As you may have noticed, Common Ground Fellowship's life was very short lived; I have very good reasons for doing so: CGF does not represent my mode of thought anymore concerning The Faith. Prior to the week of April 5, I had considered myself a conservative, almost a confessional Lutheran man with a touch to liberal thought to smooth over the rough spots from the conservative bend. I would say that almost a month or two prior to this piece I started participating on a discussion board called Luther Quest on whom the participants discuss (with passion, I might add) things Lutheran from a Confessional or Conservative/Confessional perspective.
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From the very start I noticed that my theology, what I considered 'Lutheran' was much, much different than those that I spoke to; naturally, I was the one who was balanced and right. As time wore on, the conviction began to infest my very being that I was basically an apostate in my view of the Faith.
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As it turned out, God had mercy on my ignorance; while reading a paper by Dr. Walter Maier on justification and what caught my attention was the short paragraph concerning active obedience. Active obedience simply means that Christ was born under the Law for the specifically to fulfill the Law in our stead because we don't have the inclination to live the Law, can't live the Law and never could. Because of Active Obedience, Passive Obedience makes much more sense. Because of my prior theological training, what would be considered Passive Obedience was Christ's only required obedience and faith was urged in Passive Obedience. Because of this understanding of PO, good works needed to be established to "prove" that you were in Christ; in turn, this turned into stringent legalism and eventually works righteousness. With a balance of AO and PO, Christ fulfilled the Law in our stead so no works are necessary in that sense….because we violate the Law by not keeping it, Christ became the perfect sacrifice because of us. So you see, our redemption required BOTH aspects in order to make salvation complete.
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Because of this and a few lesser important events, my whole understanding of the Faith has taken a different direction. I am much more at peace with myself than I can ever remember in the last 15 years and the grace of God through the Holy Spirit is teaching me His Word through my own reading and interaction with my new friends. As a result of that, CGF is no more and The Confessing Lutheran is the new publication that reflects the Confessional understanding of the Church, the Faith and all that these to aspects entail.
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Michael Smith
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Editor
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