For a little over a year now, I’ve been using these newsletter articles to go through the Augsburg Confession. This is one of the documents that, according to our church constitution, we receive and adhere to. And since we subscribe to it in our constitution, it’s valuable for us to know what it says. Of course, if there’s anything in it that gives you pause, I invite you to ask me about it. It’s better to question it than just keep quiet and pretend you agree.
The purpose of the Augsburg Confession, along will all of our creeds and confessional documents, is not to replace Scripture, not to be elevated above it, and not to be elevated next to it. The purpose of all these documents is to support the teaching of Scripture by holding us to it. Without creeds and confessions, we could say about any passage of the Bible, “That’s just not how I understand it,” making the interpretation of Scripture entirely subjective. Every creed and confession was written to hold us to Scripture.
Another purpose of the Augsburg Confession was to demonstrate (against the slander of the Roman Catholic Church) that the Lutheran reformers were holding to the same doctrine that had been taught throughout the history of the Christian Church, especially by the apostles of Jesus and the Early Church Fathers. They were not teaching anything new. The article on Christ’s return is a good example of this. Their teaching on Christ’s return was clear, simple, biblical, and historical:
“Our churches teach that at the end of the world Christ will appear for judgment and will raise all the dead. He will give the godly and elect eternal life and everlasting joys, but he will condemn ungodly people and the devils to be tormented without end” (Augsburg Confession, Article XVII, 1-3).
You’ll notice that their summary is a lot like the creeds, where we confess that Jesus will return, he will judge all mankind, he will raise the dead, and he will give everlasting life to those who trust in him. It’s also very short. The topic of Christ’s return and the end of the world is very intriguing, and some explanations of it can be very complicated. But the biblical teaching, at least when we focus on what we really know, is quite simple. Consider some of the main passages on the subject (Matt. 24:29-31; 25:31-46; John 5:25-29; 1 Cor. 15:50-56; 1 Thess. 4:13-18). When we remember that the signs of the end are not given to us so we can set a time, but to assure our hearts that Jesus is coming, we can focus on what Scripture clearly teaches: Jesus is coming again, he will raise all the dead, he will judge all mankind, he will condemn the wicked, and he will bring his believers into his new creation.
There are a couple false teachings that were arising at the time, and the Lutherans also distinguished themselves from those. One was the idea “that there will be an end to the punishments of condemned men and devils” (Augsburg Confession, Article XVII, 4). This idea of “annihilationism” supposes that after a certain time, those souls will cease to exist, but this is not the way the Bible describes the torment of hell (Is. 66:24; Mark 9:48).
They also rejected the notion that, when Jesus returns, he will establish a political kingdom on this earth where he would rule, for a time, over the righteous and the unrighteous together. But this ignores the clear teaching that when Jesus returns, he will judge the righteous and the wicked and separate them forever (Matt. 25:31-46; John 5:25-29). There will be no mixed kingdom.
The return of Christ is so intriguing that sometimes we want it to be more complicated. We want to try to figure out when, exactly, he will come. But God has not given us to know that. Instead, he has revealed these truths to comfort us. In the midst of our sufferings and trials in this life, we can be assured that Jesus is coming, and he will make all things right.
The peace of Christ be with you all,
Pastor Dan Antal