One+One+One=One Do you understand? The Athanasian Creed says, in part, “So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.” Three Persons, each separate and distinct from the other two, each in and of Himself entirely God, and yet not three…  Read More

Advent Hymn 64 is an Advent hymn. Advent is a “three tense” season: the past and the future unite in our present worship. In the American Heritage Dictionary, the first part of the definition for the word advent is “The coming or arrival of something or someone that is important or worthy of note.” In…  Read More

New Year Last August, a Yahoo News headline asked, “What Causes Plane Crashes?” My immediate reaction was “Gravity?” Can you think of anything else as reliable as gravity? Gravity is so universal in our experience and so unfailingly reliable that we never even consider the possibility that it “may not work this time.” When we…  Read More

Sin. The Cross. Darkness. Sorrow. Anguish. Scourging. Blood. Crucifixion. Death. A significant number of modern American churches do not dwell on these themes—during Lent or at any other time. Instead, they try to avoid them. Such biblical elements are considered too negative for their members to hear, too much of a “downer.” Read More

A HYMN OF GLORY LET US SING (Fourth IN A SERIES) Easter What terrified thoughts and emotions might well torture the mind and grip the heart of an unbeliever facing imminent death! While still in good health and favorable circumstances, some unbelievers—if they ever think about the afterlife at all—might for a time delude themselves…  Read More

Good Shepherd Theme (Psalm 23) Have you ever read one of those newspaper stories about the death of someone living the last decades of his life in poverty-level circumstances, who was later discovered to have had tens of thousands of dollars in cash stashed in various places around the hovel in which he had eked…  Read More

A HYMN OF GLORY LET US SING  (Fifth in a Series on The Lutheran Hymnal) Why do we celebrate Ascension Day? Although most Reformed churches today largely ignore the event as a calendar item, we Lutherans do not. Theologians actually have much to say about the doctrine of Christ’s bodily ascension. They use fancy Latin…  Read More

It was just a small Baptist church, located in a poor rural area of the country and made up of parishioners who themselves possessed very little in terms of material wealth.  The salary they were able to pay their pastor was barely adequate, often consisting partly of produce grown by the parishioners—which they gave him…  Read More

Hymn 620 is actually a prayer to Christ, offered in the context of a wedding ceremony.  When at that wedding we sing  “Thou dearer far than earthly guest,/ Vouchsafe Thy presence here” (verse 1), we are actually praying that Christ will be present at this wedding, even as He was present at the wedding in…  Read More

Most of those reading this magazine have, in all probability, known the blessed comfort of the Gospel from their earliest childhood. Brought up in Christian homes by godly parents, they have from their youth known the holy Scriptures, which have made them wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (II Timothy 3:15). But what if…  Read More

What is the greatest degree of commitment you could express toward someone? To say “I would die for you” certainly conveys very great commitment, but it is not an expression of the highest commitment. That would have to be “I would live for you.” There are, after all, many things worth dying for: your family,…  Read More

Thousands would die that day in Lűtzen, Saxony. Everyone on both sides knew it. November 6, 1632.  The Thirty Years’ War between the Roman Catholic Imperial forces and the Protestants had been raging for fourteen years. Camped in the fields of Lűtzen, the Protestant army of Sweden was awakened and assembled. They would attack the…  Read More

If William Walsham How, the author of this hymn, saw it in The Lutheran Hymnal, I think he might not entirely approve. The words in our hymnal are his, but the order is not; and three of the original stanzas have been left out. In this long hymn, How develops the theme of the Church…  Read More

Imagine yourself as a Jew living in Jerusalem in the year we now call A.D. 301. Roman rule over Judea embitters your life. Your religious leaders—the Pharisees—have burdened you with numerous invented religious “laws” which they say you must follow in order to be righteous in God’s eyes. Sadducees, the other prominent Jewish social/ religious/political…  Read More

A HYMN OF GLORY LET US SING (SIXTEENTH IN A SERIES) I recently saw a social media post in which a Christian from a Reformed church disparaged Lutherans for observing what he disdainfully referred to as “forty days of Lent and only one day of Easter.” Perhaps his opinion was influenced by those unfaithful, “pop…  Read More

A HYMN OF GLORY LET US SING (EIGHTEENTH IN A SERIES) This hymn is a metrical translation of the 23rd Psalm—a psalm of comfort. Most psalms of comfort (for example, Psalm 91) speak words of comfort to believers, but Psalm 23 is different; it is the exuberant exclamation of a believer, joyous that he is…  Read More

A HYMN OF GLORY LET US SING (NINETEENTH IN A SERIES) Think a moment about your daily prayers. To whom do you pray? The obvious answer would be, “I pray to God, of course.” But press the question a bit further, and you might respond, “I pray to the one true God; the God of…  Read More

A HYMN OF GLORY LET US SING (TWENTY-SECOND IN A SERIES) Contrary to the oft-repeated cant1 of collectivists, it does not “take a village” to raise a child; it takes parents.  God entrusts parents—not society in general, not educational or governmental institutions, and not villages—with the responsibility of the proper upbringing of children.  This responsibility…  Read More

A HYMN OF GLORY LET US SING (TWENTY-FIFTH IN A SERIES) God had not spoken to His people for 430 years.  More than four centuries had come and gone since Malachi had declared God’s final Old Testament promise, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day…  Read More

STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace.”   (Hebrews 11:30-31) Hebrews 11 has been called “The Honor Roll of the…  Read More