In Memory of Zephaniah:

Yesterday, my wife and I were blessed with a very healthy baby boy we named Zachariah. But what ended as a single-birth pregnancy, began as twins. We named our other child Zephaniah. He died sometime in the early months of pregnancy. Along with our great joy over Zachariah we have sorrow over Zephaniah. We look forward to bringing Zachariah to the waters of holy baptism but are unable to do that for Zephaniah. Martin Chemnitz wrote

Are the children of believers who died before birth or in birth damned?
By no means, but since our children, brought to the light by divine blessing, are, as it were, given into our hands and at the same time means are offered, or it is made possible for the seal of the covenant of grace to be applied to them, there, indeed, that very solemn divine statement applies: The man-child, the flesh of whose foreskin is not circumcised on the eighth day, his soul shall be blotted out from [his] people (Gen. 17:14). Hence the Lord met Moses on the way and wanted to kill him because he had neglected to circumcise [his] son (Ex. 4:24-26). But when those means are not given us--as when in the Old Testament a male died before the eighth day of circumcision--likewise when they, who, born in the desert in the interval of 40 years, could not be circumcised because of daily harassment by enemies and constant wanderings, died uncircumcised, (Jos. 5:5-6) and when today infants die before they are born--in such cases the grace of God is not bound to Baptism, but those infants are to be brought and commended to Christ in prayers. And one should not doubt that those prayers are heard, for they are made in the name of Christ. (John 16:23; Gen. 17:7, Matt. 19:14) Since then, we cannot bring infants as yet unborn to Christ through Baptism, therefore we should do it through pious prayers. Parents are to be put in mind of this, and if perhaps such a case occur, they are to be encouraged with this comfort." (An Enchiridion, by Martin Chemnitz, Page 119, CPH St. Louis 1981)

Amazing Grace Vs. By Grace I'm Saved in a No-Holds Barred Grudge Match

Table Talk Radio regards all pre-1750 hymns as traditional and all post-1750 hymns as contemporary. "Amazing Grace" was published in 1779 placing it in the contemporary catagory. "By Grace I'm Saved" was published in 1742 placing it just barely in the traditional category. "Amazing Grace" is the more popular of the two. Both hymns are about God's grace.

Here are the lyrics to "Amazing Grace":

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.


T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.


Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.


The Lord has promised good to me.
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.


Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

When we've been here ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we've first begun.

Here are the lyrics to "By Grace I'm Saved":

By grace I'm saved, grace free and boundless;
My soul, believe and doubt it not.
Why stagger at this word of promise?
Hath Scripture ever falsehood taught?
Nay; then this word must true remain;
By grace thou, too, shalt heav'n obtain.

By grace! None dare lay claim to merit;
Our works and conduct have no worth.
God in His love sent our Redeemer,
Christ Jesus, to this sinful earth;
His death did for our sins atone,
And we are saved by grace alone.

By grace! Oh, mark this word of promise
When thou art by thy sins opprest,
When Satan plagues thy troubled conscience,
And when thy heart is seeking rest.
What reason cannot comprehend
God by His grace to thee doth send.

By grace God's Son, our only Savior,
Came down to earth to bear our sin.
Was it because of thine own merit
That Jesus died thy soul to win?
Nay, it was grace, and grace alone,
That brought Him from His heavenly throne.

By grace! This ground of faith is certain;
So long as God is true, it stands.
What saints have penned by inspiration,
What in His Word our God commands,
What our whole faith must rest upon,
Is Grace alone, grace in His Son.

By grace to timid hearts that tremble,
In tribulation's furnace tried,--
By grace, despite all fear and trouble,
The Father's heart is open wide.
Where could I help and strength secure
If grace were not my anchor sure?

Both hyms are about grace but understand grace in very different ways. "Amazing Grace" was written by John Newton and was about his own conversion experience. He was the captain of a slave ship and on his way back home he encountered a dangerous storm. He called out to God for mercy, God spared him, and he looked back on this as his conversion. The hymn was a retelling of how God's grace kept him from death and converted him and now he can look forward to singing about God's grace in heaven. It's a very subjective hymn and based on an experience unique to John Newton--not an experience shared by every Christian.

"By Grace I'm Saved" by Christian L. Scheidt is much different. It speaks to the reality of every Christian. All are saved by God's free grace. The author of the hymn does not appeal to his experience but points us to the Scriptures. We can know that God is gracious because they Scriptures say that He is gracious and the Scriptures are trustworthy and God is trustworthy. The hymn says that we are not saved by our own works but by Christ's atoning death.

How to Read the Holy Scriptures: 25 Theses

I've recently read a number of books on how to interpret the Scriptures, each of which is useful for various reasons, but each of which I was disappointed with for various reasons. None of what follows is original but is a compilation of what I consider to be helpful advice given in books and articles. If I have erred, I ask for correction. If I have left something out please let me know.

1. The Scriptures were written to the church. The Scriptures were not written as an evangelism tract but were written for believers. The unbeliever should not expect to be able to fully understand the Scriptures and believers should not expect unbelievers to understand or accept the teachings of the Scriptures.

2. The Divine Service is the natural habitat for the Holy Scriptures. The Divine Service is where those who have been baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit gather to receive Christ's body and blood and have their sins forgiven. A lion may be dissected in a laboratory and something may be learned about it but what a lion is can only be fully known in its natural habitat. Removing the Scriptures from their natural habitat makes them appear to be tame. In their natural habitat the Scriptures are dangerous.

3. The historic liturgy provides the proper grid and emphasis for understanding the Holy Scriptures. The liturgy is Trinitarian but focused on Christ. The liturgy is all about Jesus and what He did and does. The Scriptures are all about Jesus and what He did and does.

4. The Nicene Creed which is found within the historic liturgy is a summary of the Apostolic Gospel and provides the proper lens through which to read and understand the Scriptures. The Nicene Creed is Trinitarian and focused upon the objective acts of Jesus and who He is.

5. Reading the Scriptures outside of the public gathering of the church is beneficial if it is informed by the previous theses and centered upon Christ.

6. Reading the Bible outside of the public gathering of the church is detrimental if it is not Christocentric and not informed by the liturgy and the historic faith. If Bible study is centered upon moralism or secret codes, personal Bible study will lead you away from Christ and His church. I do not know of many who have more of the Bible memorized than Harold Camping but he does not know how to interpret it and his Bible study has led him away from the Christian faith. The Scriptures were not given to be studied in a closet by individuals but to the church as a whole.

7. It is beneficial to read the Scriptures as part of Matins or Vespers. Even though you may be the only one in the room, you can join in the prayers of the church that are being offered throughout the world. The Treasury of Daily Prayer and Brotherhood Prayer Book both provide resources for the daily offices. The prayers will also help guide you in your interpretation of the Scriptures.

8. The Gospels provide the foundational texts for properly understanding the rest of the Scriptures. Reading straight through from Genesis to Revelation can often cause a person to get bogged down in details and miss Jesus. Many start enthusiastically and give up before they even make it out of Genesis. The Treasury of Daily Prayer has a helpful reading plan based on the liturgical year. Another option is to read one chapter from the Gospels each day which would take the reader through the Gospels four times each year.

9. The Scriptures should be interpreted according to their canonical order. The Gospel of Matthew provides the proper interpretive lens for reading the rest of the Gospels. The Gospels provide the proper interpretive lens for reading the rest of the New Testament. The New Testament provides the proper interpretive lens for reading the Old Testament.

10. No disputed book of the Bible should be used by itself to arrive at a doctrinal position. All disputed books should be interpreted through the lens of the undisputed books. The disputed books (or sections) of the Old Testament are: Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Tobit, Ecclesiasticus [aka Sirach], Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Old Greek version of Esther, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three Holy Children, and the Prayer of Manasseh. The disputed New Testament books are Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, the Apocalypse of John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache.

11. The emphasis of Scriptural inperetation should be on what Christ does for you. The Bible as a whole is about what Christ does for us but our sinful nature ignores that and wants us to believe that the Bible is all about what we need to do for Jesus.

12. The Law is not the Gospel.

13. The Law contains promises of good things but those promises are contingent upon your obedience to the Law.

14. You don't obey the Law so you don't receive the good things.

15. You are not reading the Law correctly if you think you are keeping it. Trying hard doesn't cut it. Getting better is not acceptable. The Law demands absolute obedience. The Law doesn't say "Try your best." The Law says "Do this and you will live, don't do this and you are damned."

16. The Law does not make anyone better. The Law is good and should be used and tells us how God would have us live but the Law itself does not keep us from doing sinful things. The Law by itself will only result in our sinful nature becoming more rebellious and engage in more sin.

17. The Gospel is the declaration of what Jesus does for you. The Gospel says you are forgiven.

18. Generally commands are Law. However, phrases such as "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved," "be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins," and "Take, eat; this is my body...Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the testament, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" are actually Gospel. If you were to walk up to a starving man, hand him a sandwich, and say "eat this" it could hardly be considered a law that you are giving the starving man. When we receive the forgiveness of sins in the preaching of the Gospel, baptism, and the Lord's Supper we are not working but receiving.

19. What the Scriptures speak of as gifts should not be interpreted as works.

20. When the Scriptures make declarations we should not automatically interpret them as imperatives. Describing is no the same as commanding. Sometimes the Scriptures describe sinful activities. Sometimes they describe a unique situation. There is no command to kill Christians, be blinded by Jesus, and then have our vision restored. Sometimes what they present is something to believed as an article of faith. God says I am holy therefore I am holy regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if I feel holy, God says I am. We should not concern ourselves with being able to "experience" what God says we are but instead cling to His promises by faith.

21. Revelation is often contrary to reason. Holy Scripture is to believed because it has received the imprimatur of Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead. God dying for your sins is not reasonable and so you should not expect the Holy Scriptures to measure up to your own notions of reasonableness or decency. If something that the Scriptures say seems unreasonable, it is unreasonable to explain it away or deny the plain teaching since Christianity is grounded upon the unreasonable belief that God would die for you.

22. Is means is. Jesus really is the door. All other doors only mimic what he really does. When Jesus said, "This is my body" He really meant it. When He said, "This is my blood" He really meant it. When the Scriptures speak of baptism being "for the forgiveness of sins" they really mean that too. Throughout most of church history most Christians believed that Jesus literally meant these things and even today most Christians do. But unfortunately, many Protestants deny these things because they are gnostics. Matter matters to God.

23. Jesus and the Apostles are able to communicate what they want to communicate. We should not twist or make excuses for the statements made in the Scriptures. If our theology does not allow us to say what the Scriptures plainly say then there is something wrong with our theology. If we can be brought up on heresy charges for repeating what the Scriptures say then our church body is guilty of heresy.

24. The church fathers are better guides than modern critical commentators. The church fathers are not infallible but they did believe that the Scriptures are all about Jesus and lived in closer proximity to the time of the Apostles. Many of them spoke the same language as the Apostles did on a regular basis. Some critics treat the church fathers as if they were immature and superstitious but only because the critics are unbelieving rationalists. The church fathers believed what the plain words of Scripture say about baptism and the Lord's Supper because their interpretive skills were not impaired by the enlightenment.

25. Allegorical interpretation is legitimate if it finds Christ in the passage. Throughout the Gospels and New Testament Epistles we find instances where passages from the Old Testament are understood as prophecies about Christ. Matthew takes Hosea 11:1 and reads it as a prophecy that was fulfilled by Jesus. When Hosea 11:1 is read literally, it seems to be speaking of God leading the Israelites out of Egypt in the past. But Matthew is showing us that Jesus is the new Israel--He is Israel reduced to one. Matthew is also showing us that all of the Scriptures are about Jesus--even those that don't appear to be. The early church fathers interpreted the Scriptures in the same way. Occasionally one of the church fathers will provide a questionable interpretation of an Old Testament passage that seems to drift too far into allegory and there is a danger if we arbitrarily allegorize. But we are on the right path when we find Christ in the passage since Jesus said that all of the Scriptures are about Him. We end up with the wrong interpretation if we insist on a Christless literalistic interpretation.

Abdon and Sennen of Rome, Martyrs; Robert Barnes, Confessor, Martyr

Today we commemorate Abdon, Sennen, and Robert Barnes. Very little is known about Abdon and Sennen. They were Persians who were martyred under Decius. around the year 250.

Robert Barnes was an English Reformer and martyr. Most of what follows is from Wikipedia. Barnes was educated at Cambridge and a member of the Austin Friars. He received his Doctor of Divinity in 1523, and was made Prior of the Cambridge convent. He was among those who gathered at the White Horse Tavern for theological discussion in the early 1530s. At the Chrsimstas Midnight Mass at St. Edward's Church in 1525, Edwards gave the first sermon of the English Reformation in which he proclaimed the Gospel and accused the church of heresies. In 1526 he was condemned as a heretic for preaching this sermon and was told to either go into exile or be burnt. Barnes decided to go into exile. Barnes chose exileand was committed to the Fleet prison and afterwards to the Austin Friars in London. Barnes escaped to Antwerp in 1528, and also visited Wittenberg, where he made Martin Luther's acquaintance. He also came across Stephen Vaughan, an agent of Thomas Cromwell and an advanced reformer, who recommended him to Cromwell: "Look well," he wrote, "upon Dr Barnes' book. It is such a piece of work as I have not yet seen any like it. I think he shall seal it with his blood" (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII). In 1531 Barnes returned to England, and became one of the chief intermediaries between the English government and Lutheran Germany. In 1535 he was sent to Germany, in the hope of inducing Lutheran divines to approve of Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and four years later he was employed in negotiations connected with Anne of Cleves's marriage. The policy was Cromwell's, but Henry VIII had already in 1538 refused to adopt Lutheran theology, and the statute of Six Articles (1539), followed by the king's disgust with Anne of Cleves (1540), brought the agents of that policy to ruin. An attack upon Bishop Gardiner by Barnes in a sermon at St Paul's Cross was the signal for a bitter struggle between the Protestant and reactionary parties in Henry's council, which raged during the spring of 1540. Barnes was forced to apologise and recant; and Gardiner delivered a series of sermons at St Paul's Cross to counteract Barnes' invective. But a month or so later Cromwell was made earl of Essex, Gardiner's friend, Bishop Sampson, was sent to the Tower, and Barnes reverted to Lutheranism. It was a delusive victory. In July, Cromwell was attainted, Anne of Cleves was divorced and Barnes was burnt (30 July 1540). Barnes was one of six executed on the same day: two, William Jerome and Thomas Gerrard, were, like himself, burnt for heresy under the Six Articles; three, Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherstone and Edward Powell, were hanged for treason in denying the royal supremacy. Both Lutherans and Catholics on the continent were shocked. Luther published Barnes' confession with a preface of his own as Bekenntnis des Glaubens (1540). Some historians have concluded that Barnes was crucial in having the English Protestants and Catholics alike understand the Reformation around them.

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany, Saints

Today we commemorate Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. According to the LCMS website:

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany were disciples with whom Jesus had a special bond of love and friendship. John's Gospel records that “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11:15). On one occasion Martha welcomed Jesus into their home for a meal. While she did all the work, Mary sat at Jesus' feet listening to his Word and was commended by Jesus for choosing the “good portion which will not be taken away from her” (Lk 10:38–42). When their brother Lazarus died, Jesus spoke to Martha this beautiful Gospel promise: “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he life? (John 11:25–27). Ironically, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the death, the Jews became more determined than ever to kill Jesus (John 11:39–54). made Jesus' enemies more determined than ever to kill him (John 11:39–54). Six days before Jesus was crucified, Mary anointed his feet with a very expensive fragrant oil and wiped them with her hair, not knowing at the time that she was doing it in preparation for Jesus' burial (John 12:1–8; Mt 26:6-13).

Pantaleon, Physician, Martyr; Johann Sebastian Bach, Kantor

Today we commemorate Pantaleon and Bach. Pantaleon was the son of a wealthy pagan. His Christian mother instructed him in Christianity but after her death he fell away from the faith and studied medicine. He became physician to the emperor. Pantaleon was won back to Christianity after Saint Hermolaus convinced him that Christ was the better physician. While discussing medicine Hermolaus said, "But, my friend, of what use are all thy acquirements in this art, since thou art ignorant of the science of salvation?" Pantaleon healed a blind man by invoking the name of Jesus over him and converted his pagan father. When Pantaleon's father died he inherited much wealth but gave it to the poor and freed his father's slaves. Envious colleagues Pantaleon to the emperor during the Diocletian persecution. The emperor wanted to save Pantaleon tried to convince him to abandon the Christian faith. But Pantaleon openly confessed his faith and healed a paralytic to prove that Christ is the true God. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to death by the emperor. Pantaleon's flesh was first burned with torches. Christ appeared in the form of Hermolaus to strengthen and heal Pantaleon. The torches were extinguished. Then a bath of molten lead was prepared; when the apparition of Christ stepped into the cauldron with him, the fire went out and the lead became cold. Pantaleon was then thrown into the sea, loaded with a great stone, which floated. He was thrown to wild beasts, but these fawned upon him and would not be forced away until he had blessed them. He was bound on the wheel, but the ropes snapped, and the wheel broke. An attempt was made to behead him, but the sword bent, and the executioners were converted to Christianity. Pantaleon implored heaven to forgive them, for which reason he also received the name of Panteleimon ("mercy for everyone" or "all-compassionate"). It was not until he himself desired it that it was possible to behead him, upon which there issued forth blood and a white liquid like milk.

Aardvark Alley has a nice article about Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Seven Sleepers, Martyrs; Martha, Sister of Lazarus, Saint

Today we commemorate the Seven Sleepers and Martha. The Seven Sleepers were a group of Christian youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus around 250 AD, to escape a persecution of Christians during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius. They fell asleep and awoke 150-200 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, following which they were reportedly seen by the people of the now-Christian city before dying.

Martha was the sister of Lazarus. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus visits the home of Mary and Martha. Martha works while Mary sits and receives the teaching of Jesus. When Martha beomes angry with Mary, Jesus tells Martha that Mary had chosen the better part. In John 11, Martha confesses her belief in the resurrection. Jesus replies that He is the resurrection.