I know that the week of Christmas is not the time many go around the table and say what they are thankful for but it probably should happen more than just one day a year. This year, one of the things I am grateful for is a church body that cares about doctrine and those whose lives are affected by it. This church body, for all its problems, has in its past a consistent witness that the crossroads we face now we have faced before. The voices of the past can speak to us once more.

Luther knew what Augustine and Paul did before him, that you cannot put orthodoxy and love in opposition—they are not mutually exclusive. Contending for the truth matters. How you contend for the truth matters just as much. 

Luther put it this way, “For in the absence of love doctrine cannot remain pure; nor can hearts be held together in unity.” (Martin Luther, “Sermon on John 15,” Luther’s Works AE, 24:245.)

Augustine put it this way, “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor does not yet understand them as he ought.” (Augustine, “On Christian Doctrine,” in Augustine: On Christian Doctrine and Selected Introductory Works, edited by Timothy George, Theological Foundations [Nashville: B&H Academic, 2022], 37–38.)

Paul, speaking about knowing the truth concerning food sacrificed to idols put it this way, “we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up,” 1 Cor. 8:1. The admonitions and exploration that follow concerning love in 1 Corinthians 13 are not merely for husbands and wives to consider but the church as a whole, especially in light of chapters 11 and 12 and the disunity that permeates the context of letter. 

At least two synod presidents also knew this. John Behnken was not a perfect president but he once addressed a synod convention saying, “There is urgent reason for speaking thus. We are facing dangers. On the one hand, our generation, the third or fourth generation in our Synod’s history, no longer considers matters of doctrine so seriously as did the fathers. There is very much doctrinal complacency. There is also some doctrinal indifference. Under such conditions it is extremely difficult to awaken consciousness of pure doctrine or any appreciation of it. Any warning against false doctrine or unionism as one of the chief dangers confronting the Church today is regarded by many as the voice of an alarmist. However, the danger confronts us. Nor must we overlook the danger of separatism, legalism, lovelessness, unbrotherliness. That tends to disunite and tear apart. Unionism and separatism—one is as bad as the other.” (Proceedings of the 41st Regular Convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, 3.)

CFW Walther, in giving an argument for the creation of a periodical, wanted the articles contained therein to “Be candid and resolute, not showing any false deference nor ever sacrificing the slightest truth for the sake of love and peace.”  And yet, a few lines later he advocates that every article should also, “exude a spirit of love and forbearance, lamenting and instructing rather than thundering and storming; maintaining that the invisible church is everywhere.” (C. F. W. Walther, “Proposal for the Publication of a Church Newspaper,” Manuscript in Saxon Immigrant Collection, 1811–1962, f. 44 (CHI), quoted in J. F. Koestering, The Emigration of the Saxon Lutherans in the Year 1838 and Their Settlement in Perry County, Missouri (St. Louis: Concordia Historical Institute, 2022), 92–93.

We are not a perfect church body but we have a perfect Lord who speaks words of Law and Gospel through people to people. The problem isn’t the Christ who speaks, it is the people through whom he works. We need him to speak to us before we can speak to anyone else. So, among the things I am grateful for, is this petition in prayer book published by my church body.

“From distrust, suspicion, and contempt; from prejudice and want of sympathy with any of Thy children; from all unholy strife and from whatsoever in us hinders Thy work on earth: 
Good Lord, deliver us.” (The Daily Office, CPH, 29.)

Only he can. One day he will. Not on our terms or by our means but on his terms and by his means.