St. Mark's Second Evangelical Lutheran Church
8 Storm Ave., Hudson, NY 12534
Rev. Dan Cohn
Sunday Service at 9:30 AM
Christmas Eve Service at 7:00 PM
Christmas Day Service at 9:30 AM
Our Beliefs
About Scripture
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod accepts the Scriptures as the inspired and inerrant Word of God, and the LCMS subscribes unconditionally to all the symbolical books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as a true and unadulterated statement and exposition of the Word of God.
We teach that the Holy Scriptures differ from all other books in the world in that they are the Word of God. They are the Word of God because the holy men of God who wrote the Scriptures wrote only that which the Holy Ghost communicated to them by inspiration, 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21
We accept the Lutheran Confessions as articulated in the Book of Concord of 1580 because they are drawn from the Word of God, and on that account we regard their doctrinal content as a true and binding exposition of Holy Scripture and as authoritative for all pastors, congregations and other rostered church workers of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
About Baptism
Lutherans believe that the Bible teaches that a person is saved by God’s grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
The Bible tells us that such “faith comes by hearing” (Rom. 10:17). Jesus Himself commands Baptism and tells us that Baptism is water used together with the Word of God (Matt. 28:19-20). Because of this, we believe that Baptism is one of the miraculous means of grace (another is God’s Word as it is written or spoken), through which God creates and/or strengthens the gift of faith in a person’s heart (see Acts 2:38; Acts 22:16; 1 Peter 3:21; Gal. 3:26-27; Rom. 6:1-4; Col. 2:11-12; 1 Cor. 12.13).
We believe this because the Bible says that infants can believe (Matt. 18:6) and that new birth (regeneration) happens in Baptism (John 3:5-7; Titus 3:5-6). The infant’s faith cannot yet, of course, be verbally expressed or articulated by the child, yet it is real and present all the same (see e.g., Acts 2:38-39; Luke 1:15; 2 Tim. 3:15).
Lutherans do not believe that only those baptized as infants receive faith. Faith can also be created in a person's heart by the power of the Holy Spirit working through God's (written or spoken) Word.
Depending on the situation, therefore, Lutherans baptize people of all ages from infancy to adulthood.
The LCMS does not believe that Baptism is ABSOLUTELY necessary for salvation. All true believers in the Old Testament era were saved without baptism. Mark 16:16 implies that it is not the absence of Baptism that condemns a person but the absence of faith, and there are clearly other ways of coming to faith by the power of the Holy Spirit (reading or hearing the Word of God).
It is not a mere “ritual” or “symbol,” but a powerful means of grace by which God grants faith and the forgiveness of sins.
About Communion
In Communion, do we commune with the sacrificed body and blood of Jesus, or do we commune with the resurrected body and blood of Jesus?
ANSWER: The answer to your question is that we receive in, with, and under the bread and wine the true body and blood of Christ shed on the cross, Jesus Christ Who is now risen and ascended and sits at the right hand of God the Father.
He is the same Christ, and when he gave us the Sacrament, as the Lutheran Confessions affirm, "he was speaking of his true, essential body, which he gave into death for us, and of his true, essential blood, which was poured out for us on the tree of the cross for the forgiveness of sins" (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VII, 49).
In the Sacrament, our Confessions further teach the same Jesus who died is present in the Sacrament, although not in exactly the same way he was corporeally present when he walked bodily on earth.
With Luther, the Formula of Concord speaks of "the incomprehensible, spiritual mode of presence according to which he neither occupies nor yields space but passes through everything created as he wills ... He employed this mode of presence when he left the closed grave and came through closed doors, in the bread and wine in the Supper ..." [FC SD VII, 100; emphasis added]
Doctrine - Frequently Asked Questions - The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (lcms.org)
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