"No matter what you did yesterday -- or failed to do -- and no matter what you will do tomorrow, God has forgiven you."
WELS's Meditations, March-May 2014, for Monday, 17 March 2014.
"Objectively speaking, without any reference to an individual sinner's attitude toward Christ's sacrifice, purely on the basis of God's verdict, every sinner, whether he knows it or not, whether he believes it or not, has received the status of saint."
WELS Kokomo Statements, JP Meyer, Ministers of Christ
"After Christ's intervention and through Christ's intervention God regards all sinners as guilt-free saints."
WELS Kokomo Statements, JP Meyer, Ministers of Christ
"When God reconciled the world to Himself through Christ, He individually pronounced forgiveness to each individual sinner whether that sinner ever comes to faith or not."
WELS Kokomo Statements, JP Meyer, Ministers of Christ
"At the time of the resurrection of Christ, God looked down in hell and declared Judas, the people destroyed in the flood, and all the ungodly, innocent, not guilty, and forgiven of all sin and gave unto them the status of saints."
WELS Kokomo Statements, taken from an earlier conflict over justification
“When Paul uses the word ‘reconciling’ here, [2 Corinthians 5:19] he clearly means that forgiveness of sins is really imputed to ‘the world.’"
Pope John the Malefactor, Lutheran Sentinel, 1996.
"This is very conveniently expressed by the terms objective and subjective justification. Objective justification is the act of God, by which he proffers pardon to all through Christ; subjective is the act of man, by which he accepts the pardon freely offered in the gospel. The former is universal, the latter not."
The Calvinist Leonard Woods translating the Halle Pietist Geoge Knappe, 1831.
There is not one for whose sin and death he did not die, whose sin and death he did not remove and obliterate on the cross...There is not one who is not adequately and perfectly and finally justified in Him. There is not one whose sin is not forgiven sin in Him, whose death is not a death which has been put to death in Him...There is not one for whom he has not done everything in His death and received everything in His resurrection from the dead.
(Karl Barth,Church Dogmatics, IV, 1, 638, cited with approval, Carl Braaten, Justification, p. 140.)
"For God has already forgiven you your sins 1800 years ago when He in Christ absolved all men by raising Him after He first had gone into bitter death for them. Only one thing remains on your part so that you also possess the gift. This one thing is--faith. And this brings me to the second part of today's Easter message, in which I now would show you that every man who wants to be saved must accept by faith the general absolution, pronounced 1800 years ago, as an absolution spoken individually to him."
C. F. W. Walther, The Word of His Grace, Sermon Selections, "Christ's Resurrection--The World's Absolution" Lake Mills: Graphic Publishing Company, 1978 p. 233. Brosamen, p. 138. Mark 16:1-8.
We proclaim boldly, “Jesus Saved,” past tense, finished, certain.
Jon Buchholz, WELS Convention Essay
"The justification of the human race indeed also ocurred, in respect of the acquisition, in one moment, in the moment in which Christ rose and was thus declared righteous; but in respect of the appropriation it still continues till the last day."
Jay Webber, quoting Halle Pietist with approval, Intrepid Lutherans
***
GJ - The statements above representation what Jay Webber, Jon Buchholz, and the Synodical Conference leaders believe or at least pretend to believe.
The hymn for the Emmaus Conference will be - I'd Rather Have Rambach -
to this tune -
C. F. W. Walther, The Word of His Grace, Sermon Selections, "Christ's Resurrection--The World's Absolution" Lake Mills: Graphic Publishing Company, 1978 p. 233. Brosamen, p. 138. Mark 16:1-8.
We proclaim boldly, “Jesus Saved,” past tense, finished, certain.
Jon Buchholz, WELS Convention Essay
"The justification of the human race indeed also ocurred, in respect of the acquisition, in one moment, in the moment in which Christ rose and was thus declared righteous; but in respect of the appropriation it still continues till the last day."
Jay Webber, quoting Halle Pietist with approval, Intrepid Lutherans
***
GJ - The statements above representation what Jay Webber, Jon Buchholz, and the Synodical Conference leaders believe or at least pretend to believe.
The hymn for the Emmaus Conference will be - I'd Rather Have Rambach -
to this tune -
- I’d rather have Rambach with silver and gold;
I’d rather be Pietist with riches untold;
I’d rather have Rambach with houses and lands;
I’d rather be led by the Halle U. band.- Refrain:
And to be the king of a vast domain
And be held in sin’s dread sway;
I’d rather have Rambach than anything
The Gospel affords today.
- Refrain:
- I’d rather have Spener with men’s applause;
I’d rather be faithful to UOJ's cause;
I’d rather have Rambach and worldwide fame;
I’d rather be true to Halle U's name. - They're fairer than roses or sauerkraut;
They're sweeter than Thrivent grants without doubt;
They're all that my Old Adam needs;
I’d rather have Rambach and let him lead.