{"id":20,"date":"2016-11-18T22:55:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T22:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2016-11-18T22:55:18","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T22:55:18","slug":"what-is-a-sacrament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/18\/what-is-a-sacrament\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a &#8220;sacrament&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A sacrament at its most basic level of meaning is &#8220;a sacred thing&#8221;, but when Lutherans use it, the best way to think about a sacrament is to think of it as a &#8220;means of grace&#8221;. It&#8217;s like a &#8220;grace delivery system&#8221; for God.<\/p>\n<p>Lutherans believe that a sacrament has to have the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It has to be expressly commanded by Jesus in the New Testament<\/li>\n<li>It has to join God&#8217;s Word and a physical element<\/li>\n<li>It has to offer, give, or seal God&#8217;s grace\/forgiveness<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Before Lutherans came around, there were seven sacraments. None of these things were bad, but they didn&#8217;t really fit with what it seemed like Jesus was really concerned with in the New Testament. So Lutherans decided that there were two sacraments and a bonus one.<\/p>\n<p>The two sacraments are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Baptism<\/li>\n<li>Lord&#8217;s Supper (also called Communion, Eurcharist, etc)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The bonus one is Confession&amp;Forgiveness &#8211; This one is added as a bonus because it is very much expressly commanded by Jesus and it offers God&#8217;s grace and forgiveness, but it doesn&#8217;t really have a physical element. So sometimes it shows up as a &#8220;third sacrament&#8221; for Lutherans and sometimes it doesn&#8217;t. Here&#8217;s the thing, we&#8217;re not as concerned with what a sacrament is as we are with what is important to Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A sacrament at its most basic level of meaning is &#8220;a sacred thing&#8221;, but when Lutherans use it, the best way to think about a sacrament is to think of it as a &#8220;means of grace&#8221;. It&#8217;s like a &#8220;grace delivery system&#8221; for God. Lutherans believe that a sacrament has to have the following: It <a href=\"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/18\/what-is-a-sacrament\/\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"sr-only\">Read more about What is a &#8220;sacrament&#8221;?<\/span>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,5,6],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-frequently-asked","tag-sacrament","tag-sacraments"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/lutherrose.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatisalutheran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}