[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, we're recording then. Here we go. Welcome, YouTube theologians. Pastor Brian Wolfmiller here. That's Pastor Andrew Packer, good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you, and that is that you have your clerical shirts specially tailored to shorten the sleeves so that everyone can see your biceps.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: That's pretty amazing, actually. I will tell you. I will tell you, though, this is not a room, but this is true.
I really like. This one's from wiki and vicar. Have you heard of that company?
[00:00:27] Speaker A: No.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: They're a different kind of material than a lot of the clerical shirts. And I like them much better than regular clerical shirts. They fit better.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: That is a plug, because I do not like my.
I remember that someone asked me, this was in Colorado, and they said, when flammy was there. And they said, hey, what's the difference between your clerical shirts? And I said, what do you mean? He says, well, why Pastor Flammy wears black and you wear gray.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: No, I'm just. It's this shirt. I think I have this since seminary from 20 years ago because this is the only one that fits. It's all tearing apart. So who's it from, by the way? This is hot tip wiking vicar. I don't even know how to spell that.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: W I w I c k I n g. Vicker. They have great shirts. I need to get more. So if you want to be a sponsor of the show.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: There you go. All right. What? You got some questions for us?
[00:01:19] Speaker B: I do have some questions unrelated to now.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: You're going to not lift your arms up the whole show?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: This is great. Don't scoot back.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: That's right.
I wish I had bigger biceps to show off, but. Okay, let's see.
Confession, absolution, and priesthood of all believers. I have a question about the office of the keys. I hear so many times that has been given to the whole church. But specifically, who was it meant for? For example, by only ordained ministers during private and corporate confession, absolution, or by every baptized member of the church? I remember Luther mentions it in the small, cold articles where he says it can be used among the brethren. When I was growing up, I'd always been taught to ask for forgiveness and say, I forgive you. If I had wronged someone or someone had asked for my forgiveness, does that count as exercising the keys? And does it count per se?
And then thanks you for your videos.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Great question.
So, okay, let's take a step back and do the whole big thing here, because this is big, oftentimes misunderstood. First, the Bible talks about confession in three ways.
The first way is the forgiveness, the confession of all sins to God, even the sins that we don't know about. So forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. That's the general confession of sins. If we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. First, John, chapter one, or even psalm 19, teaches us to pray. Cleanse us of our hidden faults. So even when we don't, even when we don't know our sins, we're confessing that we're sinners, that we're sinful, that we've sinned in thought word, indeed, by what we've done and by what we've left undone, and that we've deserved by our sin, God's temporal and eternal punishment. And that's it. That's a confession to God alone. That's a psalm 51, to you and you alone have I against you, and you alone have I sinned and done what's.
How come I forgot? Unrighteous in your sight. Okay, so first confession, general confession to God. All christians are required to do that. The second confession is when we sin against someone, we are required by the holy scriptures to confess to that person our own sin. And in fact, when we're sinned against, we're to go to that person also. But especially when this confession, when I sin against someone, the Lord would have me confess that sin to them and ask for their forgiveness. And also try to make things right. Now with the Lord, we can't make things right. He has to do it with the neighbor. We can try, we can begin, we can start. We want to repair that relationship as much as possible. So we are required to confess our sins to the people who we've sinned against.
The third kind of confession is when we go to, as Luther says, a pastor or a trusted christian friend, not pastor, and confess a specific sin, not that we can commit it against them, but that we committed against God and our neighbor. And this is what we normally are talking about when we're talking about confession and absolution.
The first two kinds of confession are required in the scriptures. In other words, it's not optional. I can't decide if I want to confess my sins to God, and I can't decide if I want to confess my sins to the neighbor. That's required. This third confession is not required of us in the scripture, but it's made available to us, especially in the command, when Jesus says, whoever sins you forgive, they're forgiven. John 20 breathes on the disciples and gives them the Holy spirit so that we confess those sins that are bothering our conscience for the purpose of hearing the absolution or the forgiveness of sinse applied directly to that sin.
We do that in, well, we kind of make a general confession in church, but when we go to the passion for private confession, absolution, we're making a specific confession. And am I just heuristic on that? My little rule of thumb is that when you come to church and you're there, and there's that silence before confession, and if the same sin floats to the top, you know, three weeks in a row, and it's sitting there in your conscience like, oh, man, look at the thing you did three weeks in a row. That means time to make an appointment with the pastor, going for private confession, absolution. Now, the absolution of that sin that wasn't committed against you, but was committed against somebody else. Oh, so let me go back to this, because the question had to do with this. Like, when someone sins against me, can I forgive them? The answer is absolutely. Not only can you forgive them, but you must forgive them. I mean, there might be a place for wisdom in there on, like, what your life looks like because of that person's sin afterwards. So forgiving doesn't in some ways, like, if someone, you know these circumstances, and it might be good to talk about with your pastor, if someone abuses you over and over and they continue to ask for forgiveness, there might be forgiveness and also wisdom to minimize that sin, both also for your sake and for their sake, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Understanding all that, not only can I forgive them, I'm required to forgive them. But that's a little bit different than the absolution, because absolution is not my forgiveness, but God's forgiveness.
So if you, Pastor Packer, sin against me, or what would be much more likely, I sin against you. And I come to you and I say, andrew, sorry. I did this thing. I heard a rumor about you, and I spread it around so that everyone.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Thought it was the whole Internet.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: And I say, I'm sorry. Now, you could give me two things. You could give me your own forgiveness, Brian, I forgive you, and you could also give me God's forgiveness, and God also forgives you. And that's. So that's a nice, that's a beautiful sort of thing. And it's that second one, the forgiveness from God. That God doesn't hold the sin against you. That's what the absolution is. Now, to this question, and this is where we oftentimes get so messed up on this, can a Christian pronounce the absolution like a pastor does? The answer is absolutely, absolutely. Not only can a Christian produce pronounce the absolution, but a Christian should pronounce the absolution. Now, there's some confusion on this amongst the Lutherans.
A lot of lutheran pastors will say that I'm wrong because it belongs to the office. And after all, the absolution says, as a called and ordained servant of Christ, I announce the grace of God unto you instead, and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the called and ordained has to do with the announcing part. In other words, I'm standing and giving the absolution in a public place, and that it belongs to the office, but the office of the keys, the authority to bind and loose sins, belongs to every single baptized Christian.
And every Christian not only can, but ought to forgive sins. In fact, I think this is what evangelism is. Evangelism is simply one Christian saying to a guilt ridden sinner, Christ died for you. Your sins are forgiven. Now, you don't have. Maybe you don't want to say, I forgive you all your sins, but that's what you're doing. That sin is forgiven by the Lord Jesus Christ. And if there was a way that's saying, I forgive you that sin in the name of Jesus, if that was helpful for their conscience, you can say it. You're authorized to say that Luther argues this so beautifully in his Trinity 19 sermon, which is on the text, when Jesus heals the paralytic man, and they're all grumbling because only God can forgive sins. And afterwards it says, they marveled that such authority was given to Mandev. And Luther said that authority to forgive sins is when it's exercised by Christ. It is now exercised by all of Christ's people. So that every Christian can and should speak the absolution in the name of Jesus, I forgive you your sins. Now, this is hard, hard, hard. It's even hard for the Lutherans. It's especially hard for the evangelicals. Right? Because they say, they. They say what the Pharisees say, who can forgive sins but God alone? And I think here's the picture that I have found to be most helpful. If you imagine that you're in prison and your case is being heard across the street in the court, and evidence is presented, and the judge declares you to be innocent and free. Problem is, you're still sitting in prison. So the bailiff, who has key to your cell walks across the street, and he opens the cell and he says, I set you free. And you say, only the judge can do that. And the bailiff says, well, I know. I was just at the judge, and he just said that you're free. That's why I'm setting you free. And you say, no, no, only the judge can set me free. You can't set me free. Only the judge. And you sit there in prison. The judge is the one who sent the bailiff. That's the whole business of the keys. When Jesus says to Peter, I give you the keys to heaven, when he says to the church, I give you the keys to heaven. Matthew 16. Matthew 18. When Jesus breathes on his disciples, John 20, and says, for whoever sins you forgive are forgiveness. Whoever sends you behind their bound, he is authorizing, deputizing the church to unlock that prison door and set people free. So the only reason why we say the absolution matters is because Jesus is the one who put it in place. And so when the passage says, I forgive you your sins, he's. He's coming with that heavenly word to set you free. And it's. And it's as if it is the judge setting you free. It's the same. And so that's how we can rejoice in the absolution that's given and the absolution that's spoken.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: I don't have much to add besides that threefold division you talk about is found in Luther's exhortation to confession, which you can
[email protected]. dot over on the left. It's the extra stuff. It's not actually part of the book of Concord, but they have it listed there, and you can read that. And it's very helpful in expanding on everything you just said. I think sometimes the confusion comes, I don't know if you would agree with this, that even sometimes as pastors, we forget that the forgiveness we speak, it's not so much because of the office, it's because of the word of God. Luther talks about this in several sermons, that the foundation for the absolution is the word of God. So the reason the absolution has any value is because we're speaking Jesus words, not our own words. And that's true of any Christian anytime. Like you said, they're pronouncing, Christ has forgiven you. You are forgiven because of Christ. Like, that's the same. The same thing. It's the same word of God. So it'd be strange to pit those things against each other, as if it's bound to the office but not bound to the word of God, which I think is what's happening. We're trying to make it bound to just the office, whereas it's bound to the word of God, which is in the mouths of all christians, hopefully, as they go out in their various vocations. So.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Yep, that's so great.
I'm going to put a link in the show notes to this absolution anthology that we published years and years ago, and it has this Luther trinity 19 sermon on it. And so you can go just download the PDF for free. And it's great, actually. I mean, it talks about this so clearly, and I'll find some quotes here, too. But while you're asking the next question, I mean, it's just like the whole time you go to a christian brother, when your conscience is troubled, you go to your christian brother, pastor, trusted christian friend, confess your sin, and he speaks the absolution in the name of Jesus, your sins are forgiven, and we have that comfort, that confidence. So great.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: That was actually, I think, my first experience before, long before I was lutheran, I was in college. Um, and we were on a business trip. I worked in the college admissions office as a student. It's actually how I met my wife. But, um, I was on this trip, and I was talking. It was late at night, and I was talking to. It was actually my boss at the time, and he's a really great guy, and I was talking about something that was burning in my conscience, and he basically spoke the absolution to me. He said, hey, you know, that that's forgiven you. You're forgiven in Christ. And that a profound impact on me. And then later, when I became lutheran, I looked back on it and had categories to understand what happened there. But I think that was the first time I really felt the impact of someone saying that when my conscience was burdened, someone looking at me and saying, hey, that that thing is forgiven in Christ. And so, um, you know, it's extremely helpful. I'm glad he didn't say no. I can't tell you you're forgiven, so. I'm not a pastor.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: This is. So here's. I got a Luther line here. We. We come into possession of the forgiveness of sins in our day. Also, when the servant of the church or any other Christian assures you God is not angry with you, do not be angry with him. Because he has, for the sake of his son Jesus Christ, forgiven all your sins. You should therefore, with all confidence, trust in this assurance and suffer yourself to be torn to pieces rather than to doubt it.
For if you doubt the absolution, even if it pronounced over you orally by God and his holy angels, it would profit you nothing. So this is, you know, this and this. And he'll say this all the way through. We're a servant of the church. We're a pastor or another christian friend. It's so, it's so good. So that we.
And here's the point. I mean, from the question, is it a real absolution if a Christian gives the absolute. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
So we, not only we want to have that confidence that if I, if I forgive the sins of any, they're forgiveness.
And I want that confidence to be not only in the one who's giving the absolution, but in the one receiving it, but in the one giving it also. Christians are out there forgiving sins. When we hear a bad conscience, we apply the blood of Christ.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: Definitely download that.
All right, next question. How do I tell Baptists my testimony? They say, how would you recommend responding when baptist friends asked for my testimony and or how I was saved? As a Lutheran, I feel like I don't have the same testimony in quotation marks that Baptists often do. And I believe I was saved 2000 years ago when Jesus died, not at some point in my life.
Going to baptist college has been surprisingly challenging as a Lutheran, and any advice is appreciated.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: There's kind of an obnoxious way and an unobnoxious way to do this right? Because in some reason, in some way, the testimony is, well, there's probably three things wrong with the testimony. The one is the free will business, that I decide to follow Jesus, that I am the one who makes a decision. And the difference between heaven and hell, life and death, is my own choice. Jesus voted for me, the devil voted against me. Now I cast the deciding vote. All that kind of business. Okay, so the chief error is the free will error. The second error that opens up is the idea of what is the denial of infant baptism and the power of the sacraments, so that it is assumed that I'm going to kind of, well, start out as an innocent child, but grow into the age of accountability, to have a life marked with the sinful flesh and then have a dramatic moment of conversion where the Lord takes me from being obviously this little hellion to being an obedient and godly person.
So the transformation of my life starts to fit in there as the indicator of my salvation. And in fact it becomes an argument that I'm using to assure my conscience.
Which points to the third problem, which is the problem of the testimonial theology. Because it's not. Because now it is my story that becomes the scripture rather than God's story.
So that because I look to my changed life as assurance now the scripture that I'm leaning into is my own testimony. And this is why that testimony theology is so important for evangelicals. Let me tell you what God has done for me.
That's their opening, the Bible. It's ironic because they deny the efficacy of the scriptures themselves, but they have a kind of efficacious theology of the testimony. So whenever you go to any sort of evangelistic training or whatever you're always writing your testimony, your 32nd testimony, your two minute testimony. Carrie tells this funny story where she was at church camp and they were writing their testimony and he says, and Carrie says, I've always known about Jesus and his love for me. And the guy handed it back and said no, it's not good enough. You have to talk about how bad you were and how good you are now. I mean that's the basic idea. And I mean maybe that's the fourth problem, right? Is that for this whole conversion business to work I've got to really minimize the effects of sin in my own life now. Like I better not be a sinner. After all, I'm converted. Okay? So the idea to give a testimony is it brings all of those temptations along. And the Lutheran I think instinctively feels, even if it can articulate it that way, the Lutheran feels that this testimonial theology is dangerous and so they want to avoid it altogether by just saying, well, I was saved 2000 years ago when Jesus died on the cross or I was saved in eternity when Christ elected to save me or I was saved when I was two weeks old when the Lord rescued me through the waters of holy baptism. Now probably all three of those sound repulsive in the ears of those who require of us a testimony. And that's probably why the Lutherans want to say them, right, because we're like er. But here's my advice. And this might, I don't know that, you know, all these problems are there, okay, what, what I would like you to do is recognize that the Lord has put you in a place to try to do something helpful. Which part of that helpfulness will be tearing down bad theology?
But the real helpfulness is going to be, to. To help this person see the clarity of the scriptures through the distinction of law and gospel.
If we confess that the distinction of law and gospel is the most glorious light that illuminates the scriptures and makes the scriptures come to life, then our main point when talking to other christians is going to be to try to bring forth the distinction between law and gospel. And a huge advantage here is that if you go straight to election or you go straight to baptism, or you go straight to the theology, your baptist friends and neighbors and evangelicals and Catholics, and everyone is going to have a defense ready to go. I mean, they're ready for that. But if you can start talking about law and gospel, then you can try to sneak through those defenses, because they're not ready for it. I've never met an evangelical or a Catholic or even a reformed or anyone who, who was ready to argue about law and gospel and say, oh, no, that's wrong. So I think when someone asks of you as a Lutheran, a testimony, you can say, you could probably say this, say, you know, a lot of people like to tell the story about how the Lord came to them and changed their life.
I think that instead of thinking in this way, like, when did I make a decision for Jesus? I like to think, has Jesus made a decision for me?
So instead of asking, have I given my life to Christ? I like the question, has Christ given his life for me? Or instead of saying, have I prayed to accept Christ, I say, has Jesus prayed for me? And when we turn to the testimony of the scriptures, we find that these things are, in fact true, that the Lord decided to come into my flesh and my sin and lay in my grave to. To be my savior. And the Lord does pray for me, and the Lord has accepted me in the beloved by the death of Jesus. And I think that the thing that gives me the most comfort is not that I have chosen Christ or that the spirit has changed my life, but that Christ has chosen me.
And it flips it into that law gospel distinction. And I just don't think they're ready for that. So that would be my advice to this person.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: What would you do if they responded? Well, Paul on several occasions gives his testimony. He talks about how he was converted and how the Lord changed him from one who persecuted the church to one who is now serving Lord Jesus Christ.
How would you respond if they're like, well, you know, Paul does it.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: How is this any different?
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I see if I'm trying to argue against the testimony theology. Yeah, yeah, it is very interesting that Paul.
It is Luke who gives the testimony of Paul, although Luke records Paul, I think, recounting his own testimony, and it does become the cornerstone of the book of acts. I mean, we get to hear of Paul's call in the road to Damascus three times.
I don't know.
It's fine. In fact, I a lot of times am trying to tell the Lutherans that we've lost the expectation of conversion. And Paul is the example, because the Lutheran thinks, well, look, if we didn't get them by time they were two months old, we probably lost them. They're going to be a pagan their whole lives. And that kind of despair is really bad. The Lord does call some people dramatically.
And Pauls call was certainly very, very dramatic, and it was also his kind of preordination as well. I mean, it was his baptism. But not every call is that dramatic.
And so sometimes we have those dramatic calls and we rejoice in them. Sometimes we dont, and we rejoice in them as well. And I wouldnt say that Pauls conversion has to be typical. I mean, we have something like a conversion in Luther, too.
Maybe we could use Luther as our model, because it's kind of great Luther's tower experience, because he. How does he say it? He says, I was there hating God because of how I understood the word righteousness. And I was trying to understand the gospel. In romans chapter one, the righteous shall live by faith. And he says, I paid attention to the words, and I saw that the word righteousness was next to the word faith, which meant that that righteousness must be a promised righteousness, not a demanded righteousness. And so. And my heart was ripped open for heaven itself. I mean, it's just absolutely beautiful. So I don't know. It's fine. I mean, the Lord deals with each one of us in very, very different ways, and we can't try to make a shape of it, I guess.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: And that's part of the problem, right? Like, trying to put everyone into the same, like, everyone has to look like Paul with some kind of dramatic conversion, or everyone has to have this that happened up in New England, right, with the whole halfway covenant thing, right? Those kids were born into the church and raised in the church. Like, they had to, like, kind of weep and wail and cry and show that they had some kind of grand, convergent experience, or they weren't allowed to be full members of the church, basically, until they had that experience. And I. Well, not all of them had that experience like that dramatic experience. And so it caused a lot of damage in those churches when all of that happened. It's kind of similar thing now. Like, if you don't have a really dramatic story, like, I grew up in a christian home, you know, I don't ever remember a time ever not being told about Jesus. And I didn't grow up in a lutheran home, but I grew up in a baptist home, and I was told about Jesus from a very early age. I don't remember a time in my life where I wasn't going to church, where I wasn't a. A part of these things. And so from the, you know, from that perspective, I don't have this dramatic, crazy story. It's pretty boring. But God is faithful. Regardless of how we come into the kingdom and we did it. We don't have to try to make it sound more exciting or more interesting or more dramatic than it actually was. Like, it can just be, God was faithful. And that's an amazing story, that God was with you and faithful and you've known him your whole life is still an amazing story. If we'd see it rightly and learned to just to trust the word and not worry about making it, making our, the story ourselves, making it more interesting or more, uh, whatever. Trying to make it like some kind of movie where it's. Everyone's just like, wow, that's amazing. I've never hear anything like that. We don't have to have that.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: It's part of the, it's part of the evangelical problem is that, you know, I mean, they believe in the free will, but the will is not. It's free, but it needs to be manipulated. So it's not the isolated free will that's just kind of reasoning its way into faith.
It's the will that's out there, but it has to be pushed a certain way. And so the whole business is to push the will a certain way. And that is getting you ramped up into this emotional thing, and the testimony falls into that as well. And to say, look, I'm nothing.
Our preaching the word of God is not to manipulate, but to speak the Lord's word in a gentle way. And now the Holy Spirit will use the word.
So this, I don't know. So the whole testimony thing is, it's a bear trap of a question, isn't it? And so we have to, I think that there's a way that we can be as wise as serpents in this and gentle as doves, and try to see the person who's asking of us a testimony we can see that here's an opportunity to speak of the kindness of Christ and pray that the Lord would grant us that opportunity.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: A fitting way to end, because I am out of time. Also, you'll notice the phone didn't ring because I realized my new phone system here in my office has a do not disturb button, so everyone's welcome. So that rumor is true. I did find the do not disturb button.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: Well done. Thanks everyone for your questions. If you want to send them. I think we're. Well, I don't know. They're still probably going to my junk mail and I'm trying to forward them. Pastor pack. But if you go to Wolfmeal co contact, put the questions in the comments below and we'll keep in touch. God's peace be with.
