Who is God?
We believe and confess God as
three-in-one (Trinity):
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Who is God,
the Father?
We believe God, the Father,
created heaven and earth and all that exists seen and unseen. The Father
created us to be in loving relationship with Him and to live with one another
in harmony, peace (shalom) and active love.
Who is Jesus?
We believe Jesus is God’s
Son, sent by God to reconcile us to the Father. Through his life and his being Jesus
broke the shackles of sinfulness and thus restored the relationship of love and
trust the God intended to exist between God and his children. Though Jesus
Christ is eternal, with God at the beginning of time, Jesus was at once truly
God and truly human, born on earth of a virgin, by the power of the Holy
Spirit.
The man, Jesus of Nazareth,
lived and died in Palestine during the governorship of the Roman administrator,
Pontius Pilate; we believe Him to be the Messiah (Christ) chosen by God to show
God’s love for the world. He is God, yet with all the limitations of being
human. His relationship to God, however, was not one of sin but rather of
perfect obedience to the Father’s will. For the sake of a sinful world, Jesus
was condemned to death on the cross.
But death could not contain
Him. On the third day after his execution, the day Christians observe as
Easter, Jesus appeared among His followers as the one whom God raised up, the
living Lord. By this great victory God has declared the Good News of
reconciliation and gives us the promise of eternal life with God. The distance
between us and our Creator has been bridged. Christ is alive today, and with us
as we gather in His name, fully present to us in Holy Communion and present as
the Holy Spirit empowers us in the covenant of Baptism and interceding for us
with the Father.
Who is the
Holy Spirit?
We believe the Holy Spirit
enlivens the Church, giving it life and unifying us in a common mission. The
Holy Spirit sanctifies or matures us in faith and is present in our hearts from
our baptism into Christ, guiding, encouraging, and motivating us to live lives
that please and honor God.
What is the
Church?
We believe the Church is the
living body of Christ, created on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). The Church has
the same ‘DNA’ as Jesus Christ in that the Church is in the world in the same
way as Jesus Christ – announcing the Good News of God’s coming kingdom, or
reign; bringing healing and restoration; preaching, with deeds as well as
words; and teaching all that Christ has commanded us.
The Lord gave a Great
Commandment to the disciples, to “love the Lord your God with all your heart
and soul and mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark
12:30-31); and He also gave the Great Commission to the disciples, to ‘go and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have
commanded you’ “(Matthew 28)” and “I am
with you always to the end of the age”
This succinctly defines the
mission of the Church.
What does it
mean to be a ‘Lutheran’ Christian?
It means we are in the
theological lineage of Martin Luther, a 16th century Augustinian
monk and professor of theology in Germany whose questioning of Roman church
practices, whose translation of the New Testament into German and whose
inflammatory writings regarding the only source of salvation as being God’s
undeserved grace in Jesus Christ, accessible to all with no need of intermediaries,
sparked what’s known as the Reformation. Emphasize theology (understanding of
God) as a theology, of the Cross of Christ rather than receiving God’s grace
for our own glorification on earth.
From the Reformation came the
Protestant church movement. The Lutheran heritage is one of accepting (through
the intervening power of the Holy Spirit) Jesus Christ and his suffering and
dying as saving us from death and assuring us eternal life; of grace as a free
gift and our acceptance of that gift a result of faith bestowed by the Holy
Spirit; of one Baptism as a cleansing from sin and entry into the Christian
church; of Christians as all having a calling and being part of a ‘priesthood
of all believers’; of the Lord’s Supper being a means of grace, giving comfort,
peace and the forgiveness of sin and an event in which Christ himself is truly
present, as Luther said, ‘in, with, and under; the sacramental elements of
bread and wine.
About the
Sacraments;
The Lutheran tradition
celebrates two sacraments, Baptism and Holy Communion. A sacrament is a means
of conveying of God’s grace to us that; is commanded by Christ using an earthly
element. Leading followers of Jesus, thru the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in
the way of the cross laying down our lives in love and service for our
neighbors in obedience to God.
