President’s Message December 2011

Dear members and friends of our ELS:
Our Lutheran Sentinel previously noted this year marks the 200th anniversary of a well-known American Lutheran, Dr. C.F.W. Walther (October 25, 1811 to May 7, 1887). Walther, president of the Missouri Synod for many years and also the first president of the Synodical Conference in 1872, was known for his superb ability to divide Law and Gospel. His major writing on this subject, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, continues to serve as a standard text at our seminary. While Walther wrote many articles on doctrinal issues, he was also recognized as a good preacher. This can be seen especially in his Christmas Day sermons. We provide here a citation from one of those sermons delivered on the familiar text of Luke 2:1–14.
We learn from the incarnation that God has created this presently troubled world because He wanted to transform this showplace of sorrow into a showplace of His mercy, and because this same world should finally give way to a better world in which righteousness and blessedness would dwell. In no way did God ordain man to sin or to misery so that He might extend to him more glorious mercy. But God did not prevent man, created free, from voluntarily falling into sin and from losing his concreated glory. He had decided not only to bring some good from evil, but also to prepare for man a greater glory than that which was lost, through a fathomless, eternally adorable miracle of His divine love. So He would make of lost man a more blessed creation than he would have been had he not fallen into sin. In the light of God’s incarnation, the night of all human misery appears only as the prelude to the eternal day of jubilation; man’s tears only as the material for the pearls of eternal glory; the whole world with its pain and woe only as the temporary scaffolding for the eternal mansions of the blessed (from The Word of His Grace, ELS Board for Publications, 1978, pp. 199–200).
We wish all a truly blessed celebration of the Incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This amazing intervention of Christ in the history of sinners gives us reason to celebrate life to the fullest!
Rev. John A. Moldstad, ELS President