If you don’t know me, allow me to introduce myself. My name is FLAME, also known as Marcus Gray. I am a Christian rap artist who has been on a lifelong journey for biblical truth, and I’ve found my home in confessional Lutheranism. Critics who once supported me view me as having fallen from great heights. Some even think I’ve fallen from grace and have embraced false teaching, that I’ve been drawn away from truth and am now obsessed with propping up Dr. Luther above Jesus. Or worse, in their minds, that I’ve become Roman Catholic! “Lord, have mercy,” they cry. The distance in their minds between Jesus’ earthly ministry, culminating in His finished work on the cross, and the ongoing dwelling of God’s presence in our lives as expressed in the sacramental life of the church is as vast as the earth is from the sun.
Keeping It Simple?
This reflex to avoid talking about the Sacraments comes, in my opinion, from two main desires. One desire is to guard with dear life the teaching of justification by faith alone (rightfully so!) and the other desire is a longing for unity. I was initially confused by the thought that the Christian life is a baptismal reality, a daily dying and being raised to newness of life. Immediately, the way that concept hit my eardrums was that humans contribute to their own salvation. I thought I was hearing that God uses our first act of obedience (Baptism) to save us.
Quite naturally, I bumped up against that notion in defense of the clear biblical proclamation that we are justified, or made right with God, by faith only. After all, Paul was explicit about this in Romans 5:1–2:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Case closed! Therefore, I felt that there was no way Baptism could fit into this picture. In my mind, like many others who are trained in a similar manner, this necessitated a rejection of baptismal regeneration, in the name of defending justification by faith alone. This is one primary reason a person turns a deaf ear to ancient Christian teaching. They believe they are doing God a solid, honoring Him and His Word by resisting Baptism’s role in delivering forgiveness.
The second desire, I believe, is a felt one. This desire goes unspoken but is at the core of the initial argument given at the beginning of this chapter. It leads to the belief that debating sacraments or even discussing them is senseless, secondary to the Gospel and distracting from the main thing—Jesus Himself.
Aching for Unity
This, to me, shows that Christians long for unity. For simplicity. We ache for a day when there is no more disagreement among the saints, when we are all finally on the same page and in complete concord with one another. Isn’t this what Jesus prayed for? It’s recorded in John 17:21:
That they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.
By God’s Spirit, we all desire this oneness. It is a beautiful desire, one that will be realized on that Great Day! Hallelujah! Meanwhile, we wait with patience for the return of our dear Lord. It appears, however, that some creative minds have found a back entrance into that Great Day already. They found the rear door propped open while an angelic being went to take out the trash, and they snuck in, grabbed a spare key, and now offer entrance into that tranquil place here on earth. That place is known as nondenominationalism.
Nondenominationalism sells itself as a kind of heaven, a place where they have carved away all the fat and have the leanest expression of Christianity. No more theological debates. No more bickering over doctrine and fine points of theology. Just pure bliss. Ease. Harmony. Unity. It brings together Christians who disagree on the Trinity, on the nature of Christ, on the Sacraments, and on church structure. But they all love Jesus, want to live “holy,” and desire to do big things for the Lord! “Let’s reach the culture,” they say. “Let’s make Jesus famous!” they shout. “Let’s fulfill the Great Commission and take Jesus all over the globe.”
Who can argue against that? To do so sounds like you are casting shade over the bright light of the Gospel. Like you are narrow-minded and have lost touch with the main thing. For sure, that can certainly be true if one swings to the other extreme and is only interested in deep theological talk without teaching simply and clearly in a way that impacts the average person dealing with the common trials and difficulties of life. That extreme should be guarded against, no question. Nevertheless, if a community of believers aims to reach the world for the sake of Christ with words and good deeds, shouldn’t we know what we believe and why we believe it? Shouldn’t we understand what those good deeds do and do not do for our standing before God?
Because Jesus Taught It
Shouldn’t we know who God is? The nature of God’s existence? The true nature of Jesus, the Messiah? The difference between God’s Law and His Gospel? The nature of these rites He established that have been called the Sacraments? How those sacraments ought to be enjoyed and applied? If the Sacraments are important enough for Jesus to implement, then we would do right to wrestle with how they have been historically understood and practiced to see where they fit into the Christian life.
Shouldn’t we consider what the earliest of saints thought about these matters? We can learn from those who were taught by the apostle John, the longest-standing apostle. We can know what the students of the earliest church fathers taught, those who then conveyed those biblical teachings to another generation. How they understood the Godhead. The nature of Jesus. Justification. Baptism. The Eucharist. Yes, even church structure and the gathering of the saints as they met.
Blog post adapted from Because Jesus Taught It: Christianity Through the Eyes of the Church Fathers © 2025 Marcus “FLAME” Gray, published by Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Scripture: ESV®.
Read more about the early church fathers, Scripture, church history, and FLAME’s Christian experiences in his upcoming book, Because Jesus Taught It.
