The uplifting expression of faith and joy at Christ’s second coming in “The Bridegroom Soon Will Call Us” (LSB 514) by Johann Walter and Michael Praetorius reminds us that there is meaningful history in so many of our great Lutheran hymns.
Simply put, the kingdom of the right is the Church, both in earth and heaven. In Luther’s On Temporal Authority, the reformer refers to this as “the kingdom of God.”
Since the twentieth century, Lutherans have spoken about a “two-kingdoms” doctrine to work out the relationship between church and state.
Luther’s Reformation hymn, “Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word” (LSB 655) is one of his best known compositions. When it was published in 1542, it appeared with the subtitle, “A Children’s Hymn, to be Sung Against the Two Archenemies of Christ and His Holy Church, the Pope and Turk.”[1]
Books are like buildings. Think of them as constructed with words and thoughts rather than with bricks and mortar.
Luther said, “The cross alone is our theology.” Another way to say this is Solus Christus, or “Christ alone” saves us.
In 1523 Martin Luther wrote his first hymn for congregational use, “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice” (LSB 556). It appears as the first hymn in the first published collection of Lutheran hymns, Etlich Cristlich lider of 1523/24.
Our hymnal is a treasury of devotions. Although we mainly think of hymns in the context of corporate worship, they are also perfectly suited for devotional use in the home.
As the basis for “We All Believe in One True God,” Martin Luther used the first two lines of a single-stanza German medieval hymn first found with Latin and German words in 1417 and expanded it to three stanzas—individually paraphrasing each of the three articles of the creed.
Don’t be afraid to read the Bible. God has set forth His Law and His Gospel in the plainest terms.
Faith is only as good as its object. This is the danger of misunderstanding Sola Fide.
The heart of the Lutheran Church’s beliefs is the doctrine of justification, the teaching of how we are declared righteous in God’s sight.
I thank you, my Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, that You have kept me this night from all harm and danger; and I pray that You would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, that all my doings and life may please You.
A composer can never escape his own style, and this is true even of amateur composers such as Martin Luther. Embracing the musical arts in both his schooling and his cloistered life, Luther became a proficient instrumentalist on the lute and the transverse flute.
One of Luther’s earliest compositions was “From Depths of Woe I Cry to Thee,” a paraphrase of Psalm 130 (Aus tiefer Not schrei’ ich zu dir, LSB 607). He wrote this hymn in 1523, around the time that he was revising the Latin Mass.