Our Lord has established eternal blessedness for those who are his people. Yet see how he has appointed a way we receive that blessedness, through Word and Sacrament. We do not have the authority to proclaim a different way of salvation. We do not have the authority to proclaim any different Gospel than that which our Lord and Savior has proclaimed in Scripture and by his perfect life and death on our behalf and his glorious resurrection as the firstfruits from the dead. Anything else is our working out our salvation on our own terms by our own righteousness. God has specifically forbidden that. We dare not contradict him in this. As Ezekiel sees, there is one way of access to the Lord, and it is the way he has created and proclaimed to us.
What is our response? Is God narrow-minded? No, he is specific. That is much different. There is no other way that is appointed to us that we should be saved but by faith in Christ, the living God. This is the right way. There is no other. It is the way that our Lord has graciously prepared. And see what a way it is! It does not require us to earn our salvation. It does not require us to do enough good works to be counted as righteous. It does not require that we make sacrifice after sacrifice. Unlike paganism, it does not require that we guess what might be pleasing to God. Unlike humanism it is not mediated by our errors. Unlike naturalism it is rooted in something that we cannot see so we do not need to worry when our natural world looks like it isn't working too well. Salvation is of the Lord, according to the grace he has given and the pattern he has revealed. Rejoice in God's working.
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