WHAT’S A LUTHERAN
I am grateful to be a Lutheran, one of 72 million Lutherans world-wide
LET ME TELL YOU WHY
As a Lutheran, my starting point is the GOSPEL – the Good News that God loves me more than I will ever understand.
I see God’s great love demonstrated clearly in the life of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus gave up his life and died on a cross as a payment for my sin. Jesus’ sinless life and death bring me into a right relationship with God, something I can never achieve by myself.
Lutherans take this Good News seriously. Our central belief is that we are put right with God completely by the grace of God, his undeserved loving kindness. We receive this through faith in Jesus Christ (not by our own good works, the things we ourselves do). This focus on the Gospel is the reason for my church’s existence and the centre of my worship and my life.
The book called the Bible is very important to me because it is the word of God. This means it is more than a religious textbook, much more. I like to think of it as God’s ‘personal letter’ to me. God makes himself known to me in His written Word. I read and hear of the love of God in Christ, of the history of God’s people, of the will of God for all people and of the kind of life He wants for you and me. God’s word to me arouses faith in God within me and builds it up.
With other Lutherans I am serious about my commitment to the Word of God, wanting continually to learn from it, live by it and share its great message of Good News with others.
Along with all other Christians, I believe there is only one God, the Triune God. The Bible clearly talks of three persons in this one God, who are equally powerful and equally eternal: God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit. Christians express this truth about who God is by calling God The Holy Trinity.
The Triune God is too great for me to understand, but I accept the mystery of God the Three-in-One and I marvel at what God in love has done and continues to do for me.
Jesus is truly God and he is also truly human. He freely gave up is life to deal with the sin in the world, including my sin. His self-sacrifice on the cross reconciles the Father to me and to others who have faith in him. Three days after his death, Jesus came alive again in order to show that he has power over death, Satan, and hell. Now he rules over all things.
Jesus promises that he will come again as the judge of all people, but until that day, he sends the Holy Spirit into my heart to give me faith and to comfort and defend me against the devil and the power of sin.
I believe this Jesus is my Lord and my God, yet he is also my closest Friend who I talk to when I pray. He promises he will be with me always.