Today we share the same Bible with the worst of the sects. The true church is gathered not around Scripture, but around the rightly understood, the purely and correctly interpreted Bible. It is the task of the church's confession to express the right understanding of Scripture which the Church has reached. Thus pastors are helped to proclaim only the pure doctrine, and congregations are protected against the whims of the preacher and the misinterpretation of Scripture. In this sense the church's confession is servant of the Word. -- Hermann Sasse, *We Confess: Jesus Christ* p. 84.
A serious reading of 1 Timothy will
ReplyDeleteemphasize that an overseer/pastor
must be able to teach. This means
that the pastor has the teaching
responsibility to exhort sound
doctrine from the truth of Holy
Scripture and to refute those who
contradict true doctrine.
"If anyone teaches a different
doctrine and does not agree with the
sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ...he is conceited and
understands nothing." 1 Tim 6:3,4
The landscape of American Christianity is littered with conceited pastor/teachers with a serious lack of understanding....
ReplyDeleteHerman Sasse understood the value and the purpose of the historic teachings of the Church. I believe the American evangelical wasteland is creating, unknowingly, a hunger that the Church's confession is more than able to satisfy. What a wonderful period it is to be an orthodox, confessional Lutheran in America.