The Anglo Lutheran Perambulator

Theology

As you can probably guess, I am a Lutheran Christian, specifically a member of the Lutheran Church - Canada. I grew up in the Free Methodist Church, before my family began attending a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, and then an Evangelical Free Church where they still attend. I began looking deeper into my own faith, and ended up finding a number of inconsistencies between the evangelical faith of my family and the traditional faith of the Christian church through the centuries. I started reading through the confessions and creeds of different denominations, and found the Book of Concord to be the most consistent with what is find in the Bible.

Here are some theology websites I really like:

December 13, 2025 13:30

Today I've been thinking about the grammar of salvation; recently I attended a Christmas party with my family, and the main speaker read through the story of salvation, beginning to end, from a more evangelical slant. In their telling they emphasized that works, baptism, and good things we do don't save us, only belief that Jesus died for our sin can save us. It got me thinking back to my elementary school education, and the difference between active and passive verbs. If I ask "How is Timmy saved?", or "How does Timmy receive salvation?", the Lutheran and evangelical answers would be fairly different. Reducing them to their simplest forms, I believe we would get:

In the first example, the verb "believes" is an active verb; it refers to the subject, communicating that Timmy is doing something.

In the second example, the verb "is" is a passive verb; it is describing something happening to Timmy, or something that has been done to Timmy. If we were to complete the sentence, it might look like "Timmy is baptized by a pastor.", meaning that the pastor is the one doing the action.

Timmy doesn't baptize himself, or do any action that leads to his salvation. In Titus 3:5 we are told "He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit"; God saves us Himself, using the pastors hands to wash us through baptism.

Good works is often reduced to the idea of following commandments, or doing good things, but when we say we aren't saved because of our good works, we mean that there is nothing we can do to merit salvation. In the phrase "Timmy believes." Timmy is doing an action, as in the phrase "Timmy gave his life to Christ.", or "Timmy repented of his sins.". Each of these phrases makes Timmy the actor in his own salvation, Timmy does something to merit his salvation; be it believing, repenting, or confessing his faith, these are all actions, or works.

What then is the answer to the question "How are we saved?"? "Timmy is baptized.", or more fully "Timmy is baptized by God through the hands of the pastor". This is not to exclude faith, for both Lutherans and evangelicals would agree that we are saved by grace through faith; but we see in verses like Philippians 1:29 and Ephesians 2:8 that faith is not something that comes from ourselves, but something that is gifted to us, through God's Word and Sacrament. If faith is a human's decision, it is a work, and that cannot save us. Faith is a gift given by God, that we passively receive.

I would finish with the thought that the language commonly used by evangelicals can imply that we are saved through an act of our own, and this is detrimental. We are not active in our initial salvation, instead, we passively receive faith and baptism from God. Baptismal salvation is not works-based salvation, but the idea that our choice merits salvation is. When you ask yourself how one gets saved, are you active (the actor in your salvation), or passive (the recipient of your salvation), in your answer?

Titus 3:4-7 "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life."