just love that idea, the idea of looking at the baptismal font of the altar where His Body and Blood come to us and know that at that moment, in those places, just as when kneeling (or sitting in my case) at the rail speaking my sins to God, He is speaking back to me in the means of grace He has given His creatures, knowing them to be seeing, tasting, feeling, touching beings.

In his Brief Commentary on Isaiah, on chap. 20,2, Luther writes (St. L.Ed. VI, 285):  "In the same manner as the Holy Spirit operates by means of the Word He operates also through the signs, which are, so to speak, nothing else than the acted Word, inasmuch as the same things are expressed by an act as by the words sounding in men's ears.  And since the word never returns void, the signs cannot be without result either.  Thus, Baptism and the Lord's Supper are signs by which our faith is raised up and strengthened."  This citation shows that our Church does not teach that the mere hearing of the Word or immersing a person in water and drawing him out again leads to faith and the obtaining of grace.  If that were so, we would be saved by works, would we not?  No; the crucial point while we are engaged in pious meditation of the Word is that we say to ourselves:  "That is the voice of God speaking to me."  Being baptized without faith is useless, even if the act were repeated ten time a day.  Communing without faith would not profit us if we received the Sacrament daily.  Nay, these acts, thus performed, would rather increase our blindness and the darkness that enshrouds us, our hardness of heart and spiritual obduration, and, in the end, our damnation  The doctrine of our Church, then, is this:  The Word and the Sacraments operate in such a manner as to raise us up in faith and prompt us to lay hold of the blessings offered us.  (159)

Reading this, typing it all up, I am struck by the fact that I do not believe I ever heard the term "means of grace" before walking down this path of joining the Lutheran Confession.  God speaking to me was dependent upon my manufacturing some feeling, feeling as if God might be speaking to me, but never sure...trying to figure out, trying to believe...trying, trying, trying.  I believe because of my belief.

Means of grace is God coming to us.  Feeling is us going to God.  The former is sure and certain and objective.  The latter is uncertain and subjective.  I want objective.  I do not want anything, anything to depend upon me.  Upon my strength, my understanding, my confidence.  Besides, as a sinful creature, I can never, ever approach God on my own, anyway.  What hope, therefore, is there for me?

Crap.  At times, I hate my feelings.  They lead me astray.  They blind me.  They bowl me over.  I want means of grace.

What beautiful teaching Walther has in his Sixteenth Evening Lecture!  Papa Dore uses this phrase all the time with me, now I will understand more fully the sweet, sweet Gospel he is pouring over me.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!