There are so many churches in our day; sorting them all out can be quite confusing! In fact, there are different kinds of “Lutherans,” and the term means different things to different people.

What “Lutheran” originally meant — and what it still means here at Messiah — can be summed up with three basic ideas about how we gain eternal life:

• Grace alone — Heaven’s doors are open to us, not because of what we do for God, but because of what Jesus has done for us by dying in our place and rising bodily from the grave.
• Faith alone — Being a Christian does not consist of following man-made rules, nor is it merely “head-knowledge” about God. It means having a heart which rests on Christ, who is the only way of salvation.
• God’s Word alone — The only reliable way to find out what God says is through the Bible – not by human ideas, not by human traditions, and not by an imaginary “inner light.”