The Glue of Harmony

After all, the Lord chose Judas too, among the apostles, and afterwards Judas betrayed the Lord. Even so, the faith and the steadiness of the apostles did not fail because Judas the traitor dropped out of their company. It is the same in the case before us: the holiness and the standing of the confessors are not cut down all at once because the faith of some of them has broken. The blessed apostle Paul writes this way in his letter: “What if some of them have fallen away from the faith? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God of no effect? Certainly not. God is true, though every man is a liar.” The greater and better part of the confessors stand firm in the strength of their faith and in the truth of the Lord’s law and discipline. They do not walk out of the church’s peace, because they remember that it was in the church that they received grace, by God’s gracious regard for them. And by that very thing their faith earns higher praise: they have separated themselves from the faithlessness of men who once stood beside them in the fellowship of confession, and have pulled back from the contagion of the crime. Lit by the true light of the good news, shone upon with the Lord’s own clean white brightness, they deserve as much praise for keeping the peace of Christ as they won victory in their fight with the devil. [a]

Dear brothers, this is what I want, and I work and plead for it just as hard: that if it can be done, not one of the brothers should be lost, and that our Mother may hold in her glad arms the one body of a people at one with itself. But if sound advice cannot call certain ringleaders of splits and inventors of quarrels back to the road of salvation, because they stay in their blind and stubborn madness — then the rest of you, whether you were caught because you are plain-minded, or drawn in by a mistake, or taken in by some clever and misleading trick, untangle yourselves from the nets of deceit, free your straying feet from their wrong turns, and recognize again the straight line of the heavenly road. The apostle’s own solemn word is this: “We command you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to withdraw from every brother who walks out of order, and not according to the tradition they received from us.” And again he says: “Let no one deceive you with empty words; for because of these things the anger of God comes on the sons of disobedience. So do not be partners with them.” We have to withdraw — or rather, we have to run — from people who fall away. Otherwise a man who keeps company with those who live wickedly, and who goes on walking in ways of error and of sin, will stray off the true road himself and be found in the same guilt. God is one, and Christ is one, and his church is one, and the faith is one, and the people are joined together into the solid unity of one body by the glue of harmony. Unity cannot be cut in two. One body cannot be split by breaking up its frame, or torn to pieces with its insides wrenched apart. Nothing that has come out of the womb can live and breathe once it is detached; it loses the substance that kept it alive. [d]

The Holy Spirit warns us and says: “Who is the man who wants life, and longs to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; look for peace and go after it.” A son of peace ought to look for peace and go after it. A man who knows the bond of love and loves it ought to keep his tongue away from the evil of quarreling. Among his divine commands and his health-giving teachings, the Lord added this one when his suffering was already close: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” He gave us this as an inheritance, and he promised that all the gifts and rewards he spoke of would come by way of keeping peace. If we are heirs together with Christ, let us stay in the peace of Christ. If we are sons of God, we ought to be peacemakers. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.” God’s sons ought to be peacemakers: gentle in heart, plain in speech, agreed in their affections, tied faithfully to one another by being of one mind. [h]

This one mind was what held among the apostles in the beginning, and this is how the new people of believers kept the Lord’s commands and held on to their love. Divine Scripture proves it, where it says, “The crowd of those who believed were of one heart and one soul.” And again: “All of these kept on with one mind in prayer, together with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” That is why their prayers had effect; that is why they could be confident of getting from the Lord’s mercy whatever they asked for. [j]

But among us being of one mind has shrunk exactly as far as open-handed giving has fallen away. In those days they would put houses and farms up for sale, and, so as to store up treasure for themselves in heaven, they brought the money to the apostles to be handed out for the use of the poor. Now we do not even give a tenth out of what we have inherited; and where our Lord tells us to sell, we buy instead and add to our store. That is how the strength of faith has withered in us; that is how the vigor of believers has gone slack. And so the Lord, looking ahead to our own times, says in his Gospel: “When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earth?” We can see that what he foretold has happened. There is no faith in the fear of God, in the law of righteousness, in love, in work. Nobody gives a thought to the fear of what is coming. Nobody takes to heart the day of the Lord, and the anger of God, and the punishments coming on unbelievers, and the everlasting torments settled for those with no faith. What our conscience would be afraid of if it believed, it is not afraid of, because it does not believe at all. If it believed, it would be on guard; and if it were on guard, it would get away. [l]

Dear brothers, let us rouse ourselves as much as we can. Let us break the sleep of the old slackness we have lived in, and stay wide awake to watch for the Lord’s commands and to do them. Let us be what he himself told us to be: “Let your belts be fastened and your lamps lit, and be yourselves like men waiting for their Lord to come home from the wedding, so that when he comes and knocks they can open to him. Blessed are those servants whom their Lord finds awake when he comes.” We ought to be belted and ready, so that when the day of setting out arrives it does not find us weighed down and tangled up. Let our light shine in good works, and burn in such a way that it carries us out of the night of this world into the daylight of everlasting brightness. Let us always wait, careful and on guard, for the Lord’s sudden arrival, so that when he knocks our faith is awake and takes from the Lord the wages of its watching. If these commands are kept, if these warnings and instructions are held to, the devil’s trickery cannot catch us asleep. We will reign with Christ in his kingdom, servants who stayed awake. [n]