Lutheran Witness: February 2017

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From the President: How to Pray the Ten Commandments

From the editor

If we could anthropomorphize the Ten Commandments, we’d likely pat them on the head and pinch their cheeks and send them off to play, not unlike our Aunt Martha used to do on our birthdays. But God’s Law isn’t cute or trite or optional. It’s real, and so is His wrath when we fail to keep it.

This month, we walk through the commandments—one at a time—to better understand what each one means. In doing so, we are reminded that those commands were not simply meant for the children of Israel but that they are demanded of us today as well.

We also debunk the prevailing idea that the Law is bad and the Gospel is good, even as we offer ways you can share the goodness of God’s Law—speaking the truth in love—with those who do not believe.

From swearing to coveting, we repent, we pray and we remind one another, as the Rev. Adam DeGroot explains, that Jesus alone “came to fulfill the perfect Law of God by His perfect obedience, by His innocent suffering and death.”

Adriane Heins, Managing Editor
The Lutheran Witness