The Branch Calls
the Tree Dead

What is this page about?

Think of a church that meets in a large building that was once a storehouse. It began in 1998. It has a band, a stage and a long sermon. A few times a year, it baptizes adults who have made a decision. On the first Sunday of the month it has bread and grape juice. It says it has “no creed but the Bible”. The pastor started the church. He answers to a group of leaders that he chose himself.

From its stage, people hear this message: “The old churches down the road are dead.” Those are the churches with towers and prayer books. They were in the town long before this building.

Here is the interesting thing. The speaker gives no test for “dead”. Nobody can check a claim that has no test. Nobody can answer it. It can never be shown wrong.

So this page takes a test from a man who had one.

The short answer

Luther would not agree that the old church is dead. We know this, because people asked him the same question and he answered in writing.

In 1528, Luther had already been put out of the church of Rome. He had called the pope the enemy of Christ. Then two pastors wrote to him. Some people in their towns said this: “The old church is so bad that its baptism is worth nothing. People must begin again.” Luther answered with a short book. In it he wrote:

We on our part confess that there is much that is Christian and good under the papacy; indeed everything that is Christian and good is to be found there and has come to us from this source.

Martin Luther, Concerning Rebaptism, 1528

In simple words: We say openly that there is much that is Christian and good in the pope’s church. Truly, everything that is Christian and good is found there, and it has come to us from there.

He then listed what the old church still had: the true Bible, true baptism, the true Lord’s Supper, the forgiveness of sins, and true ministers.

Read the last words again: “has come to us from this source”. Luther says that his own Bible, his own baptism and his own Gospel came to him through the church he was fighting. He did not find the Christian faith lying in a field. He received it, damaged, from a church that was still a church.

And the people he wrote against were not Catholics. They were Protestants who wanted to begin again from nothing.

“But Luther left the church too”

Yes, he did. Here is the answer.

Luther never said that he was starting a church. He never said that the Christian faith had disappeared and he was bringing it back. He said that the church was alive, but a false message was being preached in it. His job was to correct it with the Bible.

So he kept everything that the Bible did not force him to change:

• the three old creeds,
• the church year,
• the old order of worship, put into the people’s language,
• the baptism of babies,
• private confession of sins,
• the teaching that Christ’s body is truly present in the Lord’s Supper,
• ordained ministers,
• the old hymns.

In 1530 his friends wrote a public statement of their faith. It says that they have left nothing that the whole church has always believed.

A man who thinks a tree is dead does not spend his life repairing its branches.

What a church receives without knowing it

Here are things that the new church uses every Sunday. It thinks they are simply “from the Bible”. But look where each one came from.

Only one of these eight comes from the first century.

This does not mean that people are foolish. Almost nobody knows these dates. But it shows something. A church with “no creed but the Bible” still uses a list of Bible books that church meetings agreed on. It uses a teaching about the Trinity that took three hundred years to say clearly. It uses an English Bible with words that one man chose in the 1520s.

None of this came to the new church straight from heaven. It came down through the old tree. You can disagree with a tradition. But you cannot be independent of it.

Baptism: who is acting?

Here Luther and the modern church are farthest apart. Luther wrote a book against the modern idea in 1528.

The modern teaching is like this: “Baptism does not save you. It is an outside sign of a decision you have already made inside. So we baptize believers and not babies. If you were baptized as a baby, that was not a real baptism. You should now do it properly.”

Luther said no to every part of this. His main question was: who is acting?

Baptism, however, is not our work, but God’s.

Martin Luther, Large Catechism, 1529

In simple words: Baptism is not something we do. It is something God does.

Everything else follows from this. If God acts in baptism, then baptism does not depend on how honest I was. Luther wrote: “My faith does not make Baptism, but receives it”.

So a second baptism is an attack on God’s promise. Suppose baptism depends on my faith being good enough. My faith is never good enough. Then where can I stop? Luther said: “Nothing is lacking in baptism. Always something is lacking in faith.”

Luther also did not think that water has magic power. He said that without God’s word “the water is just water and no baptism”. The power is in God’s promise that comes with the water.

The Lord’s Supper

Luther broke with other Reformers over this one question, and only this one.

In October 1529, German and Swiss Reformers met at a castle in the town of Marburg. They wanted to unite. They wrote fifteen points. They agreed on fourteen of them. They did not agree on the last one. The question was this: are the body and blood of Christ truly present in the Lord’s Supper?

Luther wrote Jesus’s words on the table with chalk: “This is my body.” He would not move from them. The union failed.

Forget for a moment who was right. The fact of history is this. Some Christians say the bread and wine are only signs, and the meal is only for remembering. Luther travelled to argue against that idea. He walked away. He did not accept it. Today it is the usual idea in the new churches.

You may hold this idea for good reasons. But you cannot hold it and also say, “The old churches have left the Reformation.”

The second difference is simple counting. In the Lutheran churches, the Lord’s Supper was held every Sunday. Luther wrote that a person who does not want the Supper “at least some four times a year” may not value it at all.

So here is a small point that is hard to answer. A new church says, “We take Christ’s words more seriously than the old churches.” Christ commanded only two practices. The new church offers one of them four times less often, or twelve times less often, than the churches it calls dead.

“God spoke to me”

In Luther’s time some people said, “The Spirit speaks to me directly. I do not need the written Word.” Luther gave them a hard name. In English they are called “enthusiasts”.

Luther did not say that God cannot speak. His point was this. Nobody can check a private message from God. So it becomes a weapon. If “the Spirit told me”, then no Bible text can correct me and no brother can test me.

His rule was about order. The outside comes first, and the inside comes after.

God has determined to give the inward to no one except through the outward…

Martin Luther, 1525

In simple words: God has decided this: he gives his gifts inside a person only through things outside the person. (Luther meant the spoken Gospel, baptism and the Lord’s Supper.)

Twelve years later Luther said it even more strongly. He wrote that God gives his Spirit to no one “except through or with the preceding outward Word”.

Luther pointed to the first sin in the garden. The snake asked Eve, “Did God really say that?” The snake offered her a better, private way to know what God “really” meant. It was against the clear word God had given. So for Luther this is the oldest temptation of all. And it always looks like spiritual growth.

To be fair: a Christian may say, “This verse touched me deeply.” Luther said such things too. The question is which one judges the other. Does God’s outside Word judge my feeling inside? Or does my feeling judge the Word?

Washing a baby’s clothes, and the cross

Two more teachings of Luther point the same way: outward, and downward.

Normal work

In Luther’s time people thought that monks were a higher kind of Christian. Luther fought this idea. He wrote:

If you perform your daily domestic task, this is better than all the sanctity and ascetic life of monks.

Martin Luther, Large Catechism, 1529

In simple words: If you do your daily work at home, this is better than all the holiness and hard life of the monks.

In 1522 he wrote about a father who washes his baby’s dirty cloths. People laugh at him. But Luther says that God and all his angels are smiling, because the father does it in Christian faith.

Luther said this against the monks. But it also speaks to any church today that measures a Christian by how strong his worship feels. The better measure is this: are his family, his workers and his neighbours better off because of him?

The cross

In 1518 Luther wrote that we cannot read God from success that we can see. God’s greatest act in history was a public death on a cross. To everyone who watched that afternoon, it looked like failure.

Three things follow.

1. Growth is not proof. This cuts both ways. A small church that is getting smaller cannot call that proof of being faithful.
2. Feeling is not proof. God may give his gift in a service that feels dry.
3. The teaching that faith brings money, health and success is this same mistake in its clearest form. Luther would say that such a teacher does not know where to find God.

Luther’s test: seven signs of a living church

In 1539 Luther wrote a list of seven signs. With them, anyone can know a living church. This is a fair way to talk about “dead” churches. The test is the same for everybody. It does not ask how anyone feels.

Use it for a church you know well. Your own church is best.

1. God’s Word. Is the Bible read aloud here? Is the preaching about Christ, who died for sinners? Or is it only advice with Bible verses added? Many old churches with beautiful buildings fail here.
2. Baptism. Does this church baptize as Christ commanded? Does it teach that God acts in baptism and gives a promise? A church that baptizes but teaches that nothing is given has kept the act and emptied it.
3. The Lord’s Supper. Is it held often, every week or nearly? A table four times a year fails here. So does an old church where nobody comes to the table.
4. Forgiveness and correction. Is sin named here? Is forgiveness spoken aloud to people? Almost every church today fails this sign.
5. Ministers who are called. Did the church call the preacher? And can a group remove him, a group that he does not control? A founder with a board that he chose fails the second part. So does a bishop that nobody can check.
6. Prayer and praise together. Do the people pray, sing and give thanks aloud together? Or do they mostly watch and listen? People who watch a band are as silent as people who watch a choir.
7. The cross. Does this church carry trouble and cost for Christ? Or is it comfortable, successful and liked by all? Success fails this sign. But a small church must be careful too. A church that people avoid because it is dull is not carrying the cross.

This test does not give anyone the answer he wants. Sign 7 fails rich churches of every kind. Sign 4 fails almost everybody. Sign 1 fails many old churches.

Luther’s own answer to a weak church was not to leave it. He wrote small books to teach the faith.

Where this page ends

Look also at what is not on Luther’s list. Excitement is not there. Growth is not there. The age of the church and the kind of music are not there. And one more thing is not there: whether the people seem to mean it. But that is the test people really use when they say “dead”. No human being can see that in another person.

You could see every one of Luther’s seven signs from the back seat of a church, on any day. You would not need to know anyone’s heart. Luther knew what the human heart is like, his own too. So he made a test that does not need anyone to read a heart.

Check it yourself

This page is about what one man believed. It does not say whether anyone’s church is Christian.

1. Read Luther’s Small Catechism. It takes twenty minutes and is free to read online.
2. Read the Augsburg Confession of 1530. It is shorter than many modern statements of faith.
3. Use the seven signs on your own church. Be honest about signs 4 and 7.