In 1947, Martin Franzmann wrote this piece celebrating the anniversary of the founding of my church body, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). I share it today to commemorate it again, this is still the church where we should lay down no conditions.

So We Preach
Martin Hans Franzmann

“The power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also the Greek”; that is the Gospel. And the whole meaning and the whole glory of our hundred years’ history lies solely in the fact that we have preached that Gospel without additions, without abridgment, and without reservations. What we have offered the world is simply God’s offer of salvation, implemented and guaranteed by God’s power.

The salvation we offer means life, life in the only real sense, life without end — and there is no alternative. It is not a matter of choosing between life on the terms of this salvation and life on somewhat lower terms. There is no choice, no choice that anyone would choose. 

It is either this salvation or the wrath of God abiding upon us. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” And the wrath of God on all outside Christ remains as real and as terrible as it was from the beginning: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

It is either this salvation, which we have offered and offer, or death. “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life.” The line is drawn as surely by the power of God as rescue is offered by the power of God. There is no debatable land, no neutral place, no room where a man may stand and be a looker-on. This crisis is for every man alive. 

It is either this salvation or perdition. “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” “The second death”— the perdition is as eternal as the salvation. The salvation which we preach is no less than eternal; the Christ of whom our Gospel speaks, in whom the salvation we offer is, “became the Author of eternal salvation.”

It is the only salvation, and it is indispensable. It is the salvation that all men need, Jew or Greek. Unless the Jew and all like him, all the doers of works and accumulators of merit, all the proclaimers of salvation by performance—unless they can bring to God a Law perfectly and always kept, down to its last jot and tittle, spiritually kept out of a pure and perfect love for God—and they cannot—they need this salvation. All men need it, “for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”

“Against all ungodliness”; that includes the worship of yourself, that subtle idolatry to which all religion of performance and all secular humanism are finally reducible, “And all unrighteousness”; the stubborn fact of sin remains, and as long as sin remains, there remain its consequences; “the wages of sin is death.” Sin is being rediscovered of late, after lying long hid in the theological attics; and the world that is rediscovering it had better begin to reckon with its corollaries. All, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; every mouth is stopped; and all the world is guilty before God. 

In the face of this we offer, not something of our own, not a system to be followed, not a set of rules to be obeyed, not a wisdom to be assayed and absorbed; we offer a power, the power of God that delivers. 

And we offer this salvation to all mankind, to everyone that believeth, to all the world; that is to say, to all the guilty, for God’s grace extends as far as His judgment. That is what we have been doing these hundred years, that is what we are doing now, we “exclusive” Lutherans that will not dip our feet into the stream of a unionistic ecumenicity, we narrowhearted Lutherans, we dogmatical hairsplitters, we that have bound ourselves hand and foot—yea, brain, will, desire, heart, soul, and all—to a Book that will not let us go. We offer salvation to all. We offer it more freely because we know it more truly. 

We lay down no conditions. We ask none to take any man’s word as authority over him or any man’s power to dominate him. It is God’s Word that we ask men to accept and God’s power that we ask men to succumb to. There are no conditions; only believe. We demand no performance. We ask no one to climb laborious ladders to a probable heaven. We ask men to believe and let God work. We place no bars, racial, political, or social. The Lutheran Church is not a German church, an English church, or a Chinese church; it is neither a white man’s church nor a black man’s church; neither a rich man’s church nor a poor man’s church. The Gospel that we preach is a universal Gospel and the grace it offers is a universal grace. 

So we preach. We cannot do otherwise; our life principle is the Spirit of God; and if we live by the Spirit, we must also walk by the Spirit. In so preaching, whatever our shortcomings may have been, lies the glory of our past. In so preaching lies the only hope of our future. There is no conflict between conserving and going forward; for unless we conserve this, our life, we shall not go forward at all. 

Martin H. Franzmann, “So We Preach,” Lutheran Witness 66 (April, 1947): 152.