Beginning later this year (Fall 2010, September), St. Mark Lutheran Church will undertake a study of the doctrine of God’s eternal foreknowledge and election based on the Formula of Concord’s 11th Article. Over the next few weeks, leading up to that study, we will present the article from the Solid Declaration (the long version).
41 Few receive the Word and follow it. Most despise the Word and will not come to the wedding [Matthew 22:3–6]. The cause for this contempt for the Word is not God’s foreknowledge, but the perverse human will. The human will rejects or perverts the means and instrument of the Holy Spirit, which God offers it through the call. It resists the Holy Spirit, who wants to be effective, and who works through the Word, as Christ says: “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matthew 23:37).
42 Many “hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away” (Luke 8:13). The reason is not that God was unwilling to grant grace for perseverance to those in whom He “began a good work,” for that is contrary to St. Paul (Philippians 1:6). The reason is that they willfully turn away again from the holy commandment, grieve and embitter the Holy Spirit, involve themselves again in the world’s filth, and redecorate their hearts as homes for the devil. For them their last situation is worse than the first. (See 2 Peter 2:10–20; [Ephesians 4:30;] Hebrews 10:26; [Luke 11:24–26].) Read More…








