Pious Lutheran

Holy Trinity,  Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, Early 16th Century A blessed feast of the Holy Trinity to you dear friends in Christ! On this joyful day we got to confess together in unity that glorious Athanasian creed! In this Creed we confessed together the catholic faith, the faith that you must believe if you’re to be saved, and if you don’t believe what is confessed in this creed then you will without doubt perish eternally. Those are strong words which should impress upon us the importance of meditating upon them at least once a year. I know it seems like a long creed, but it’s really not when considering what it's confessing. In those few words were summarized the catholic faith, namely, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, and that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God who is at the same time both God and man. In other words we worship one God, not three gods, and yet each  person of the Trinity is true God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit i...

"Jesus and Nicodemus" Matthias Stom, 1615-1649 “ If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. ” Freedom is a topic which has interested people in the West for thousands of years. It’s difficult to define freedom without saying what it is not. Namely, freedom is to not be enslaved to another. Freedom is to not be a slave. This freedom is what Christ has come to give us. “ That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. ” Through rebirth of water and the Spirit, the Christian is made free. But freedom from what? Who is the slavemaster?  Usually when we think of freedom and slavery we’re thinking of worldly masters. So we think of the Israelites being freed from their Egyptian masters. Or we think of slavery her...

Today on Trinity Sunday we got to hear two of the most beautiful things in church! Firstly, we all confessed together in unison with our own tongues the “long creed,” the Athanasian Creed. With those words we very concisely summarize the Christian faith that God is Triune. Secondly today, we all heard that Gospel in a nutshell, many people’s favorite Bible verse, John 3:16. “ For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. ” With those words we heard what God’s will is for us, namely that we would be saved through the atoning death of Christ. Today we heard who God is and what His will is for us, because those two things are intrinsically united and two sides of the same coin. You cannot know who God is apart from His will for you to save you, neither can you know God’s will of your salvation apart from knowing God’s identity. The two only make sense if you know both of them, because if you only know one side ...

Do all of the religions in the world believe in the same God? Many today would say yes. It’s a common and popular belief today that all religions lead to the same goal, as if there are many paths which lead to the same destination of heaven. Likewise, there are many who believe that there is but one god who goes by many names, meaning that all religions worship the same god. Among Christians lately here in America a phrase has been bandied about which tries to equate different religions with one another. It’s a dangerous and misleading phrase that will lead to people falling away from the faith. That phrase? Judeo-Christian. It’s a phrase which piles Judaism, Mohadism, and Christianity into one big lump. Why? What’s the common thread between all three? Abraham! Abraham plays a role in all three, and thus, the people of these various religions are lumped together under the phrase of Judeo-Christian.  But the fact of the matter is, the Christian faith is nothing like the faith o...

About a month ago there was a viral video going around about the pope speaking with a little boy. The boy’s unbelieving father had died and now the sobbing boy asked the pope if his father is in heaven. Now obviously this is a sensitive issue, and it would have been much better had this been dealt with privately not in front of a bunch of people and cameras. Nevertheless, it was dealt with publicly and the pope answered publicly. The pope first answered the little boy by telling him that his father was a good man. He concludes then that because the boy’s father was a good man, therefore God would take that good man to be with Him in heaven. It’s an emotional tear-jerking video showing the pope holding a sobbing boy close to himself. But ultimately, the pope comforts the child with a lie, promising hope where that poor boy doesn’t have any hope.  The Athanasian Creed, which we just confessed states quite clearly “Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic fa...