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What gives us the different flavors of churches are their beliefs. Because we live in this world, there will always be human with earthly disagreements over the Bible and God’s Word. Therefore, for the sake of peace, and for love of God’s Word, and for the love of each soul, God asks us to be separate here on earth but we know God has his Kingdom which surpasses any denomination. In Christ we are united with every true believer even though with our earthly weaknesses we cannot recognize every believer. We rejoice that God can and does look into the hearts of believers everywhere and unites us in his spiritual kingdom.
We summarize our Lutheran teaching in the following way:
Sola Scriptura – Ageless Wisdom
Sola Gratia – Boundless Love
Sola Fide – Priceless Faith
Sola Scriptura – Ageless Wisdom
Sola Scriptura is a Latin phrase used during the Lutheran Reformation in the 16th Century to summarize part of Lutheran theology. It simple means in Scripture alone. We believe that the Bible is filled with timeless wisdom. 
We believe all of the Bible to be God’s Word. God wrote it through a variety of men over time but every word is still only his. We believe the Bible is ageless wisdom because God gave it. Its source is divine.
The Bible tells us about God. It introduces him as our heavenly Father who created us. He created a place to in which he planned to place all mankind. He wanted to interact with humans for eternity on this earth. We have timeless wisdom when we desire to interact and get to know God better.
The Bible deserves our respect because it is the message of our divine King, … because it has never been proven wrong, … because it is our connection to God now that sin has separated us from God and he cannot walk in the garden with us as he did with Adam and Eve. It is ageless wisdom to respect those who have authority. If the President of the US would personally invite you to a meeting, would you not go? No matter what your politics?
The Bible tells us we, as the human race fell into sin through Adam and Eve. This is the big problem. Many are frightened by God’s warnings against sin. All mankind, including us Christians, knows in the heart that each individual is fallible and sometimes cruel or violent or destructive or simply bad. Why else would Criminal Minds and other such shows entertain us so well unless we know that each of us is capable of sin? Is it not ageless wisdom to know your weaknesses?
In contrast to our capability to sin, the Bible guides Christians to live a holy life. Christians may not always act that way, in this way Christians can be called hypocrites. But God motivates Christians to repent of their sins to those they sinned against and to God himself and then to show their faith in God by striving to live holy lives again. The Bible shows us our debt to God’s forgiveness in his Law. But Christians recognize the sin recounted in the law and work to avoid it for themselves, live it in their lives and encourage it for the blessing of the people around them. In this way God reveals his Ageless Wisdom!
God has a plan to defeat our spiritual enemies and the sinful deeds motivated by those enemies. Our destruction was self- imposed as God had warned. Our salvation from destruction is divinely, miraculously and logically carried out by our gracious God.
Sola Gratia – Boundless Love
God’s plan to save us from ourselves and from sin, death and the devil, is based in his grace. Notice the word grace in sola gratia, the Latin term that means by grace alone.
We believe that our God has saved us. That he gets the complete credit for our salvation. In the Bible salvation is described in many ways. We were dead in sin and he made us alive. We were his enemies and he reconciled us to himself in Christ. We were convicted and he justified us, declared us not guilty. His boundless love surpasses our hostility. His mercy surpasses our rebellion. His love calms our hatred of his Law and thus also him.
He did all this by paying the price for sin in Christ Jesus. Because of his love for us God the Father sent the second person of the Triune God, Christ Jesus, to take humanity into himself, in short he became 100% human man while retaining his divinity. His body became the substitute payment for human beings. His divinity made that payment valid for all people of all time. Since Jesus made the payment of his death on our behalf, no other payment for sin is valid. If not his death means nothing. He is then not a Savior but only an example for our lives. But he was the sacrificial lamb for everyone. In his boundless love he endured the torture and crucifixion of sinful men.
He proved his victory by his resurrection from the dead. Death could not hold his boundless love. He gave us certainty that he defeated the devil whose weapon was temptation to sin. He defeated sin because the wages of sin is death, so he rose from the dead. He defeated death because he passed through death and now lives on.
In his boundless love he made that salvation as simple as possible. He simply appeals to men saying, “believe in me.” But so many want to take some credit for standing before God. They do want to think that they could contribute something to their salvation.
Sola Fide – Priceless Faith
Sola Fide means by faith alone. I want to explain that priceless faith as a priceless gift of God, and priceless connection to the salvation God promised and provided.
We you believe in someone or something you act on it. If you believe in a candidate, then you vote for the one you believe in. If a person loves fishing, he goes fishing. If he loves the Packers, he cheers for them with Rogers and without. If a person loves crocheting, then he crochet's.
Certainly when we believe in Christ we act on it. We strive for doing good. But we do not claim to save ourselves. Salvation is received by faith alone and not by the acts that flow from faith. If a doctor saves you from death, you don’t complain as much about the bill and rejoice with what the doctor did. You thank him. You had nothing to do with the surgery that saved you. Your body could only respond after the surgery was complete or else you would not have needed the surgery. Before the surgery you believed in going to the hospital to a capable doctor and your faith was blessed.
In the same way we have a priceless faith. We pay no price for our salvation. Christ paid the price. That faith has been provided by God and grows at his blessing. God created our spiritual life, our life of faith, just as he created our body, our physical life. Through faith alone we have what God promises. Promises always depend on faith. You trust the person who promised a trip to Disneyland.
We have a priceless faith because only through this faith do we receive that promise. Like sitting on a chair, the chair promises to hold you up. But if you put your faith in a broken chair it will not hold you up. It is a priceless faith because only though faith in Christ and what he has done do we have the salvation God promised.
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