Posts Tagged ‘great commission’

3 results.
Jun15

The Great Commission: Law or Gospel? Church or Ministry?

Posted In: WE Got Answers
Hey W.E. Team!

Would you please address Matthew 28? I used to attend an LCMS congregation with a new pastor who had attended PLI. He placed so much emphasis on “The Great Commission” that it began to feel like a (LAW) burden. It is my understanding of Matthew 28 that it is the institution of the pastoral office, the office of the keys. Am I off base here?

R,
Historically, Lutherans have seen Matthew 28 as the establishment of the Office of the Ministry and of the Church. Seeing this as the “Great Commission” is rather foreign to Lutheranism. Probably the best discussion of this has been on a recent episode of Issues Etc. with Rev. Dr. Lucas Woodford: http://issuesetc.org/2012/05/22/2-the-great-commission-pr-lucas-woodford-5222012/

Matthew Lorfeld, Pastor
Messiah Lutheran Church
La Crescent, MN

http://www.messiahlacrescent.org

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Jun14

X Marks the Discipled

Posted In: vlog

Worldview Everlasting takes on Matthew 28:16-20

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Dec28

Are you sure we should Baptize babies?

Posted In: WE Got Answers
I am a life-long MS Lutheran Lutheran, yet I honestly struggle with our practice and defense of infant baptism. I know that we believe that he who is baptized will be saved and we certainly want our babies to be saved and so we follow this command, yet I really don’t know if John the Baptist would agree with this or Jesus who are the examples of baptism in the Bible. Even God Himself expressed his great pleasure in Jesus being immersed and baptized as an adult….not as a child. Our we creating our own sense of “religion” by so aggressively stating that others are incorrect by not baptizing their babies as they instead wait for the person to decide on their own and make that personal choice through faith to accept Christ? ????
The burden of proof is on those who would assert that when Jesus says “make disciples of all nations [by means of] Baptizing” that he meant this to only apply to certain people and not infants/children. Or to state it more bluntly, those who would say we should not Baptize infants must defend the position that when Jesus says “make disciples of all nations” he really didn’t mean *all* nations. I am not so concerned about the some kind of “sense of religion”, but really are we attentive to Jesus Words and subsequently are we attentive to God’s Word spoken through the Apostles (such as in Acts 2, Titus 3, Romans 6, and 1 Peter 3.

The problem with the theology of “choosing Jesus” or making a “decision” for Christ isn’t that it “isn’t Lutheran”… it is that it speaks directly against what Scripture says (ie Romans 3).

This may be somewhat hard to hear in America where the anti-Scriptural teaching of believers-only Baptism and decision theology is the norm, however the vast majority of all Christians throughout the world and throughout history have resoundingly rejected both these false teachings.

If it will be any help, I have spent about the last two years going through each place where Scripture speaks of Baptism, here is a link to a brief summary touching on the highlights: http://www.messiahlacrescent.org/2010/12/what-does-the-bible-say-about-baptism-what-do-lutherans-believe-about-baptism/

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