Maybe you grew up Lutheran, or maybe you're trying to understand a Lutheran friend. Either way, you'll find we agree with Lutherans on some big things. They revere Scripture. They teach that God saves by grace. And they tie baptism to the forgiveness of sins, which plenty of churches don't. Here at Christians In Honesdale we also part ways with Lutheran teaching in five places: the confessions beside the Bible, faith alone, who is baptized and how, the Lord's Supper, and worship. We'll take the common ground first and then walk through the forks one at a time.
What We Share With Lutherans
A Lutheran and one of us could sit down with the same open Bible and agree that it's God's word and that nobody earns heaven. We'd also agree that baptism isn't an empty gesture, which surprises people, since a lot of Protestant churches treat it as a symbol only. Luther's Small Catechism says baptism "works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this." We'd put it in Peter's words, "Baptism… now saves you" (1 Peter 3:21), but we're closer on this than most people expect.
We'd likely sing some of the same hymns, too. Luther wrote "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and you'll find it in plenty of a cappella hymnals.
A note on the Hebrew: Luther built that hymn on Psalm 46, which opens ʾĕlōhîm lānû maḥăseh wāʿōz, "God is our refuge and strength." A maḥăseh is a shelter you run into when the storm hits. The song is about where a believer runs, and that's ground any Christian can stand on.
It's also worth saying that Lutherans aren't one body. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), the two largest in this country, differ sharply on several things, including how binding the old confessions are. What follows describes historic Lutheran teaching, and a particular congregation may hold it more or less strictly.
So nothing below is written to score points. We'd just rather be clear than blur things.
Reform the Church, or Go Back to It?
Lutheranism traces its start to 1517, when Martin Luther protested real abuses in the medieval church. His stand deserves respect. He put grace back in front of people taught to earn God's favor.
A reformation, though, works on a tradition that already exists and tries to improve it. We're after restoration instead: going back behind every tradition, Luther's and ours included, to the church Jesus Himself promised. "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). That's why we call ourselves simply Christians (Acts 11:26) and let the New Testament alone set the pattern.
Five Places the Road Forks
1. What Sits Beside the Bible
For Lutherans, the Book of Concord (1580) sets out what the church teaches. Inside it you'll find the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and Luther's catechisms along with other statements, all read next to Scripture. Lutheran pastors pledge at ordination to teach in agreement with these confessions, though, as noted above, Lutheran bodies differ on how strictly that pledge binds.
We keep nothing beside the Bible. No confession sits there, and no creed. Our reasoning is short: a creed that says less than Scripture isn't needed, and one that says more has said too much. Scripture alone makes a person "complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
2. Whether Faith Stands Alone
"Sola fide," faith alone, sits at the very center of Lutheran teaching. When Luther translated the New Testament into German in 1522, he rendered Romans 3:28 as justified "by faith alone" (allein durch den Glauben). The word "alone" isn't in Paul's Greek, and Luther defended adding it as good, natural German. Yet the phrase "faith alone" does appear in exactly one verse of the Bible, and that verse says the opposite: "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone" (James 2:24).
A note on the Greek: James wrote ex ergōn dikaioutai anthrōpos kai ouk ek pisteōs monon, "a person is justified by works and not by faith only." Paul, in Romans 3:28, says one is justified by faith "apart from works of the law" (chōris ergōn nomou). Paul shuts out works that earn, the law-keeping that would put God in a person's debt. James shuts out a faith that sits by itself. Paul describes the faith that counts in Galatians 5:6: "faith working through love" (pistis di' agapēs energoumenē). It's faith that's at work.
Lutherans usually answer that James means faith that shows itself to other people, not how a person is justified before God. We'd point out that James's examples are Abraham offering Isaac and Rahab hiding the spies, and he says of Abraham that "faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works" (James 2:21-25). James is talking about how God counted them righteous.
Please don't hear that as a claim that anyone earns salvation. Paul settles that: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Everything rests on grace. But saving faith is alive, and living faith does what the Lord says. Naaman dipped seven times in the Jordan (2 Kings 5:14), and Israel marched around Jericho. "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days" (Hebrews 11:30). Neither earned a thing, and neither was optional. Obeying God doesn't pay for His gift. It's how a person receives it.
A note on the Hebrew: Paul's "the righteous shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17) quotes Habakkuk 2:4, ṣaddîq beʾĕmûnātô yiḥyeh. The Hebrew ʾĕmûnāh means steadiness or faithfulness. It's the word used when Moses' hands stayed "steady" until sundown (Exodus 17:12). In the Old Testament, faith was never a single moment of agreement. It was trust that held firm and kept walking.
3. Who Goes Into the Water, and How
Start with the agreement, because we mean it. Lutherans teach that God forgives sin through baptism, and we read the New Testament the same way: "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38). We also agree that baptism isn't a human work that earns anything. Paul says we were "raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God" (Colossians 2:12). The working is God's.
Where we differ is the who and the how. Lutheran churches baptize babies, usually by pouring water, and teach that the Holy Spirit creates faith in the infant through baptism itself. In the New Testament the people baptized had already heard the gospel, believed, and repented: "But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women" (Acts 8:12). "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17), and an infant can't yet hear and believe the gospel, or repent of sins he hasn't committed.
Lutherans often point to the households baptized in Acts, like the Philippian jailer's. But Luke says Paul and Silas "spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house," and afterward the jailer "rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God" (Acts 16:32-34). The household that was baptized was a household that heard and believed.
Behind infant baptism stands the belief that babies are born guilty of Adam's sin. Scripture speaks of children differently. Jesus said, "to such belongs the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:14).
A note on the Hebrew: Ezekiel 18:20 says, bēn lōʾ-yiśśāʾ baʿăwōn hāʾāḇ, "The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father." The verb nāśāʾ means "to carry" or "bear." Guilt isn't passed down like a family debt. Each person carries his own.
Then there's the how. In the New Testament, baptism was an immersion, a burial: "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4). When Philip baptized the Ethiopian official, "they both went down into the water" (Acts 8:38).
A note on the Greek: Baptizō means "to dip" or "immerse." Luther knew it. In a 1519 sermon on baptism he wrote, "I would have those who are to be baptized completely immersed in the water, as the word says and as the mystery indicates." On this point, Luther and we read the word the same way.
You can sprinkle an infant. But an infant can't believe and repent, and can't choose to be buried with Christ.
4. What the Supper Is, and How Often
Lutherans hold that the true body and blood of Christ are really present "in, with, and under" the bread and wine. (They reject the label "consubstantiation," and they also reject the Catholic teaching that the bread stops being bread.) Luther held to this firmly. At the Marburg debate in 1529 he chalked Jesus' words on the table, Hoc est corpus meum, "This is my body," and wouldn't move off them.
We read "This is my body" the way we read Jesus' other "is" statements, like "I am the door" (John 10:9). At the same table He said, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20), and nobody thinks the cup was literally a covenant. The bread stands for His body, and the meal is a memorial: "Do this in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:24). "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26).
A note on the Greek and Hebrew: "Remembrance" is anamnēsis, a calling-to-mind that brings the past into the present. Jesus spoke those words at a Passover meal, and God had said of the Passover, wəhāyāh hayyôm hazzeh lākem ləzikkārôn, "This day shall be for you a memorial day" (Exodus 12:14). The Greek Old Testament translates zikkārôn with mnēmosynon, a close cousin of Jesus' word. Israel didn't relive the exodus at every Passover. They remembered it before God, and it shaped who they were. The Supper works the same way.
On how often, we may be closer than you'd think. Lutheran congregations today take communion on schedules that vary from church to church, but the Lutheran confessions themselves say, "Among us the Mass is celebrated every Lord's Day" (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XXIV), and many Lutheran churches have gone back to weekly communion.
Every Sunday we observe the Lord's Supper, just as the early church did: "On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them" (Acts 20:7).
A note on the Greek: "Gathered together to break bread" is synēgmenōn hēmōn klasai arton. Klasai is an infinitive of purpose. Breaking bread was the reason they gathered, and the day they gathered was the first day of the week. That's why the Supper is part of every Sunday for us, not an occasional addition.
5. How Worship Sounds, and Who Oversees It
A Lutheran service is liturgical. Expect written prayers and robed clergy, usually an organ, and a calendar of church seasons like Advent and Lent. It's often beautiful, and every piece is there on purpose.
Our worship is plain by choice. We sing together with no instruments, "addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart" (Ephesians 5:19; see also Colossians 3:16). Beyond the singing there's prayer, Scripture read aloud and preached, the Supper, and the collection.
A note on the Greek: "Making melody" is psallontes, from psallō. In older Greek the word meant plucking strings. Paul names the instrument to be plucked: tē kardia hymōn, "with your heart." The New Testament never describes Christians in worship using any other one.
Lutherans organize into larger bodies, synods and districts, with bishops or district presidents over many congregations. Nothing sits above us. Christ is the head of the church (Ephesians 1:22-23). In the New Testament, each congregation was meant to be overseen by its own elders, a group of qualified men shepherding "the flock of God that is among you" (1 Peter 5:2; Acts 14:23).
We'll be honest about where we stand on that. We're a small congregation of fewer than twenty members, and right now none of our men meet the qualifications Paul lays out (1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). So we don't have elders yet, and we won't appoint anyone just to fill the title. That isn't unusual in the New Testament. Paul and Barnabas planted churches and came back later to appoint elders (Acts 14:21-23), and Paul left Titus in Crete to "appoint elders in every town" where congregations were already meeting (Titus 1:5). Until the Lord raises up qualified men among us, we work together as a congregation under Christ and His word.
Because nothing sits above us, we can't answer for any other congregation, even one that shares every conviction on this page, and nobody else answers for us. What you're reading is what we teach and do in Honesdale.
Weighing Both Against One Book
Don't settle this by which service feels more like home, or by whichever article argues best, this one included. Read Acts and watch how people became Christians. Read the letters and see how the first congregations worshiped and were overseen. Then hold Lutheran teaching up to that, and hold us up to it too. Luke called the Bereans noble for "examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11). Luther himself, standing at Worms in 1521, said his conscience was "captive to the Word of God." We'd be glad to be measured by the same book.
Open the Question With Us
If you'd like to talk this over, we'd count it a privilege to read these passages with you at whatever pace suits you. You can request a Bible study, see who we are, or write to us with a question.
When we meet:
The congregation meets in Suite D, 416 Main Street, Honesdale, PA 18431, so pull around to the rear of the building to park, and come in the back.