By Knut Lee
"How Soon Must God's Mercy Give Way To His Justice?"
"Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end to all flesh. The earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth..." Genesis 6:11-13
Today's unyielding question, above all others, has to be, "How soon must God's mercy give way to his justice?" Day after day, month by month, year upon year, reports, anguished accounts, drive godly believers to tears of despair!
Thirty years ago a District President or Presiding Bishop was expected to be, and indeed was, a pillar for biblical truth and pastoral integrity. While admittedly, a good many appointed leaders today struggle to perpetuate centuries of undeniable biblical truth, too many capitulate to the demands for an inclusivity, which has no agenda but openness.
Certainly the bishops are familiar with Romans, chapter I: "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. What can be known about God is plain to them... They are without excuse, for although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God..." Granted, this is a brutal indictment, but the cold fact is that the sovereign God has spoken truth!
Dr. Francis Schaeffer, before he died, saw clearly that many evangelicals were compromising Scriptural truth. One's thoughts turn sadly to Jeremiah, the weeping prophet Schaeffer had this to say:
"A person can erect some sort of structure, some type of limited frame in which he lives, shutting himself up in that frame and not looking beyond it. Or it can as easily be a theological word game within the structure of today's methodology. That is where modern people, building only on themselves, have come, and that is where they are now..." He goes on to say:
'Today's highly motivating religious words out of our religious past, but separated from their original content and context in the Bible, are then used for manipulation. The words become a banner for men to grab and run with in any arbitrary direction ù either shifting sexual morality from its historic Christian position based on the Bible and Christ's teaching, or in legal or political manipulation..."
This new vogue of accommodation (could we not honestly add the concepts of inclusivity and openness? - Ed.) to the world spirit about us, this step, really a vast leap, is rooted in two groups: those who seem to be willing to accommodate to a lower view of Scripture, and those who no longer take seriously the biblical concept of true, traditional discipline.
With this overwhelming erosion, which began with trickles in the seminaries of the sixties, came secularization of our ELCA predecessor educational institutions. This tragic tale of truth has not even come to be known to many struggling parents who dish out by the thousands to make more yuppies – for what?
At the recent St. Olaf Conference, A Call to Faithfulness, Dr. Carl Braaten thrilled the more than a thousand pastors and laity with his mission call of the Gospel to the nations. His closing remarks say it with poignant realism:
No one should claim that striving for peace, justice and moral denunciation of poverty and oppression need to be purchased at the expense of the uniqueness of Christ and the proclamation of the Gospel. It is precisely the Gospel that frees us to work for a more humane and just world. Because our hope is grounded in God, we can afford to take the risk of losing ourselves so that others may live more fully.
We would have a wonderful conclusion to this conference if we could be assured that our controversy in the church is much ado about nothing, that we do not have a theological problem, that it's all a matter of theology and emphasis. Meanwhile I cannot squelch the conviction that we are engaged in a struggle for the truth of the Gospel and the integrity of the church's mission. We do not know how much more time we will have before God will take the Gospel out of our faithless hands and pass it on to those who will commit their lives as witnesses to its truth.
Dr. Robert Jenson, also at the conference, A Call to Faithfulness, said: 'To whom or what are we to be faithful? We are, at a first step of analysis, to be faithful to a particular God among the many candidates ... This God has an identity; he can be picked out and addressed specifically. A faithful church is one that is careful to do so."
In the Resurrection, this God publishes a new name. And here again, the risen Lord could summarize the whole mission of the church as the initiation of disciples into that name, into "the name Father, Son and Holy Spirit"
A faithful church would be faithful to these names, and so to the particularity of her God.
And so, we of FOCL lift up once again Article I. of our Declaration of Affirmations and Concerns, "The Mystery of God," as the appropriate position of a Confessional Lutheran Church concerned with and dedicated to the mission of the Gospel of Jesus Christ:
1) We affirm the historic position of the Lutheran Confessions that there is one God in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit All three are one divine essence, without division, forming one Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier and Preserver of all things visible and invisible. We believe that this one true and Triune God is a jealous God, demanding exclusive fear, love, trust, worship and devotion.
2) We repudiate any and all attempts to invoke or to incorporate into Christian worship the name of any foreign, mythical or other god or spirit.
Our Lord Jesus Christ asked the plaintive question, referring sadly to himself: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" A somber question indeed, particularly when coming from the Lord of Lords and King of kings. Yet, the Holy Scriptures are laden with promises... Did not even Yahweh, in the book of Jonah, say to the restive prophet that he could change his mind and forgive if Nineveh would but repent? Jonah 4:11 tells us, "And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city . . .?
Promises exude from both Old and New Testaments, to wit, 2 Chron. 7:14 ù "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land."