#20- The Power, Right and Authority to Marry

18 For one thing, it is taught among us with regard to those who desire to marry that all those who are not suited for celibacy have the power, right, and authority to marry, for vows cannot nullify God’s order and command. 19 God’s command in 1 Cor. 7:2 reads, “Because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” 20 It is not alone God’s command that urges, drives, and compels us to do this, but God’s creation and order also direct all to marriage who are not endowed with the gift of virginity by a special act of God. This appears from God’s own words in Gen. 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

(Apology XXVII, Tappert, p. 73).

Theology Summary Bible Class Pt. 39: Kingdom of Glory

The subjects of the kingdom of glory are the same as that for the kingdom of grace–believers and holy angels.  The kingdom of grace is governed by means of the Word and sacraments administered by the pastoral office.  The subjects of the kingdom of grace are translated into the kingdom of glory either at death or on the last day.  The kingdom of glory is ruled by the Triune God directly. There is a difference in the mode of knowledge and conditions of their members.  In the kingdom of grace, believers receive by faith through the Word the revealed knowledge of God, while in the kingdom of glory believers experience the beatific vision of the glory of God. While in the kingdom of grace believers experience cross and tribulation, but in the heavenly kingdom will share in Christ’s glory.

Handout 1: The-Third-Genus-King-p25-26-only.pdf
Handout 2: Kingdoms-Definitions.pdf

#19- Parents Punish Evil in the Place of God

179 You shall not kill.”  180 We have now dealt with both the spiritual and the civil government, that is, divine and paternal authority and obedience. In this commandment we leave our own house and go out among our neighbors to learn how we should conduct ourselves individually toward our fellow men. Therefore neither God nor the government is included in this commandment, yet their right to take human life is not abrogated. 181 God has delegated his authority of punishing evil-doers to civil magistrates in place of parents; in early times, as we read in Moses, parents had to bring their own children to judgment and sentence them to death. Therefore what is forbidden here applies to private individuals, not to governments.

182 This commandment is simple enough. We hear it explained every year in the Gospel, Matthew 5, where Christ himself explains and summarizes it: We must not kill, either by hand, heart, or word, by signs or gestures, or by aiding and abetting. It forgives anger except, as we have said, to persons who occupy the place of God, that is, parents and rulers. Anger, reproof, and punishment are the prerogatives of God and his representatives, and they are to be exercised upon those who transgress this and the other commandments. (Fifth Commandment –  Large Catechism -Tappert, p. 389).

Theology Summary Bible Class, Pt. 38: Kingdom of the devil

The kingdom of the devil is a kingdom of unbelief governed by the devil himself, who is a liar and murderer. The devil has not created anything, but only seeks by deception to get people to deny and/or misuse God’s gracious gifts. Revelation 12:9 says that he is “called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” According to Ephesians 2:1-3, even those later came to believe “were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.”

The Lutheran Confessions explain that “the punishment and penalty of original sin, which God has imposed upon the children of Adam and upon original sin…” includes not only “death, eternal damnation, and also other bodily and spiritual, temporal and eternal miseries…” but also “the tyranny and dominion of the devil, so that human nature is subject to the kingdom of the devil and has been surrendered to the power of the devil, and is held captive under his away, who stupefies [fascinates] and leads astray many a great, learned man in the world by means of dreadful error, heresy, and other blindness, and otherwise rushes men into all sorts of crime” (FC, Ep. I. Original Sin 13).

Thankfully, “… Christ was given to us to remove both these sins and these punishments, and to destroy the kingdom of the devil, sin and death…” (Apology, II 50). “For human nature is far too weak to be able by its own powers to resist the devil, who holds as captives all who have not been freed through faith. There is need of the power of Christ against the devil, namely, that, inasmuch as we know that for Christ’s sake we are heard, and have the promise, we may pray for the governance and defense of the Holy Ghost, that we may neither be deceived and err, nor be impelled to undertake anything contrary to God’s will. [Otherwise we should, every hour, fall into error and abominable vices.] Just as Ps. 68, 18 teaches: Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts for man. For Christ has overcome the devil, and has given to us the promise and the Holy Ghost, in order that, by divine aid, we ourselves also may overcome. And 1 John 3, 8: For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (Ap IV, III, 17-18).

Handout 1: The-Third-Genus-King-p21-24.pdf
Handout 2: Kingdoms-Definitions.pdf
Handout 3: King-Chart-Throughout-Time.pdf