Let's bid this down! Gerberding closes this Friday

Ken McGuire · November 2013

About a hundred years ago George Henry Gerberding wrote some very approachable and yes, very Lutheran Pastoral theology. I have released one of these works as a Personal Book - but now the official Logos versions will close this Friday. I offer the following extract from the PB edition for you to see what he offers:

A poor woman, a sufferer for twelve years, craves healing from our Lord. With a woman’s faith, timid though strong, she presses through the crowd close up to Jesus, and with her trembling bony fingers touches the hem of His garment. Jesus perceives that virtue is gone out of Him. The woman perceives that virtue, healing and life are come into her. There was a transfer from Christ’s blessed life-giving body, into the diseased suffering body of the woman. And what was the medium of the transfer? The fringe of His garment — a piece of cloth. Yes, if it so pleases the mighty God, the everlasting Saviour, He can use a piece of cloth as a means to transfer healing and life from Himself to a suffering one.

The same divine Saviour now works through means. He has founded a Church, ordained a ministry, and instituted the preaching of the Word and the administration of His own sacraments. Christ now works in and through His Church. Through her ministry, preaching the Word, and administering the sacraments, the Holy Spirit is given. (Augsburg Confession, Article 5.) When Christ sent forth His apostles to make disciples of all nations, He instructed them how they were to do it. The commission correctly translated, as we have it in the Revised New Testament reads thus: “Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Here then is the Saviour’s explicit instruction. The Apostles are to make disciples. This is the object of their mission. How are they to do it? By baptizing them into the name of the triune God, and teaching them to observe all Christ’s commands. This is Christ’s own appointed way of applying His Grace to sinful men, and bringing them out of a state of sin into a state of grace.

And this is the Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church. We begin with the child, who needs Grace. We begin by baptizing that child into Christ. We, therefore, lay much stress on baptism. We teach our people that it is sinful, if not perilous, to neglect the baptism of their children. The Lutheran Church attaches more importance to this divine ordinance than does any other Protestant Church. While all around us there has been a weakening and yielding on this point; while the spirit of our age and country scorns the idea of a child receiving divine Grace through baptism; while it has become offensive to the popular ear to speak of baptismal Grace, our Church, wherever she has been and is true to herself, stands to-day where Martin Luther and his co-workers stood, where the confessors of Augsburg stood, and where the framers of the Book of Concord stood.

Gerberding, G. H. (1917). The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church (pp. 42–44). General Council Publication House.

Please go to https://www.logos.com/product/33936/select-works-of-george-henry-gerberding to get more of this wisdom...

SDG

Ken McGuire