The Church is the People of God, the mystical Body of Christ, and Temple of the Holy Spirit as constituted by the means of grace. The means of grace create and sustain the Church because they contain the promise of the gospel. This gospel, then, creates and maintains faith. The means of grace create faith because Jesus Christ, who is the living and eternal Word of God, is present in there in the power of the Spirit. Just as in the beginning the Word of God in the power of the Spirit called the original creation into existence (Gen. 1), so too, the same Word of God and Holy Spirit bring about a new creation in the life and person of Jesus (Jn. 1, 2 Cor. 5:17).
Lutherans have historically divided the means of grace into the categories of the Word and the Sacraments. For example, Lutheran theologian Robert Kolb suggests essentially four distinct forms of the Word of God: Christ, Scripture, the proclamation of the Church, and the sacraments.1 Nevertheless, there are certain difficulties with the two-fold division between Word and Sacrament. First, the risen Jesus is equally present in the power of the Spirit in both the Word and the Sacraments. Therefore, the same word of the gospel spoken through the preaching office is also spoken in the sacraments, although in a different manner [as discussed later].
Secondly, God addresses humans through both visible words and auditory words. As Hermann Sasse observed: “The sacrament is the verbum visibile (visible Word); the Word is the sacramentum audibile, the audible and heard sacrament.”2 All creatures are God’s visible words. No visible word lacks an auditory word attached to it by God. At minimum, God has attached the word “very good” to all his creatures. Likewise, God never gives an auditory word apart from a visible word. The auditory word either refers to the visible word or is attached to it as law or promise. Hence, the strict division of proclamation and teaching as bare auditory words, and sacraments as auditory words united with physical objects is not fully possible.
For this reason, in the next two chapters, we will speak of the Word of God and the Sacraments in tandem with one another as differing means of grace. Both the Word and Sacraments are the means by which God speaks the gospel to believers. Martin Luther’s Smalkald Articles include what is probably the best summary of the means of grace. Here, Luther discusses the five means God uses to inculcate the gospel: the preaching of the Word of God, the office of the keys/confession and absolution, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and words of mutual consolation among believers.3
God is superabundantly rich [and liberal] in His grace [and goodness]. First, through the spoken Word by which the forgiveness of sins is preached … in the whole world; which is the peculiar office of the Gospel. Secondly, through Baptism. Thirdly, through the holy Sacrament of the Altar. Fourthly, through the power of the keys, and also through the mutual conversation and consolation of brethren, Matt. 18:20
(Smalkald Articles III:4)
God’s grace in Christ flows to us through these five streams. Indeed, these five means of grace may be likened to the five Wounds of Christ (hands, feet, side) in that they counteract the demands and condemnation of the law as represented by the five books of Moses. [In this chapter], we will discuss the first means of grace, namely the ministry of the Word of God as a means of grace in the midst of the Church.
- Robert Kolb, The Christian Faith: A Lutheran Exposition (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1993), 184-185. ↩︎
- Hermann Sasse, “Word and Sacrament: Preaching and the Lord’s Supper,” in We Confess: The Sacraments, 24. ↩︎
- SA III.4; CT, 493. ↩︎
From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).
Cover image from Brian Williams, “On the Five Wounds of Christ,” Liturgy Guy: Life, Liturgy, and the Pursuit of Holiness, October 22, 2022, accessed June 7, 2024, https://liturgyguy.com/2022/10/20/on-the-five-wounds-of-christ/.
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