Tornado-damaged ELCA church says "Jesus makes mistakes...isn't very nice...repents and apologizes...He screwed up"

(The following article was written by Rev. Tom Brock of pastorsstudy.org. You can follow Pastor Brock on Facebook - here and Twitter - here.)

Perhaps you heard the story of the 2009 Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America at which a tornado struck the Assembly as they voted to ordain practicing homosexuals (by 66.6 percent). Many saw it as a sign of God's displeasure on the ELCA.

​Across the street from the Minneapolis Convention Center is the historic Central Lutheran Church which hosted the gay lobby back in 2009. Beer tents were set up on the lawn of Central Lutheran to serve convention-goers and the tornado not only tore up the beer tents but also tore down the large iron cross from the steeple of Central Lutheran. The cross hung upside down for months while it was being repaired.

Fast forward to today. Below at minute 8:38 and again at minute 21:16 you will hear one of Central Lutheran's pastors teach that Jesus made mistakes and had to "come to His senses". The pastor even says that Jesus "repents and apologizes" (minute 22:52). She repeats (minute 24:38) that "Jesus sees what He has done is wrong, says He is sorry". She says Jesus "screwed up" (minute 28:51). None of that, of course, is in Matthew 15:21-28. Commentators believe Jesus was challenging the syrophoenician woman to press on in her faith, not sinning against her. The rest of the sermon mentions eunuchs and sexual minorities (Central is very pro-LGBT).

The tragedy of Central Lutheran's teaching is that it gets rid of the atonement. Christ was sinless, therefore He could pay for the sins of others. But if Jesus sinned, He would have had to pay for His own sins and could not pay for ours. But, sadly, some liberal Protestants no longer believe in Christ's substitutionary atonement. They believe for God the Father to punish His Son for our sins would amount to "divine child abuse." In their view, substitutionary atonement never needed to take place to begin with because God is a God of love, not of wrath. So Jesus didn't need to be sinless.

But the Bible teaches Jesus was sinless (Hebrews 4:15, 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Peter 2:22). The Bible teaches that Jesus saves us from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9, I Thessalonians 1:10) and that He made atonement for our sins. In fact, the Apostle Paul teaches that one must believe that Christ died for our sins in order to be saved, since it is a matter of "first importance" (I Corinthians 15:1-4).

What a tragic day in which we live when clergy deny Christ's sinlessness and His atoning sacrifice. May the Lord save His Church from such "pastors."

In Jesus our Savior,

Pastor Tom Brock

PS I can't help but think of the hymn Luther wrote in 1542:
"Lord, keep us steadfast in your Word;
curb those who by deceit or sword
would wrest the kingdom from your Son
and bring to naught all he has done.
​