So, the issue is (sorry if I wasn't clear) that I believe the HS is within us prior to baptism. Yet, if I want to join this church I must knowingly embrace its doctrines. It seems to state that in baptism, one receives the HS... As if THEN...
To me, it seems that receiving the HS has been rolled into Baptism because it's mentioned in the same sentence in the Bible. It also seems as tho I'm told that statements of doctrine don't really mean what they are stating exactly, that they are meant to make us feel confidence and comfort in our salvation, but are we saying I can't take the statement exactly as stated to reflect actual Lutheran beliefs? Aren't statements meant to be exact and clear and concise.
I suppose during the baptism liturgy I have glossed over the words or thought they meant that we receive (not together) the HS and Baptism, both but not one because of the other.
Not until ournew Pastor has reiterated and clarified this to us, has it become a stalling moment for me.
There are certain matters which Lutherans simply accept are left up to God, and so we don't like to say "Something is this way, but never this way" unless there's a really good reason to do so. Which is why Lutherans will make a distinction between God's Ordered Means and God's Absolute Ability.
Martin Luther himself gives the example of Daniel's three companions in the fiery furnace as an example of this distinction. We know, from empirical evidence, that fire burns. It's what fire does, it's how fire operates in the natural world, and this is by God's ordered design. If I stick my hand into an open flame, I will get burned. And yet we have this story in which the Babylonians punish Daniel's companions for refusing to bow down to the image of Nebuchadnezzar by having them thrown into a furnace to be burned alive--and not only does the fire not burn them to death, it doesn't harm them at all, in fact they remain completely unsinged. Because by God's absolute power He chose, in that circumstance, to prevent the flames from harming them, in order to accomplish His purposes.
That God prevented the fire from harming His servants through His absolute power does not negate the ordinary, ordered means of fire--that fire burns. That Daniel's companions weren't burned does not mean that if I stick my hand in a fire I won't get burned (because I will).
So we have the ordinary and the extraordinary. We have what God has ordered as the ordinary, how things are ordered by His design; and we have God's absolute power which He may choose by His own prerogative as the Almighty Lord over all things.
Other examples would be that venomous snakes are, well, venomous--and yet when St. Paul crashed onto Malta and was bit by a venomous snake he was completely unharmed. This doesn't mean that I should go around picking up vipers, rattlesnakes, and asps--that's stupid. But yet God in this particular instance circumscribed the ordinary.
When we speak of God's ordered means, namely that God works through His Word and Sacraments, we are not placing some sort of limit upon God, but that God has ordered these for His particular purpose. Christ commissioned His Church to preach the word, and through the word we are given faith (Romans 10:17), likewise Christ commissioned His Church to go and baptize, attaching the promise of new birth to it (John 3:5), we see in the Scriptures these promises attached to Baptism: that by it we receive the Holy Spirit, have our sins forgiven, are united to Jesus Christ and His death, burial, and resurrection, etc. These promises have been attached to Baptism, meaning that all these things are most certainly true and the one who is baptized can be confident in God's promises here.
God has promised that our sins are forgiven, so we can say our sins are forgiven--because God said so.
This is the Ordered Means.
However, this does not mean that somehow God is limited. We can see, for example, the thief on the cross to whom Jesus said, "Today you will be with Me in Paradise." What did the thief do to earn this? Well, nothing. But Christ--God--gave His word to the thief, saying, "You will be with Me". We don't, on this basis, say that every criminal on death row is saved; we say that in this particular instance Christ spoke this word to this individual. What we can say, however, is that the same saving word which Christ proclaimed to the thief, is the selfsame word we have received in the preaching of the Gospel and in the administration of the Sacraments. So that it is truly Christ Himself who says to us, "That where I am, you will be also." (John 14:3)
We can be confident that we have received this, not on account of anything we have said or done, but on account of what God has said and Christ has done.
So what about those who have never heard the Gospel and received Baptism? The millions of people who have never heard the name of Christ throughout the ages? Do we therefore say they are hopelessly condemned? No, we say God knows, and that the God of mercy and justice who saves us because of His great love for us is the same God toward them. And so we don't speak as though we could know--but rather leave such matters in the hands of our most gracious and kind God, of whom it is written that He is "the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe" (1 Timothy 4:10).
It's not about who is "in" and who is "out"; it's about faithfully preaching the good news of Jesus Christ. Christ is our Savior; it's not about the things we do, say, think, or feel. It's about what Christ has done for us, and God's loving-kindness toward us and the whole world. Christ has accomplished the work, it is done and finished, and now this word goes forth, a word that we should proclaim boldly and without shame for "it is the power of God to save all who believe, the Jew first and also the Gentile; for by it the justice of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith.'" (Romans 1:16-17)
-CryptoLutheran
