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The following reading from the CONCORDIA edition of the Book of Concord is for the Matthew 5:21-37 for the Epiphany 6, series A, February 16, 2014. It is from Apology, Article XXI, pages 203-204. The Scriptures testify that it is God who blesses, forgives, gives life, increases, heals, establishes, comforts, sustains and only God gives the growth. Why would we pray to anyone else? Click here for the reading formatted for the back of a standard CPH bulletin. Pastor Doug May
We have the command to call upon Christ: "Come to Me, all who labor." (Matthew 11:28) The root of Jesse, shall stand as a signal for the peoples —of Him shall the nations inquire. (Isaiah 11:10) May our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father … comfort your hearts and establish them. (2 Thess. 2:16-17) What example can the adversaries produce from the Scriptures about the invocation of saints? The second requirement for an atonement maker is that his merits are shown to make satisfaction for other people. They are divinely given to others, so that through them, just as by their own merits, other people may be regarded righteous. Christ's merits are given to us so that, when we believe in Him, we may be regarded righteous by our confidence in Christ's merits as though we had merits of our own. Confidence in the divine promise, and likewise in Christ's merits, should be promoted when we pray. For we should be truly confident, both that for Christ's sake we are heard and that by His merits we have a reconciled Father. The adversaries ask us first to invoke the saints, although they have neither God's promise nor a command nor an example from Scripture. Yet they incite greater confidence in the saints' mercy than in Christ's mercy, although Christ asked us to come to Him. (paragraphs 18-21)
These are excerpts from the Book of Concord.
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