God’s Word for You

Mark 14:50 The Holy Christian Church

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, February 11, 2024

50 Leaving him behind, they all fled.

At this moment, when hands were laid on Jesus and his disciples abandoned him, where was the Holy Christian Church? This is a question that Luther asked when he was recalling moments in the Old Testament when the ancient church of the faithful was reduced by sin, doubt, and disbelief. What was the remnant when Cain murdered Abel? How small was the church when Abraham was ready to give up on ever having a son with Sarah and produced Ishmael? How tiny was the remnant of the church when Rebekah helped Jacob to deceive Esau and Isaac and break the Ninth Commandment? But when Abel died, his parents and sisters were still living believers. When Abraham and Sarah were wrestling with their faith, ancient Eber was still preaching the gospel and repentance in the world. When Isaac was deceived, the roster of the true church was narrow indeed, but many miles away there were two sisters who would marry Jacob and be the mothers of the Israelites.

And so Luther asks: “What happened in Christ’s own time, when all the apostles fell away and he himself was denied and condemned by the whole people, and scarcely more than a Nicodemus, a Joseph (of Arimathea), and the thief on the cross were saved? Were these then called the People of God? They were the remnant of the people.” And Again: “Who knows but that the state of the Church of God throughout the whole course of the world from the beginning has always been such that some have been called ‘The People’ and ‘The saints of God’ who were not so, while other, a remnant in their midst, really were the People or the Saints, but were never called so” (The Bondage of the Will).

The true Holy Christian Church, the invisible church, is where Christ is preached and believed, where people gather around the Word and the Sacraments. “For where Christ is not preached, there is not the Holy Spirit to create, call, and gather the Christian Church, and outside it no one can come to the Lord Christ” (Large Catechism). Paul commands: “If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching… he understands nothing” (1 Timothy 6:3-4). And again, Paul commands Christians to mark and avoid those who teach or preach false doctrine (Romans 16:17).

Therefore the true church is one in which all its doctrines stick to the word of God; a false church is one which in one or more points departs from the teachings of the word of God. We don’t pass judgment on individual members of a false church, regarding their faith, but we must pass judgment on the public doctrines and confession of faith. The visible church has within it true believers (the invisible church) but may also have within it hypocrites and people who are in error. It is a matter of inevitability and a pattern of history that many of the ones in error will be leaders and ministers of straying churches, but that some true believers will be found among the ordinary Christians in their membership and flock, but many are lost: “My people have become lost sheep. Their shepherds have led them astray. They have turned them aside on the mountains. They have gone from mountain to hill. They have forgotten their resting place” (Jeremiah 50:6).

At times it will seem to some as if no one at all is left in the true church, as when Elijah cried out: “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty, but the Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too!” (1 Kings 19:14). But God is the one who knows and does not forget the sparrows in the trees and in the village streets (Luke 12:6). He also knows how many there are who put their faith in him (1 Kings 19:18).

Here in the Garden, faith was not shining very brightly. Jesus had foreseen: “You will all be trapped into falling away. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered’” (Mark 14:27; Zechariah 13:7).

Therefore, we should not despair when we discover to our shame that we have, in a moment of weakness, joined with the apostles who left Christ Jesus our Lord behind and fled. God has given us our time of grace in the world to be called back. He does not want us to wander alone like a demon in the arid places seeking rest but finding none (Mathew 12:43). He wants us back under his wings, and so he goes out calling us back, with law and gospel, to stop our fleeing, admit our wandering, and to hear and embrace his gracious words: “You are forgiven.” And for some, the words even go on to say, “Feed my lambs; feed my sheep” (John 21:15,17). A sinner recalled to faith does not have a special name or title apart from Christian. For we are all sinners recalled from unbelief or error, to faith. We are thrilled to be called, once again, humble members of the Holy Christian Church.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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