DEVOTION//VDMA

VDMA.

Please don’t try to pronounce those letters. They don’t form a word. They are an acronym.

Beginning during Luther’s lifetime and in the decades that followed, Lutheran princes and their courts had those letters sewn into their robes and uniforms. They appeared on armor, canons, and other items owned by those godly leaders. When the German Lutheran princes formed the Smalkaldic League to protect them from the Catholic Emperor, they choose this slogan as their official motto. VDMA was painted on the walls and carved into the woodwork of Lutheran churches and schools.

The reason? VDMA stands for the Latin phrase, Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum, “the Word of the Lord remains forever.” It was a four-letter abbreviation for the Scripture truth Luther’s Reformation brought to clarity. God’s Word is powerful and unchanging. No matter the challenges against the Scriptures, it remains forever true. At the heart of that Word’s message is God’s promise that, through Spirit-worked faith in Jesus, sinners are thoroughly forgiven and brought into God’s family.

“The Word of the Lord remains forever” appears in Isaiah 40:8 and is quoted in 1 Peter 1:24,25. 

In Isaiah 40, the prophet receives a vision of God’s plan to redeem the world. God seals his promise with the guarantee that his Word is eternally true.

Peter quotes Isaiah to confirm his readers “have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”

Perhaps, in these days of multiplying email acronyms, we Lutherans should breathe new life into VDMA.

After all, God’s message about his love for sinners will have a much longer lifespan than any email, social media post, or meme.

“The Word of the Lord remains forever.” VDMA!