Our Saviour Lutheran Church • After Matins • Book of Concord

After Matins: Redemption

Large Catechism, Creed, Second Article

PSALM Psalm 9

READING Isaiah 63:7–14

BOOK OF CONCORD Large Catechism, Creed, Second Article

The Texts

"I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds."

"I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord; He redeemed them in His love and pity."

Isaiah 63:7–14 is God's own recounting of His redemptive acts toward His people, spoken in the voice of the prophet but shaped as testimony. I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us. He became their Savior; in all their affliction He was afflicted. In His love and in His pity He redeemed them; He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. The passage is not a theological proposition about redemption; it is a memorial of specific acts of love described with the vocabulary of personal tenderness: pity, lifting, carrying. Psalm 9:1's response to this kind of recounting is the response Isaiah 63 models: I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. The whole heart is the measure of the thanksgiving; the recounting is the form it takes.

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The Single Word: Lord as Redeemer

Luther's approach to the Second Article in the Large Catechism begins with a focus on a single phrase. He asks: if someone asks what you believe in the Second Article, what should you answer? The answer he proposes is brief: I believe that Jesus Christ, true Son of God, has become my Lord. Everything else in the article elaborates on the meaning of that title. Lord does not mean taskmaster or sovereign in the sense of a ruler who demands performance. Luther's little word Lord means Redeemer: the one who has brought us from Satan to God, from death to life, from sin to righteousness.

Luther defines Lord as Redeemer: the one who has brought us from Satan to God, from death to life, from sin to righteousness. Isaiah 63's Lord is the God who redeems in love and pity, who lifts up and carries. How does the definition of Lord as Redeemer rather than sovereign or taskmaster change what happens in the heart when the Creed's 'I believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord' is confessed, and what does it require to be said to the congregation member who experiences the Lord's lordship primarily as demand rather than rescue?

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The Captivity and the Rescue

Luther's explanation of the Second Article does not begin with the rescue; it begins with the captivity from which the rescue occurs. Before we had this Lord, we were captive under the power of the devil, enmeshed in sin and blindness, and doomed to eternal damnation. There was absolutely no counsel, help, or comfort available to us. This is Isaiah 63's context as well: Israel in exile, afflicted, scattered, in need of a rescue they could not accomplish for themselves. Luther's account of the rescue has the same structure as Isaiah 63's memorial. The eternal Son of God in His unfathomable goodness had compassion upon our misery and wretchedness and came from heaven to help us. He expelled the tyrants and jailers, delivering us from the jaws of hell to take us as His own property under His protection and governance.

Luther describes the captivity, enmeshed in sin and blindness with no counsel or help available, before describing the rescue. Isaiah 63 recounts the affliction before the lifting and carrying. How does holding the full weight of the captivity described before the rescue change the quality of the thanksgiving that follows? And what happens to the thanksgiving when the captivity is minimized, when the condition from which Christ rescued us is treated as a minor inconvenience rather than a doom from which there was no other help?

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The Creed as Daily Thanksgiving

Luther's pastoral vision for the Second Article is that it should function as a form of daily thanksgiving, which is the shape Psalm 9:1 commands. The Creed, Luther writes, is nothing else than the Christian's answer and confession regarding everything we must expect and receive from God. When the objective facts of the Second Article are confessed through his personal explanation, redeemed me, won me, made me His own, gave me no reason for it but His grace, the article ceases to be a cold doctrinal record and becomes the recounting of wonderful deeds that Psalm 9:1 says fills the whole heart.

Luther's Second Article explanation turns the objective facts of the Creed into a personal confession by using the language of direct address: redeemed me, won me, made me His own. Isaiah 63 does the same when it says He redeemed them and lifted them up and carried them. Psalm 9:1 commands the recounting of wonderful deeds with the whole heart. What specific practice would allow a congregation member to use Luther's Second Article explanation as a daily form of thanksgiving rather than encountering it only as a Sunday recitation?

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The Payoff

Isaiah 63's God who redeemed in love and pity, who lifted and carried His people all the days of old, and Psalm 9:1's whole-heart recounting of wonderful deeds are both the content and the form of Luther's Second Article explanation. The content is the rescue from captivity, the expulsion of the tyrants, the cost paid in precious blood by the One who had no need of paying anything. The form is the personal testimony that converts a doctrinal record into a hymn: redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood. When a congregation confesses this, it is recounting wonderful deeds with the whole heart, which is the daily practice of those who have been lifted up and carried and who have not forgotten it.