From the very beginning of our sin and separation from God, the Lord Himself provided the promise and solution to this most terrible of all problems.  It was the promise to send a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15) who would defeat the devil, and rescue and provide redemption from sin, death, and hell for our debt to God.  That promise was fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, who is called the Christ, because He is the anointed One of God.  Not only is Jesus a man, a full human being, but He is also the Lord God Himself in the flesh, the Second Person of the eternal, Blessed Trinity in the flesh.   The Lord Himself is our rescuer!   He is our Redeemer.  God, the one to whom we owed the debt, has in love provided the payment for our debt in the sending and suffering and death of His eternal, beloved Son, Jesus Christ, who is true God and true man.

 

This is what it means to have Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer.  He is the sacrificial payment for our debt to God by our sin, failure, disobedience, and selfishness in not fearing, loving, and trusting in God above all things or to love our neighbor as ourself.   By His suffering, bleeding, and death, Jesus Christ became our substitute in the debt we have earned for ourselves.  God says that He counts this as payment in full.  Jesus said just before breathing His last upon the cross 2,000 years ago, that, "It is finished."   All the debt has been paid for everyone in the world, all people of all time.  That means you!  This is the Gospel, the good news!

 

In vindication and acceptance of the Lord's sacrifice the Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead bodily on the third day.  The Lord did not simply intend to save our souls, but to save us in both body and soul.   The resurrection from the grave is essential to Christian belief because it shows that the Lord is true, keeps His promises, and has power over death and the grave.   Whoever believes (trusts) in Jesus as Savior and Redeemer has eternal life in body and soul by grace alone (completely free gift).  That's what the Christian message (Gospel) is all about and that's what the true and faithful Church is all about - proclaiming, delivering, and teaching that gospel message and giving that out properly in the Lord's sacraments (mysteries) that are both means (ways) of the Lord God giving out His grace and salvation.   It is the Lord, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, who works through these means of God's spoken and sacramental Gospel to create and nurture faith in our hearts that we trust in Christ.

 

The Holy Spirit proclaims our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, to us.  It is He who creates faith in Jesus and shows us that in Christ, God the Father, has also once again become our Father.  The Holy Spirit works through the gift of Holy Baptism, the washing of water with the Word, to create faith, bring repentance, adopt into God's family, the Church, and to give access to the divine name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which He puts upon us with the water of Holy Baptism.  

 

The call of God into the world, then, is to repent, and believe the Gospel.  In the earliest times of the church, the holy apostles of Christ preached to repent and believe in that good news of Christ our Redeemer, and receive Baptism for the remission of sins so that we should also then be given the gift of the Holy Spirit.  For this promise is for you and your children and as many whom the Lord our God will call.   So through baptizing and teaching all things of Christ the Church has the ongoing mandate from Christ our crucified, risen, and ascended Lord to make followers of Christ of all nations until the Lord Jesus appears again openly on the Last Day to judge the living and the dead. 

 

We seek to bring this gospel message of salvation to you that you may be baptized into Christ and know the peace and joy that comes in knowing Christ eternally as your Redeemer from sin and death and have fellowshiop with the Father and the Holy Spirit in Jesus, and so also then with His Body of believers, the Church.  

 

The Church rejoices, with eyes fixed upon Jesus, to worship Him eternally in joy, reverence, and awe.  For He is, even now, among us as the One who serves in His holy Word and Sacraments in the Divine Service.  The Church has acknowledged this through the ages as with teaching, reverence, and joyful anticipation of the Lord's return we seek Him where He has promised to be now hidden humbly in His means of grace in the fellowship of those who confess Him faithfully.  For the genuine Church is wherever the Gospel of Christ is purely preached and Christ's sacraments are given out the way He instructed them to be administered.  The people of the Church are sinners gathered around this forgiveness in Christ in contrition and repentance. 

 

Our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, is with us always to the very end of the age.  He has promised to be with us as surely as He is inseparable from His Word, joined to us in Holy Baptism, and as certainly as He is known in His very name.   We are no thrown to and fro by the theories of man, or the transient feelings of our own hearts, to know Christ is with us.  We have His humble signs of His true Word from Scripture, and His miraculous sacraments in Baptism and the Holy Supper.   There He points and says, "Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."   Even so, we pray that the Lord would appear again openly soon and we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

 

gloriachristi@gloriachristi.com