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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 22:17:08 GMT -5
Creature of the Word
Michael Allen
Professor of Systematic Theology
Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando
Editor’s Note: This lecture was delivered in the Covenant College chapel on Wednesday, October 18, 2017. Video may be found at www.covenant.edu/calendar/all/2017/10/18.
Students of Covenant College, I don’t know where you’ve been going this morning. I don’t know if you’ve had a seminar with Dr. Kapic or a class with Dr. Jackson. I don’t know if you’re just getting over sleeping in or if you’re trying to get back into the rhythm again after being away for a few days. But what I can guess is something that you have likely not experienced. It’s something that is actually strange in human history but likely common for all of us in this room. It’s something that distances us from people like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Martin Bucer, and the other great men and women in the sixteenth century involved in what we call the Protestant Reformation. It is that wherever you came from, whatever dorm or apartment you came from, whatever class or cafeteria, you probably didn’t walk past a graveyard this morning. That’s strange. And that oddity isn’t owing to relocating to college for a few years. You probably come from a town, a suburb, a neighborhood, or a city where in your day to day affairs you didn’t pass by graves quite often. We live in a world and a time where the dead are ushered off. We’re so good that we often move them off in a way before they are even dead. We send those who are ill or dying off into care outside of the home and away from our family. And where do most cemeteries get put today? Far off in the fields where the land doesn’t cost much and where we don’t come across them very often.
But people like Luther and students at the University of Wittenberg, where he served, would have walked past graves every morning on their way to study. I don’t say this to depress you, I say this simply to point out something about our culture. We live in a day and an age where the past is in many ways moved far away out of sight. Perpetual reinvention is the order of the day, and if we’re not careful as Christian women and men, we can ingest that and we can assume that. That’s why I’m so glad that you as well as brothers and sisters around the globe are taking time this year to celebrate the Reformation by giving attention to what the Holy Spirit did in that time and place where peoples’ imaginations and affections, convictions and practices were shaped by a renewed encounter with God’s word.
It’s my hope that this morning in the brief time before us we might explore one facet of that so that, hopefully, you and I can stand on their shoulders and see a bit further than we otherwise would. Hopefully, you and I, like the Christians who early on heard that letter to the Hebrews and were told of the “great cloud of witnesses,” will be able to “run the race set before us” by learning of those who have gone ahead (Heb. 12:1). By seeing the outcome of their way of life, by knowing that they’ve taught us the word of God, and by imitating their faith (Heb. 13:7) in a fresh way here and wherever our Lord will take each of you around the globe in his kingdom.
Listening and learning from the past is a strange thing for us today. And thus it’s a difficult task. I’m reminded of the Avett Brothers’ song, “Tear Down the House”. Repeatedly lamenting the idea that we live in a world that tears down the house that we’ve lived in. The result of that is that we don’t know the names of people around us, and we don’t even know ourselves. So it’s well worth our time, if we want to know ourselves, if you’re trying to imagine what God would have for you in life, if you want to know the names of those around you, and if you want to better know what is going on in the breadth of God’s kingdom, that we would look at our house and that we would look at the Lord’s house at the way in which he has worked in many places and in all centuries. And this morning, I want to look at one idea in particular.
Protestantism and the Reformation are known for a bunch of things, many of which I know you talk about in classes and celebrate here from time to time. But one idea that is crucial is the idea of the place of the Word of God, the Bible. We sing the Bible. We pray the Bible. We preach the Bible. We read the Bible. We are so into this we put the Bible on t-shirts and on placards. The Bible gets used here, there, and everywhere. And it’s worth reflecting, not on why we use the Bible in that way or why the Bible permeates Christian culture in its varied forms, but what promise holds for doing so? Is that simply the way your grandparents did that? Is that merely the way that the giants of the faith in years past did it? Is that the equivalent of analog wisdom in a digital world? Or is there something unique and lasting that hopefully can give you deep and profound comfort and hope? Does God’s Word hold a promise for power and life and blessing for you wherever you find yourself?
So to explore that, I don’t want to turn to Luther, though I trust you’ll hear of Brother Martin in other lectures. I want to turn to one of the forgotten texts of the Reformation, to which no one shows this love. It’s a small excerpt from one of the very first reformed confessions of faith. In the year 1528 in the town of Berne, they issued ten theses. They weren’t quite pompous as Luther cooking up 95 whole theses. They had a mere ten, and I want to reflect on the first of those Ten Theses of Berne. It goes like this: “The holy Christian church, whose head is Christ, is born of the Word of God, abides in the same, and does not listen to the voice of a stranger.” It is my single favorite line from all of the sixteenth century. I think there are three truths of which it is trying to alert us.
First: the holy Christian church has but one head, and the only head is Jesus Christ. Head, of course, is a political term speaking of a leader. In church settings, we use different words: pastor, elder, priest, minister, bishop, overseer, or superintendent. The terms have ranged across the traditions and through the centuries, but we know the idea of spiritual leadership. It’s crucial to catch that when Protestants and particularly when Reformed Christians speak of the Christian church and her life, the very first thing we always say, the very first line of every book of church order is that the head of the church is Jesus Christ.
It’s very easy to misperceive that claim. It’s very easy to take that line to mean that Jesus is the head of the church in the same way that a lot of people have their names on buildings on this and other campuses. Jesus is the head of the church. He was the entrepreneur that got things going. He was the benefactor who donated his own self. He was the remarkable figure long, long ago in a land far, far away who played a key role, so we remember what he did as the prophet the priest and the king. That’s not wrong.
But it’s crucial to catch that while we do celebrate what he did in the first century, the church stands on the promise that he is acting now. You can look at one text that Luther was so taken with in the early years just before the posting of his 95 theses. He had been studying and teaching on Hebrews, and he saw in Hebrews this remarkable witness as we read in chapters 5-10 that Christ dies once for all, so there is no more sacrifice that needs to be made. And Luther starts to see this is going to have effects on the ways in which we think of our repentance as having some kind of sacrificial effect or continuing the atoning work of Christ in any way. And he celebrated Heb. 1:1-4, where it says that “Christ having made propitiation for sins, sat down.” That action is what a typical priest could never do, because he had never done or completed that work. But Jesus did complete it, so he sits. That’s crucial. But we cannot miss as people who celebrate the atoning work of Christ and the finished nature of our justification, that Hebrews also goes on to say that Jesus isn’t done and doesn’t merely sit. It’s not simply the case that Jesus was active in the 1st century, in that glorious past tense of the gospel. Nor is it simply that there is a future that we can look to with assurance and confidence, not fear, because he will return and he will treat us as his own, in the future tense of the gospel. But Hebrews 13:20 says that he is the “great shepherd of the sheep.” Though there are many leaders, though there is a great cloud of witnesses, Jesus now is at the right hand of the father to intercede for you when you feel too weak to call out to God. He’s there to pray for me when I feel too overwhelmed with indecision and worry. Jesus is my great pastor. I have other pastors. I have other leaders, and he sends them to me, but he also stands above them and ministers on my behalf. And I fear that too often, too often, in our celebration of the atoning work of Christ and the past tense of the gospel, we fail to keep reading and we fail to see that there is grace for us also in this present tense of the gospel. We dare not miss the fact that Jesus is now head of the church. He is ruling and reigning. He is interceding and he is pastoring each and every one of you. And this is how he promised that he wouldn’t lose his sheep.
Second: this statement goes on to say, “that the holy Christian church whose only head is Jesus Christ, is born of the word of God and abides in the same.” We likely get the idea in the Protestant Reformed tradition that new birth is of God. Babies don’t do much other than scream and whine. They come out messy and rather cranky. It is a gift that they receive life, and so it is for us spiritually. We grasp that. But do we catch that the same gift that God provides in spiritual birth in bringing you from death to life in Christ is matched by God’s paternal care? Do we understand God’s fatherly care in sustaining and growing you? Do we prize the promise that God is going to gift you in just as miraculous ways to make it through life as gifting you with life itself? When I was in high school, I played basketball, but my senior year I decided to run track. And my favorite event was the 4×400 relay, which is the last event of any track meet. It’s pretty simple: four people are going to run, and you’re going to pass the baton after each person has run a lap around the track. I loved it. It was the last event, and, oftentimes, the result of the meet was hanging on the result of that race. I really savored that kind of pressure. And I like the fact, frankly, that it wasn’t the longest event I had to run. I confess there is a lazy bone somewhere in my body. But I also hated it. I hated it for just this reason: as someone who had grown up playing soccer and a whole lot of basketball, I found that, though the 4×400 is a relay, it’s still not really a team sport or event. I would stand there on the track and wait to run the 3rd leg. And either the person before me would have the lead and it’s my job not to screw it up for the next 50 some odd seconds, or, worse, we’re behind and it’s my job to make up for the fact that somebody has been outdone. In either event, I’m running and everybody is watching me and nobody is there to help. It is not a team endeavor in that regard. And that’s why each and every time as I anticipated it, I would also throw up. I would grow nervous before the event and I would throw up invariably 15 minutes before the race and then I would go and race and be delighted afterwards. That was anxiety inducing that sense there was no one to help you.
My hunch is that we all feel that spiritually. We sense at times that Jesus took the first leg with the baton, and it was beautiful. He was rounding the corners. He was taking the flack when people started to gain on him. He was so consistent even to the end. He didn’t really renege. He kept pushing through, and he finished so well. And then he passed off the baton. And the apostles had fits and starts, and it wasn’t all pretty necessarily, but they ran remarkably and by the end they are going at greater strength then in their youth and in their early days as disciples. And maybe there’s another leg. Maybe mom and dad or maybe some pastor or youth leader, someone who played a key role in your life, they have run a lap ahead of you. They seem to be further ahead and they seem to have witnessed and discipled and demonstrated something about the faith that seems pretty impressive frankly. Now here you are. You have life ahead of you, and God will call you to contribute to communities, to take jobs, to take risks, to evangelize, to invest in various ways, and to bless your neighborhood and cities by watching out not just for those near but those far away. And it can feel, frankly, pretty lonely and overwhelming and isolating. It seems to me that it’s just that isolation that causes us to clam up, isn’t it? We cease to take risks. We fail to be bold. We refuse to dream big. We hesitate to think about not just what would be the easy way forward or the logical next step, but what God might really be calling me to and what opportunity really presents itself.
The Reformation was a time of bold radicalism, of great missions, of remarkable evangelism, of investment in culture in neighborhoods and families and cities, and radical economic provision for many immigrants displaced by a whole slew of political problems around the European continent. They were able to do those things because they had a very vivid sense that Jesus was not disengaged. It’s not simply that he passed the baton and now it’s on them to make it or to not screw it up. Rather Jesus has power for them today. That’s why Luther turned to one text in particular time and again, Romans 1:16-17. You probably famously know it for its conclusion: “The just shall live by faith.” Luther did herald that we’re justified by faith alone not by works of the law. But Luther also treasured that first part of it that “he was not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” because it’s the “power of God for salvation.” Luther knew that just as much as God has grace to bring you into the family, and to give you new birth as a Christian woman or man, so Jesus has power through his word and through the gospel to sustain you and to grow you, to send you and to use you to bless others. That’s why he was such a seemingly reckless man willing to at great risk follow Christ’s call.
Third: there’s a catch with seizing upon this promise of Jesus being active – just as active as at our conversion – today. We do prize that the only head of the church is Jesus. He’s not absent, but he’s active. He stands at our side. He goes before us. He watches over us. And in these ways he really has grace for today just as much as for your conversion day. I hope you know and depend upon that reality. And also that you savor the promise that he uses his Word that we can abide in it and in so doing can find strength, wisdom, encouragement, and comfort in every season. But you really have to know something about God’s Word and about the promise of Christ’s grace. Here’s the catch: when Christ saves a man or woman, he does not leave you as you are. That means, against all the polite customs of our day and age, Jesus will get all up in your business. It’s not for nothing that Calvin and the other reformers treated the prophet as the great image for the person who is learning from and professing the word of God. And so Calvin would regularly look to Jeremiah 1 to describe the nature of the ministry of the word. It’s a remarkable picture of Jeremiah being called to what is frankly a thankless task to go preach the word to people who won’t be too happy about it. And he was told, according to Jer. 1:10, that he was to go with this word and he is to do it to destroy, and to overthrow, to pull up, and to tear down, and to build, and to plant.
And you’ve got to catch those purposes of God’s Word. God’s Word will build you. God’s Word will plant you. God’s Word is meant to bring about flourishing and wholeness. That word “perfection” is used so much in places like Matt. 5 or Heb. 5 or Eph. 4. And it doesn’t so much mean in those places that you are meant for sinlessness in this life, but mainly that you are meant to be a complete and whole Christian. You are to be a man or woman who bears the maturity of Christ in as much as you are being conformed to him. But the catch is, that the way to maturity is the way of being confronted, so that before Jeremiah gets to build and to plant, before he gets to reconstruct, there is that difficult work of deconstruction. There are 6 infinitives listed there in Jer. 1:10 regarding the goal of God’s Word. Only numbers 5 and 6 describe positive rebuilding. Numbers 1-4 are all about the difficult work of getting down to the basics of the problem and rooting it out. Just like someone suffering from a terrible cancer isn’t really going to be helped until chemotherapy has whittled them all the way down that the root issue can be dealt with, that a transplant can actually be performed. Until you actually take down those defenses, you can’t really get at the issue. You can only get at the symptoms. You can get at the appearances. You can get at some of the superficial, presenting issues. But you can’t really get at what’s killing you until you are deconstructed.
We might easily say “well, that’s what happened to me before I was converted.” “Oh, God’s Word told me that I was a sinner and I was on my way to hell.” We can so easily think that the Word, the living and active Word of God (Heb. 4:12-13), cuts through and confronts and deconstructs the pagan. That helps me to know that Hollywood is after me, that Washington D.C., and that Fifth Avenue all have evil designs. They want to win my heart and affections to the fears of this world or the allures of the devil. No doubt that’s all true. But we can too easily assume that it was only at our conversion that we needed to be challenged and confronted and deconstructed by God’s “living and active Word.”
So another key text that Luther and especially Calvin regularly discussed is found there at the beginning of Rom. 12 where God calls for us to offer our bodies as “living sacrifices” (Rom. 12:1). Doing so is our true spiritual worship. And it goes on to say that to do that, we have to “not be conformed to the patterns of this world.” We have to throw a spiritual stiff-arm to the ways that this world is trying, that people who are brilliant and have a lot of resources and want to make you want things that you needn’t want are trying to make you fear people you needn’t fear. And so, you aren’t to be conformed to those patterns. But it goes on and it says further that we are to “be transformed by the renewing of you mind” that you might be able to discern what the will of God is, what is good and true and perfect. We often think that the problem is out there. We fail to remember with the Reformers that I don’t need the problem out there to lead me astray, because the problem inside me is pretty much enough to get me in trouble. And we forget also that the status quo is not acceptable. We forget further that Jesus’s forgiveness of me is not Jesus being done with me. So we have to remember that the Word of God will get up in my business. It will challenge me. It will demonstrate places where my vision of my neighbor is too small, where my sense of love’s demands is far too comfortable, or where my vision of God’s glory is far too weak. It will explode those things. It will cut and it will at times hurt.
And what better place to get used to that practice than when you’re studying the liberal arts at a place like Covenant College? The Baptist philosopher Cornel West regularly says that when you study the liberal arts, “you are learning how to die.” He means that you learn to see parts of yourself as things that are false, bad, and ugly. You examine those ideas that aren’t humane, that aren’t life giving, that aren’t just and merciful. You see those parts of you confronted. I think we can go a step further and with the Ten Theses of Berne we can say that God’s Word doesn’t leave us to do any of that self-critique alone. It’s not that you simply need to learn how to have a self-critical mind, though that’s a good thing to develop. Even better: you have the promise of a Lord who is alive and active at the right hand of the Father and who has sent out the Word of his prophets and apostles and that Word is there to comfort you, yes, but it is also there to challenge you. It is living and active, it does cut right through and divide soul and spirit and bone and marrow, and that’s why we speak not only of forgiveness and justification as great gifts of the gospel, but in the Reformed tradition especially, we celebrate the fact that sanctification, God transforming who you are through and through, is also a gift. It is a calling, but it’s a gift and that Jesus has not left you alone. He is not on vacation or sabbatical, but he is more actively involved in the transformation of you through and through than even you are. He desires that more than even you long or dream for it. His Word is his gracious instrument, and his Word is the powerful means by which he does that. You know, the thing with grace is that God can give it in many places. If God wants to do so, he can speak through the mouth of the donkey. Go read Numbers (22:21-39). But if you want to know the comfort of the gospel and you want to know the challenge of Jesus, the wisdom isn’t that you would go to the barnyard, but that you would turn to the good book.
I am reminded of the TV shows about storm chasers. These are folks who chase down tornadoes, desiring to film them and to measure them. Tornadoes can pop up anywhere, right? I remember growing up in Miami when there was a tornado that famously went through the skyscrapers of downtown Miami. It was on every newspaper’s front page the next day because that’s a very strange, unexpected sight. We admittedly have our own problems, but we don’t typically have that one. Stormchasers are always traveling in the same spots. It seems that they are always in Kansas or Oklahoma. They’re always in the plain states known as tornado alley. Because while a tornado may pop up anywhere, if you really know that you need to find them, you move to one of those places. Similarly, this is why we celebrate the biblical idea of God’s “means of grace.” God in his freedom can reach you anywhere. God in his love can change you through many tools. Yet God in his fatherly care and Jesus as your great pastor has provided specific means of grace – especially his Word – so that, going again and again to it, listening to sermons, meditating upon it in prayer, discussing it with brothers and sisters, using it to evangelize other people, we have the promise that we will find the comfort of the gospel as well as the challenge of Jesus. We can be reminded of the justification and freedom we have in Christ. We are freed to go and be bold to be self-sacrificial, to think of others’ needs, and to not worry about ourselves so much.
But we can also go to see the way in which it opens up a new way of imagining the world and a new way of seeing yourself. In the Reformed tradition, we often talk about a much later reformer, the late nineteenth century theologian-statesman Abraham Kuyper, who spoke that there is not “one square inch” of this entire globe of which Jesus Christ doesn’t say “mine.” That’s true, and we rightly celebrate the consequence of that for all of life. But I think the Ten Theses of Berne and the Reformation insistence on the Word of God for developing whole and effective Christians should remind you and me to hear that line also in a slightly more personal tone. Kuyper’s words can feel very big or abstract given their global scale. So let me conclude with this. Jesus looks at you and there is not one nook and cranny of yourself, there is not one part of your person that he doesn’t say is “mine”. There is not one instance or segment of your life for which there isn’t grace and gift and a word to comfort and to challenge. There is a gospel for all of life, and his grace truly does change everything.
Volume 3 Issue 1
Spring 2018 | 74 pages
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Other Articles in This Issue
In This Issue
Creature of the Word
Solus Christus: Against the Idol Making Factory
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Other Reviews in This Issue
The Christ of Wisdom: A Redemptive Historical Exploration of the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament
Rediscovering the Holy Spirit: God’s Perfecting Presence in Creation, Redemption, and Everyday Life
The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism
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Copyright © 2017 Reformed Theological Seminary
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 22:28:35 GMT -5
Solus Christus: Against the Idol Making Factory
D. Blair Smith
Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology
Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte
Editor’s note: The following is a message delivered at “The Gospel of Grace and Glory: The Reformation at 500 and Counting,” a conference co-sponsored by Christ Covenant Church (PCA), Matthews, NC, and Reformed Theological Seminary Charlotte, October 27-28, 2017. A video of Smith’s presentation (along with those on the other “Solas” of the Reformation) can be viewed here: christcovenant.org/reformation-conference/.
Introduction
Each of the great Reformational solas can stand on its own as a study, but they also stand together. On the one end, how do we know anything of Christ, faith, and grace? Scripture alone. On the other end, all that we think and do is for the glory of God alone.
The three in the middle – faith, grace, and Christ – lead from the one end to the other and form an integrative heart of our faith. Paul saw this clearly in Ephesians 2 where he says we have been saved by God’s grace, which we receive through faith, and that that grace and kindness is shown and communicated to us in Christ Jesus.
Faith and grace are aimless and empty without Christ. They flow into and find their meaning in solus Christus. Faith alone is faith in Christ alone. Grace alone, is the grace of God alone extended to us in Christ alone. The Gospel has integrity, an integrity the Reformers saw as being lost in the late Medieval Church. Studying the solas together helps one appreciate this integrity and puts on display the brilliant facets of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This talk will unpack “Christ Alone” through two points. Each point has a point of contrast, that which the Reformers were protesting and, I would submit, we should still protest:
Strong Savior (and not strong Church)
Sufficient Sacrifice (and not repeated Sacrifices)
In every point we are seeking for the beauty of the Son of God as he is to shine through. The need of every era, whether of the 16th century or the 21st, is for the true God to be known, worshipped, and obeyed. And in every age we are tempted to pollute the beauty of Christ through our idols. John Calvin said it is in our very nature: “Man’s nature… is a perpetual factory of idols…. Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity.”[1] With the Reformers, we seek the pure Christ as the only answer to our polluting idol factories.
I. Strong Savior (and not strong Church)
In each of these two main points, I am going to follow this sequence: (1) look to the problem the Reformers identified in their day, (2) their Biblical and theological solution, and (3) some points of application to our own day.
The Problem of a Strong Church
In the early sixteenth century the Church was at the center of people’s lives in Western Europe. She had evolved, especially in the two hundred and fifty years or so leading up to the Reformation. She had gone from what my old professor Harold OJ Brown called the “Company of the Saved” to the “Salvation Company.”
What is meant by “Salvation Company”?: Luther recognized that in his day people had become enslaved to the sacramental system of the Church, and instead of looking to Christ for their standing before God they looked to the Church. It was thought that because of Christ, Mary, and the saints there was a storehouse of grace in the Church. Priests were its sole dispensers and the faithful had to come to them. There had been a sort of mechanization of grace.
In 1520 Luther wrote three key treatises of the Reformation, one of which was The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, where he attacked the sacramental system of the church. That system, Luther said, represented a captivity from cradle to grave within Rome, which had become its own Babylon holding captive the people of God.
How did the sacramental system work? One was baptized as an infant, confirmed as a youth, married as a mature person, and received extreme unction at one’s death bed. Each of these ceremonies, along with ordination, were seen as sacraments, conveying grace when administered by a priest (The church and her priests were the sole administrators of grace.). The grace conferred through these sacraments was supplemented throughout one’s life by regular confession of sin to a priest (the 6th sacrament) and the reception of the Eucharist (the 7th sacrament) through a priestly Mass. From cradle to the grave the Christian was dependent upon the Church, tethered to the sacraments in order to receive the grace by which one can be saved.
Luther looked to Scripture and saw only two sacraments. The effect of his teaching was to shift focus from the church and its clergy to Christ alone. Salvation not from a company with priests turning on the taps of grace, as it were, but salvation in a singular person: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Stripped of this ornate sacramentology, and the whole edifice the Church had established in religious life through priests, the Mass, and so on, one might ask where one went for grace. If the Church had it very wrong, what were believers to do? Where would men like Luther point them? There’s a famous painting of Luther in the City Church, the Stadtkirche, in Wittenberg where he is standing in the pulpit preaching. He holds one hand up with his index finger extended, pointing to Christ on the cross. Believers should look to Christ alone.
When Luther said “the cross alone is our theology” it was an affront on the whole the whole Roman system. Christ Alone drove the whole program of reform in the Church, scrubbing away the pollution of man-made tradition: priests were redefined as pastors, tables replaced altars, and the ministry of the Word replaced sacramentalism. Thus, Luther and the other Reformers, in seeking to redress centuries of harmful teaching regarding how we are made right before God, will chip away at the accumulated traditions and focus upon Christ. As they burrow down into Christ they will see how his person and work are central to our faith.
2. The Solution of a Strong Savior
If the problem of a Strong Church was the problem identified by the Reformers starting with Luther, what was the solution? Instead of a Strong Church, it was a Strong Savior. Consider 1 John 1:1-4:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
On the one hand, the Reformers did not have a Christological complaint with the Roman Catholic Church in its day. That is to say, Jesus Christ as having two natures – 100% God, 100% Man – in one person was the classical Christology that the Reformers carried forward in their own teaching. As John says, this Son was with the Father from all eternity, but has also been touched with our hands: one Son, both divine and human.
This beautiful Christ, though, needed to be freshly presented in order for people to see that he and he alone is the source and sum of our salvation. It is as if the Reformers in their preaching and writing took up their brush and filled in the whole picture of salvation with nothing but Christ – not even the smallest brushstroke could display the church and her priests as adding to that picture—for to do so would be to pollute the picture of salvation.
Well, as Bible people where did the Reformers go to fill in their picture of Christ? Let us remember, each of these solas rests on the first: sola scriptura. Scripture alone is the place where we go to gain our picture of Christ. So, they went to places like 1 John 1 aware the book started off with a picture of Christ and ended with a warning to keep from idols. They went to Colossians 2:9: “For in [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” But they also went to sources before them who had given close attention to the biblical Christ.
If you take a big view of history you can often see that when God is doing something monumental in his Church he is also positioning key building blocks within the broader culture that will uphold and sustain what he is doing in the Church. Think about the very first centuries of church: where would they have been in their ease of travel and communication without the roads and peace of Rome and the common language of the Greeks? Likewise, where would the Reformation have been without the broader cultural movement of the Renaissance? Ad Fontes! To the sources! What sources? Well, for many in the broader Renaissance it was the pagan classical sources in Greek and Latin. For the Reformers, though, it was the Greek and Hebrew of the Bible, yes, but also the Church Fathers—those early preachers and theologians who thought deeply and clearly about the Trinity and Christ. It is vital to remember that the Reformers were not schismatics, but were seeking to restore the one holy catholic and apostolic church. So they went to the Bible, yes, but also to the early Creeds and the Church Fathers.
And as the Reformers went to the Fathers on the question of the Son of God the answer they would have received is: only this Christ can save. Only the Son of God as fully divine and fully human can bridge the gap between us and God. The Church Fathers of the 4th century taught a clear Creator-creature distinction, with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit one side – the divine side – and a fully dependent creation on the other. What is more, given the human Fall into sin, we are not merely dependent creatures we are fallen creatures opposed to our Creator.
Who can bridge the gap? The Fathers reasoned with the Scriptures and said, only the God who had the power to create also has the power to save. And only a mediator who is fully human can heal us in the deepest recesses of our humanity: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).
The Church Father Athanasius knew the importance of the divinity of Christ when he said, “There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word who made it in the beginning.”[2] And Gregory of Nazianzus knew the importance of the full humanity of Christ, body and soul, to our salvation when he wrote, “The unassumed is the unhealed”[3] – that is, if Christ didn’t assume all of our humanity, then something is left unhealed. John Calvin picked up this truth when he wrote, “Unless [Jesus Christ’s] soul shared in the punishment [of the cross], he would have been the Redeemer of bodies alone.”[4]
The Reformers echoed the Fathers on this crucial point: the full incarnate Son of God – fully God and fully Man in one person – is our only hope of salvation. In all his strength he must save us, bridging the gap with his powerful mediation. In Christ there is not only perfect humanity but also “the whole fullness of deity.” The Reformation Gospel is the holding forth of this, the announcement of all that is in Christ Jesus. If we add to the picture of salvation, through the church assuming power that rests in Christ alone, then we preach what Luther called a “theology of glory” instead of a “theology of the cross”— thus robbing Christ of his glory as our strong Savior.
3. When We are Strong, He is “Weak”
Is this still a temptation for the Church today? It might take different forms from the late medieval Roman Catholic Church, but certainly it is! We are always tempted to pursue a “theology of glory” by adding foreign and corrupting elements, to pollute the pristine picture of salvation given to us in the Word. A theology of glory wants God but bypasses the cross, thus inserting man’s devices in reaching up to God. Solus Christus is continually needed to confront our quests to have our relationship with God mediated by things other than Christ.
We have an unhealthy desire today for immediacy in our user-friendly mediators which are very adept at bringing us to themselves. But do they bring us to the living God? A great temptation for evangelical Protestant churches today is to make a subtle exchange. We say we preach the Gospel. We have Gospel-driven this, and Gospel-centered that. But what is at the heart of our Gospel? Is it the person of Christ and his cross? The second person of the Trinity? The transcendent yet immanent Lord of our lives? Or does the Church and its identity and what it is on about become the heart of the “Gospel” we preach? Do we exchange the person of Christ for a cheap man-made glory, a synthetic thing that we can constantly reinvent, shape, and fit into our lives?
We pollute the Gospel when we present Christ with a worldly wisdom, when a worldly wisdom of present glory shapes our churches’ message such that we have an ecclesiology of glory—that is, a church drawing attention to itself, seeking itself above Christ. The fruit of that is poisonous pride.
This is something Paul had to take up with the Corinthian church. They were tempted to shape the life and message of the Church according to the wisdom of the age—today maybe it’s political posturing of a variety of stripes that provides an overlay on the church’s message and programs, or perhaps certain activities that elbow in and take center stage, or is it a slick audio/visual apparatus.
Paul said, “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). He goes on in 1 Corinthians 1 to impress upon the church the need for an ecclesiology of the cross, that is, a church shaped by the humble logic of the cross.
The problem the Reformers identified in their day, and the problem of our day, is not the Church. The Church is God-ordained and a great gift. The problem is a church seeking glory, rather than a Church rightly ordered according to the Word alone, where Christ the Strong Savior and the cross shape its ministries.
What do we add to Christ in order to mediate our relationship with God? Whatever that is, it mirrors the strong sacramental system the Reformers dealt with. We must repent of it and turn to the person of Christ, who says, “Come to me…”
In closing out this first point on a Strong Savior, Calvin provides us the exclamation point when commenting on the great temptation before the Church at Colossae, which was the temptation for the Church during the 16th century, and is the temptation before us today:
The only remedy for fortifying [us] against all the snares by which the false apostles endeavor to trap us is to understand accurately who Christ is. For how is it that we are “carried about with so many strange doctrines (Heb. 13:9), because the excellence of Christ is not perceived by us? For Christ alone makes all other things suddenly vanish. Hence there is nothing that Satan so much tries to effect as to call up mists so as to obscure Christ; because he knows that by this means the way is opened up for every kind of falsehood. This, therefore, is the only means of retaining, as well as restoring, pure doctrine: to place Christ before the view such as He is with all His blessings, that His excellence
be truly perceived.[5]
II. Sufficient Sacrifice (and not repeated Sacrifices)
Our second point is that our strong savior, Jesus Christ, offered a sufficient sacrifice for sins on the cross. Our first point looked especially to the person of the Son. We now give attention to his work.
The Problem of Repeated Sacrifices
There’s a famous scene from the English Reformation that many of you will know well. On the 16th of October 1555, during the reign of Mary I, known to history as “Bloody Mary,” Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burnt at the stake in Oxford. The two men, along with Thomas Cranmer, are known as the Oxford Martyrs. You might know this scene because of these lines. Latimer said to Ridley before being burned: “Be of good cheer, Ridley; and play the man. We shall this day, by God’s grace, light up such a candle in England, as, I trust, will never be put out.”
A year earlier, while Ridley was in prison waiting to be burned for heresy, he reflected on the Roman Catholic Church of his day. He said Satan’s old world of false religion stood on two “most massy posts and mighty pillars…. These two…are they in my judgment: the one is false doctrine and idolatrical use of the Lord’s supper; and the other, the wicked and abominable usurpation of the primacy of the see of Rome.”[6] Thus, the two pillars of the Mass and the central role of the Pope and church hierarchy. These two come together as we unpack this point on Christ’s sufficient sacrifice.
To understand Roman Catholic teaching the first thing to know is it is well-thought out and it often has a touchstone, even if quite small, within Scripture. This is the case with their foundational doctrine of Totus Christus, the “whole Christ.” You could see this as standard fare from Ephesians 4 and 5 where Christ is head of the Church and the Church is his body. But by the 16th c. this had developed into something quite different.
If you boil it down, the Roman Catholic teaching on Totus Christus is very simple: As the body of Christ, the Church is in some sense the continuing incarnation of the Son. The sacraments, as they grew to seven and were cemented in Church teaching in the 13th – 16th centuries, were said to be “the seven arteries of the Body of Christ, through which the lifeblood of God’s grace was pumped.”[7] So you have the Church as the body of Christ, understood as continuing the incarnation, and the sacraments as the arteries through which God’s grace flowed. Here’s the great question: who has authority to turn on the taps of grace, as it were?
At the head of the Church on earth is the vicar of Christ (vicar from vicarius in Latin: meaning “substitute”), the Pope. The Pope ordains Bishops. Bishops ordain priests. Priests are clergy who have the authority to “turn on” the taps of grace for the faithful. At the center of Roman Catholic spirituality, in the 16th century as well as today, was the Mass where the elements of bread and wine are transubstantiated when the priest pronounces hoc est corpus meum – “this is my body.” The outward appearance of the elements, the accidents, still appear to be bread and wine, but their substance becomes the actual body and blood of Christ. Thus, in the work of the body of Christ, the Church, Christ himself becomes repeatedly and really present in the daily Mass celebrated throughout the world.
I say all that all as foundation for understanding this point: There is a sacrifice brought to God by the hand of the priest after transubstantiation. This is the sacrifice of the Mass repeatedly offered every day throughout the world wherever the Roman Catholic Church is active. It is bloodless but it is still understood as a sacrifice. In response to the Reformation the Roman Catholic Council of Trent solidified this teaching that the Mass is a true sacrifice of propitiation – a work obtaining mercy for the living and the dead. Indeed, the Council of Trent declared, “The sacrifice of the Mass is properly offered not only for the sins, penalties, satisfactions, and other needs of the faithful who are living but also for the departed in Christ who are not yet fully cleansed.” In sum, the cross of Christ does not justify full stop, but merely opens justification, makes it possible, and hence the Mass is continually offered as a work of the Church in order to obtain remission of sins for the living and the dead, to make it possible to store up merits for eternal life.
2. Jesus is the Only Sacrifice for Sin
In your Bibles turn again to 1 John, over to 1 John 2:1-2:
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
Jesus is the only Savior and his death on the cross is the only sacrifice that can pay the debt of our sin. How does Jesus save? We could talk about His actively righteous life, from conception until death. But let’s focus here briefly on the Cross.
Key to understanding the cross is that, we are not simply dependent creatures; we are sinners. God is holy and does not wink at sin. In his just and moral order, sin demands punishment. Forgiveness requires death. Hebrews 9:22 says without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. Jesus died our death on the cross. It is these scriptural truths that led the Reformers to understand that Christ’s death on the cross was both substitutionary and penal.
Jesus is our Substitute: Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). He died “for” or “on behalf of” his people. He’s died in our place, for our benefit. That is why at the heart of the Gospel we can say God is for us in Christ. Listen to Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:20-21:
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
It is because of this Scripture, and others like Romans 5, that the Reformers spoke of a double imputation on the Cross: our sins were imputed to Christ and his righteousness was imputed to us, his people. In that double imputation, then, we see how the cross-work of Christ was both substitutionary and penal: Jesus received legal punishment for crimes committed, that is, the penalty we deserved for the breaking of God’s law. As our substitute, he bore our penalty, the penalty our guilt incurred. Thus God can forgive while also upholding His justice. Luther called this the “wonderful exchange” – Christ becoming a curse for us so that in him we might become righteous.
Christ’s death was justice-satisfying, wrath-quenching. It was propitiatory – that word we read in 1 John 2 – turning God’s wrath away from us that we might receive his favor, that we might be forgiven and looked upon as righteous. As we contemplate the cross, we must recognize our sins put him there. Luther said the Law stands before Jesus on the cross and yells, “I find him a sinner!…Therefore, let him die upon the cross.” But if we are united to him by faith, that is our death. He suffered and died for me and for you.
Was it for sins that I have done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity, grace unknown,
And love beyond degree. (Isaac Watts)[8]
We caused his pain. Our sins put him there. In my, in your place condemned He stood. What a savior!
This all took place on the cross at once. Christ’s sacrifice was full: It was final, sufficient, complete. Remember Christ’s last words: “It. Is. Finished.” There is no more sacrifice. We cannot add to it or take anything away from it. Hebrews 7:26-27:
For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.
You can see why the Reformers would have opposed the Mass so vehemently: there can be no more sacrifice for sin. A continual sacrifice, no matter how tethered to the cross, denies the finality and sufficiency of the cross.
3. Reclaiming the Priesthood
As we think about the contemporary application of this point I want for our thoughts to stay in heaven, from Hebrews 7: we have a high priest who carries on a heavenly ministry, daily, hourly, minute-by-minute interceding on our behalf. As fully human he represents human beings before God and, as fully divine, he represents God to humanity. What is more, he has given to his people united to him to be a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). There is, as the Reformers taught, not a priesthood legitimized through the hierarchy of Rome but a “priesthood of all believers.”
Now, this doctrine is not one which indulges a “Jesus and me” approach to spirituality. God has given us the Church as our family. We are united to Christ not individually but through a body. God gives elders who shepherd us and ministers who preach the authoritative Word of God. The Sacraments, which find their home in the Church, are a means by which we are to regularly draw on the grace of God. The priesthood of all believers is not the Good News of American Christian individualism.
So what is it? It means every member of Christ by faith holds personal communion with the Divine Head. In that communion there is pardon and strength from Christ directly, not mediated through a priest. And instead of a priest offering a sacrifice on behalf of the people at Mass, all Christians offer sacrifices. We offer a sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15-16) and we are also that sacrifice – we present ourselves as living sacrifices. Because of the work of Christ, we go directly to God through Christ. Because of the Spirit, our offerings are sanctified and acceptable to God (Romans 15:16).
Now, given the Reformation emphasis on the ministry of the Word we do set apart and equip men to toil in the ministry of the Word, regularly preaching to the people of God. But unlike the Roman Catholic priest regularly offering the sacrifice of the Mass, the ministry of the Word is not the work of the preacher alone.
One of the more discouraging elements in the church today, including in our most conservative reformed evangelical churches: there is a yawning gap between our stated belief in the authority of Scripture and our actual literacy in Scripture. Large sections of the evangelical church are growing in their biblical illiteracy. Now, this might say something about the biblical content heard in some sermons, certainly. But it also says something about the people of God taking seriously the priesthood of all believers.
Luther saw that, according to Malachi 2:7, the principal task of OT priests was to teach people the law of God. The minister of the Gospel feeds the Word to the people. Fed by the Word, we then as priests minister the word each to the other in discipleship and counsel. Paul says we address one another in “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19). Peter says the function of the royal priesthood is to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
I think a decisive issue now and in coming decades among the priesthood of all believers is and will be biblical literacy. As one author put it,
An attenuated sense of what’s in Scripture is making us all live and work in thinner and thinner air. Good preachers will say great things, but their words will be weak unless our congregations somehow become more alert and alive to [biblical] resonances. When we hear of defections from biblical authority, it seems increasingly to come from a lack of saturation in Scripture itself. The commands of God in Scripture seem unpersuasive to Christian cultures that aren’t already deeply immersed in biblical ways of thinking.
The Christians who labored before us did astonishing things to get the words of Scripture into their minds and hearts, “transfused,” as [one Scottish poet] put it, “through the texture of the soul.”[9]
A Church always reforming today clings to Christ alone as our Strong Savior. As our one mediator, Christ brings the wisdom of the cross to bear on our lives. On that cross the Son of God offered a singular and sufficient sacrifice that has secured our salvation once and for all. Now in heaven as our high priest, Jesus has given to us to be a royal priesthood who minister to one another the life-giving Word of God. He’s a Strong Savior and Sufficient Sacrifice—Solus Christus, Christ Alone
Conclusion
In a recent interview Rosaria Butterfield said that our own day has one great ordering sola: sola experientia.[10] By experience alone we know what is true. By personal experience alone we produce a myriad of Christs, a myriad of idols. She goes on in the interview to perceptively observe that when we do not honor the Christ, we will demand others honor our Christs. Isn’t that what we are seeing today in our fitful, seething, ruptured public square with its increasing fundamentalism? Don’t we see the self emerging from experience turning into a myriad of Christs to which we must be true? Don’t we see that faith has been replaced by sincerity? As long as someone is sincere you must leave them to themselves, for their self and sincerity to self reigns. What a recipe for tyranny! What a recipe for anxiety! What a recipe for the endless psychoses that stalk our land.
In 1505, 12 years before the nailing of the 95 theses, one of the more dramatic scenes unfolds in Luther’s young life.
“Help me, St. Anne; I’ll become a monk!”
These were the words Luther yelped when he was caught in a terrible thunderstorm in which he was thrown to the ground after nearly being struck by lightening. Here is Martin Luther traveling from his home to college in Erfurt, where he was studying to become a lawyer. But fearing for his life, he vows to enter the cloister.
I want us to think for a moment about what he clings to in the midst of danger.
St. Anne? Why her? During that time different professions would have their own patron saints that they would pray to. St. Anne was the patron saint of miners, which was Luther’s father’s profession. During this thunderstorm Luther feared for his life and did not know how to find safety in Christ. He goes to what feels nearer, and safer: a saint, a saint that would have been regularly invoked in his household.
Only a year earlier he did something similar. He had accidently stabbed himself with his dagger. As he lay there bleeding, waiting for his friends to return with the doctor, he cries out to Mary. So within the span of a year we have two life threatening incidents and Luther seeks solace in a patron saint and the mother of Jesus. Why not Jesus himself?
The spiritual imagination of late Medieval Roman Catholicism was a crowded and confusing place. You could not ignore the cult of the saints. You had shrines crammed into every corner that were not only vital to the spirituality of the times, but also the economy. With the proliferation of these shrines and their saints, as well as the ever-present Mary, Christ was beginning to recede from view—at least in those moments of peril and need. He was a high Lord and Judge, not a comforting, merciful Savior—at least not for many in the Church. The very thing the incarnation was to teach us about the Son of God had been replaced. Christ had been shoved up to the top of a grand hierarchy, almost beyond reach, needing himself mediators to bring grace to poor sinners.
Heaven was crammed with saints and the earth full of their relics. And these relics, they themselves had turned into portals of grace. So add them to the seven sacraments constantly buzzing in the ear of the faithful, creating anxiety over whether one was doing enough to get grace to be right with God. If Christ’s mediatorship was not fulsome enough, if the cross was only the first payment rather than the final payment, then you need a little help from Jesus’ friends: Mary and the Saints. Contrast that with the assurance we can sing of in the Gospel:
No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.[11]
It was not until Luther could stand freely in Christ through the Good News of the Gospel, that he could take sweet solace in Christ—no longer seeing him as an active judge seeking recompense, but a generous savior who brings him into a family with brothers and sisters, calling in the Spirit on a merciful Father.
In the glorious Gospel we meet the Selfless Son who graciously meets us as our mediator, who has accomplished our salvation and reconciled us to God. Christ continues to meet us as we are united to him by the Spirit – he meets us where we are and fulfills us. You see it 500 years ago, you see it today: life can be wearying and troublesome, and we often feel empty. How does Jesus fill us and satisfy us? It starts with his call. Have you heard it? Do you hear it?
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).
Jesus says rest is found in Him. Jesus claims to have the capacity to fulfill the deepest longings, aspirations, and needs in our soul. We all, from the Fall, have a sense of emptiness and the world – and sometimes the church – promise all kinds of shiny things and shiny people will satisfy us. We indulge in sensual pleasure, we accumulate material things, we achieve great success, we try chemical stimulants, all seeking fulfillment. That’s what they promise. That’s why we chase after them. But we remain unfulfilled, empty, unsatisfied.
Our age is enamored with the self, but God created the self never to be an end. It cannot bear the load we seek to put on it. The self can only truly find itself by losing itself in the Son. Prior to his conversion, why was Luther so anxious even though he was such faithful a man of the Church? There was nothing there! Just because the church said grace was found in this place and that, doesn’t mean it was. Where do you go to find favor, grace, rest, today?
To the empty, hungry soul Jesus says, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). In John 7:37-38, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’” To the doubting, fearful, confused soul, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). To those weighed down by or enslaved to lies, whether their own or the world’s, Jesus says, “[In me] you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
Rest for the weary, bread for the hungry, water for the thirsty, light for the lost – Jesus promises all these in himself. He’s a big Savior who provides all in Himself. And only he can provide these because he is God, He has the resources of heaven, and he brought those to earth to give to all those who entrust themselves to him.
[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), I.xi.8.
[2] Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word (Grand Rapids, MI.: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), I.1.
[3] St. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 158, Epistle 101.5.
[4] Calvin, Institutes, II.xvi.12.
[5] John Calvin, “Commentary on Colossians” in Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. 21 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 145-146.
[6] The Letters of John Bradford, volume II: Containing Letters, Treatises, Remains (New York: Cosimo Classics, 1848-53), 161.
[7] Michael Reeves, The Unquenchable Flame: Discovering the Heart of the Reformation (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2009), 18.
[8] Isaac Watts, “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed” (Hymn).
[9] Fred Sanders, “The Danger of Running a Spiritual Deficit” (February 26, 2012), The Gospel Coalition: www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-danger-of-running-a-spiritual-deficit/
[10] www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm5mECL4bX4
[11] Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, “In Christ Alone” (Hymn).
Volume 3 Issue 1
Spring 2018 | 74 pages
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 22:41:59 GMT -5
Luther in 1520: Justification by Faith Alone
Howard Griffith
Professor of Systematic Theology
Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington D.C.
This was a lecture presented at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington DC’s lecture series “Luther’s (Re)formative Years, 1517-1521,” in October 2017.
Introduction
When you meet someone you admire and begin to get to know them, it can be a thrilling experience. You begin to listen to them. You come to see the beauty of their character, their kindness, their courage, their joy, their passion, and that gives you joy. Living with Martin Luther over the last weeks has been that sort of experience for me. I have been trying to put my finger on what I love about him. I think it is the fullness of his joy as a Christian. Justification by faith alone was not merely a true doctrine to him. It was life itself. Brother Martin was an old friend to me, but he has become a new friend again. I hope, through these lectures, you will make a new friend as well.
By 1520, the year he wrote The Freedom of a Christian, Luther had become quite popular. When he challenged the practice of indulgences and when he debated John Eck, Luther’s concern was pastoral, what Robert Kolb calls the “consolation of sin ridden consciences.”[1] Christ alone is the savior, and he alone is the Lord of the Church. His authority is found in the Scripture alone. Luther’s writings were being circulated widely and read. But between 1517 and 1520, the leadership of the Church was not buying it. What the Church heard was Luther undercutting the Pope’s authority and upsetting church order.
Many people were reading Luther, and he used his popularity. In 1520, he wrote several treatises that expressed his theology and his program. The Treatise on Good Works answered the charge that he discouraged good works. The Open Letter to the Nobility of the German Nation asked the politically powerful to lessen the Pope’s usurpation of Christ’s power in the Church and his intruding into secular affairs. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church challenged the practice of withholding the cup from the laity and rejected the idea of the mass as a sacrifice. Luther said only baptism, penance, and “the bread” were truly sacraments. Marriage, confirmation, ordination, and extreme unction were not sacraments, because they lacked Christ’s command and did not promise forgiveness.
In July 1520, Pope Leo X warned Luther of 41 doctrinal errors and threatened him with excommunication. He had 60 days to recant. In November Luther published his positive explanation of the Christian life, The Freedom of a Christian. He dedicated it to the Pope with an open letter asking for peace. “[N]owadays, we are made so sensitive by the raving crowd of flatterers that we cry out that we are stung as soon as we meet with disapproval. When we cannot ward off the truth with any other pretext, we flee from it by ascribing it to a fierce temper, impatience, or immodesty. What is the good of salt if it does not bite?” (45).[2] He said in effect, “I am not criticizing you, but those who have attacked me in your name. You are like Daniel in the midst of lions.” He then defends his attacks on abuses. “All I wanted was peace, but if people attack my teaching, I will not be silent. Please intervene and give us a truce.” And closes with this: “my father Leo, … be not deceived by those who pretend that you are lord of the world, and allow no one to be a Christian unless he accepts your authority… These men are enemies, who seek to destroy your soul.” The apostles called themselves servants of the present Christ, not vicars of an absent Christ. (51) “Perhaps I am presumptuous in trying to instruct so exalted a person, from whom all should learn… [but] I know you are in a miserable situation, so that you are in need of even the slightest help of the least of your brothers. I am your friend and your most humble subject.” The Freedom of a Christian set out Luther’s view of the joy and glory of being a Christian. This is his statement of justification by faith alone. Let’s look at his little tract.
The Freedom of a Christian
The book has two theses, or propositions. “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.” This is true in the inner man. “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” This is true in the outer man. Let us look at these two theses.
I. “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.”
Perfect freedom is the definition of the believer’s relationship to God. That freedom is his in his soul, and nothing can overcome it. Why not? Because nothing external can either produce righteousness and freedom or bring unrighteousness and servitude. Luther defines freedom as being in a right relation to God. No external good works can produce this righteousness nor can they diminish it. The only thing that can make a person free is trusting in the Word of the gracious God. If he has this faith, nothing can hurt him. If he lacks this faith, nothing can help him.
What does Luther have in mind when thinks of external good works? He is thinking of two popular religious lifestyles, the practice of penance (required for all Christians) and the monastic practices of contemplation and fasting (for the especially religious). Penance kept up your relationship with God. It had three parts: contrition, confession, and works of satisfaction. Luther complained that contrition for sin had become a human effort that prepared the heart for approaching God, a human merit. “If you do your very best, God will not deny his grace.”[3] But this only created doubt. How could anyone ever be certain he had done his best? Confession of sins to a priest had become the occasion for priestly tyranny, rather than the pronouncement of free forgiveness for Christ’s sake. And making satisfaction through good deeds assigned by the priest in confession turned people’s faith toward human works, rather than to God’s free promise. There was no freedom there. Any wicked person could do these things.
So, if you can’t get righteousness by human performance, where can it be found? It is found in the message of the Word of God, when we receive it by faith.
Faith has three powers. The first is that it receives the treasures of grace that God freely offers in Christ.
[T]he moment you begin to have faith, you learn that all things in you are altogether blameworthy, sinful and damnable. When you have learned this, you will know that you need Christ, who suffered and rose again for you, so that if you believe in him, you may, through faith become a new man, in so far as your sins are forgiven, and you are justified by the merits of another, namely of Christ alone. (55f.)
No human work can accomplish this. At the same time, no outward work, but only unbelief of heart, makes a man guilty and a servant of sin.
Luther answeres an objection: why then does Scripture command so many ceremonies and laws if faith alone “justifies, frees and saves”? His answer is to draw a line between the law and the gospel, or God’s requirements, that no one can fulfill, and his promises. The commandments show us what we ought to do, but give no power to fulfill it. God intends them to teach us our inability to do good and lead us to despair of our ability. But the second part of Scripture is the promises, which say,
If you wish to fulfill the law and not covet, as the law demands, come, believe in Christ in whom grace, righteousness, peace, liberty, and all things are promised. If you believe, you shall have all things. If you do not believe, you shall lack all things.
The promises are “holy, true, free, peaceful words, full of goodness.” Luther is saying that when we rely on the promises of Scripture, when we entrust ourselves to the promises of God, the power and grace of the Word of God are communicated to the soul. No good work can rely upon God. So there is no need for good works to justify, and therefore the Christian is free from the law. Good works are not necessary for righteousness and salvation.
Faith’s second power is that it gives God his proper glory by trusting him as truthful, righteous, and good. This is the highest honor we can pay anyone, to trust him. Conversely, if we do not trust him, we do him the greatest disservice. “Is not such a soul most obedient to God in all things by this faith? What greater wickedness, what greater contempt of God can there be, than not believing his promise? For what is this but to make God a liar?” (59) If a person does not trust God’s promise, he sets himself up as an idol in his heart. Then his unbelieving doing of good works is actually sinning.
Do you notice that Luther has a new understanding of the character of God? Till now he had thought of God as a harsh judge who rewards individuals according to their merits. He does not deny God’s wrath against sin. But now he says that God’s basic disposition toward his sinful creatures is love and mercy. His personal favor is based on nothing but his own desire to show compassion. “What a kind, fine God he is, nothing but sweetness and goodness, that he feeds us, preserves us, nourishes us.”[4] He is proclaiming the graciousness of God in the gospel. He also has a new understanding of grace. He no longer defined grace as an internally located gift from God; instead, it became instead his favor, his merciful disposition toward sinners.[5]
Faith’s third power is that it unites us to Christ as our bridegroom. Here Luther becomes lyrical.
By this mystery, as the Apostle Paul teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31-32]. And if they are one flesh, and if between them there is a true marriage… it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly, the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has, Christ claims as his own. … Let us compare these, and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death and damnation. Now let faith come between them, and sins, death and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life and salvation will be the soul’s… By the wedding ring of faith he shares in the sins, death and pains of hell, which are his bride’s…. Her sins cannot now destroy her… and she has that righteousness of Christ, her husband, … and [can] say, “If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and mine is his…” (60-61)
Luther calls this the glorious exchange, the royal marriage. By faith, then, the person can ascribe all glory to God and have no other gods. By faith he can keep all the commandments.
Finally, Luther says that by faith our perfect freedom means that we are kings and priests to God. Because Christ is king, so we are kings, (in the inner man) lords over all things. Nothing can hurt us. All things are made subject to the believer to further his salvation. Nothing can subject him to harm, even if God ordains that he suffers and dies.
The Christian is also a priest, because he can come before God, to pray to him acceptably. And it is only faith that makes him able to intercede for others. He needs no works to make him righteous and save him, since faith abundantly supplies all that he needs.
The obvious objection is: if that is true, how should the Christian be distinguished from the church’s priests, popes, bishops, and other “ecclesiastics”? There is no distinction, except that certain Christians are set apart to be public teachers and servants. (65).
But the church has turned these servants into lords. This is why the church needs reformation. It is not enough to teach people the facts of Christ’s life, along with human laws and the teachings of the church. Nor is it enough to teach about Christ in order to move men’s affections to sympathy.
The church should preach, not just facts about Christ, but what Christ is to be to us.
[T]hat he might not only be Christ, but be Christ for you and me… faith is built up when we preach why Christ came, what he brought and bestowed, and what benefit it is to us to accept him.
What man is there whose heart, upon hearing these things, will not rejoice to its depth, and in receiving this comfort, will not grow tender, so that he will love Christ as he never could by means of laws or works?” (66)
Luther has moved to the biblical notion of faith. Faith is trust in God. It is not just another virtue formed in us by grace. Faith is not a virtue. It is the rejection of all possible virtue. Faith is not an inward good work that takes the place of outward good works. Rather, it looks to Christ. It knows Christ and rests in him and his righteousness for us.
Let’s move on to Luther’s second proposition.
II. “A Christian is a totally responsible servant of all, subject to all.”
This defines the believer’s relationship to other people. Here Luther answers the objection that says, “now I am free from all works. I’ll do nothing.” No, we have to do good works because we are still subject to sin and temptation in our bodies, our outward man.
The value of good works for the individual.
Luther immediately warns against relapsing into the notion that good works serve as justifying righteousness. No, that is impossible. Works cannot make righteous. But when we have received righteousness, we do good works out of faith and motivated by God’s glory. Without this faith, it is impossible to please God.
He proves this by some good biblical reasoning. “A good tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor a bad tree bear good fruit.” Good works do not make a man good, but a good man does good works. A good building does not make a man a good builder, but a good builder builds a good building.
This is how we are to tell whether a work is good or not. If our works are “burdened by this perverse leviathan” that through them one is justified, they are made necessary and freedom and faith are destroyed, and they become damnable works (72). When this happens, these good works “violently force themselves into the office and glory of grace.” Only faith allows a person to see this is true. Therefore all teaching about works, penitence, etc. will be deceitful and diabolical if we stop with that.
Law only kills, humbles, and leads to hell without bringing back again. “Repentance proceeds from the law, but faith from the promise of God.”
The value of good works for others.
We do good works in order to serve our neighbors. Faith is active through love. “That is, it finds expression through works of freest service, cheerfully and lovingly done, with which a man willfully serves another without hope of reward; and for himself, he is satisfied with the fullness and wealth of his faith.” (74)
Here is his sum of the joyful service of the Christian:
He ought to think: ‘Although I am an unworthy and condemned man, my God has given me in Christ all the riches of righteousness and salvation without any merit on my part, out of pure, free mercy, so that from now on I need nothing except faith which believes that this is true. Why should I not therefore, freely, joyfully, with my whole heart and with an eager will do all things which I know are pleasing and acceptable to such a Father who has overwhelmed me with his inestimable riches? I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbor, since through faith I have an abundance of all good things in Christ’…Behold, from faith thus flow forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a joyful, willing, and free mind that serves one’s neighbor willingly and takes no account of gratitude or ingratitude, of praise or blame, of gain or loss. For a man does not serve that he may put men under obligations. He does not distinguish between friends and enemies or anticipate their thankfulness or unthankfulness, but he most freely spends himself and all that he has, whether he wastes all on the thankless or whether he gains a reward. As his Father does, distributing all things to all men richly and freely, making ‘his sun rise on the evil and on the good’(Mt.5.45), so also the son does all things and suffers all things with that freely bestowing joy which is his delight when through Christ he sees it in God, the dispenser of such great benefits. (75-76).
Luther concludes that believers live not in themselves but in Christ by faith, and not in themselves but in their neighbors, by love. “Otherwise he is not a Christian. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor” (80). This is faith working through love. Gal 5:3.
Evaluation
The focus of public preaching and private pastoral ministry must be to set forth Christ for us. God has given him for us. God has raised him for us. God is good and trustworthy, and he freely offers all things, in Christ, to us. Therefore, the trustworthiness of the Word, and the necessity of faith is everything. This must be the goal of all ministry. What we want to do for everyone is to enable them to believe in Christ as he is offered in the Word.
Luther is not antinomian; he does not believe that we are not obligated to keep God’s law once we are Christians. He says we must, because we are still sinners and subject to temptation and to continuing unbelief. The law continues to tell us that our righteousness is available only in Christ himself. However, even as it instructs us as believers, the law has a largely negative function for the believer. Luther does not make a sound theological place for God’s law as the believer’s delight. It is just the gospel that overcomes the problem of law. “If I am outside of Christ, the law is my enemy, because God is my enemy. But once I am in Christ, the law is my friend, because God is my friend.”[6] It is the deepest desire of my heart to obey God’s law and to do this in faith. Faith works through love.
Luther’s doctrine of sola fide in 1520 is closer to “union with Christ by faith alone” than to “justification by faith alone.” His major metaphor is the union of the believer and his Bridegroom. That brings the wonderful exchange between Christ and us. Faith is the wedding ring that brings us into union with Christ, our bridegroom. Luther clearly includes justification in this. An alien righteousness, Christ’s righteousness, belongs to us by faith alone. But the more precise idea of his perfect, finished, and final righteousness, counted ours once for all time, is not here yet, because Luther speaks about our righteousness growing over our lifetime.
Later biblical reflection would clarify this, and Luther would be clearer about it too. God in free grace, reckons the righteousness of Christ to us, when we simply entrust ourselves to him. It is not present, ongoing renewal that is the ground of God’s justifying verdict. Nor is it faith, considered in itself, that grounds God’s pronouncement. Christ’s sacrifice for us is the only basis of our being forgiven, fully, and perfectly and once for all. In 1520 the brownies were still a little chewy. It took some time for this fully biblical idea of justification to bake completely.
However, having said this, I think Luther’s idea of the glorious exchange by union with Christ is sound and biblical. Union with Christ by faith alone truly is the “freedom of a Christian.”
When we receive Christ by faith alone, we receive his righteousness as a completed gift, and consequently we are accounted righteous by God once for all. And it is also true that our hearts are cleansed, what we term “sanctification,” by this union. What Luther calls the good works of a good man, notice, a changed man, are the fruit of this union.
John Calvin would later put it like this:
Therefore, that joining together of head and members, the indwelling of head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him of the gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not contemplate him outside ourselves from afar, in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us, but because we put on Christ, and are engrafted into his body—in short, because he deigns to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him. (Institutes 3.11.10).
I close with these beautiful words of Luther:
Who then, can appreciate what this royal marriage means? Who can understand the riches of the glory of this grace? Here this rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him… as the bride in the Song of Solomon says [2:16], “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (80-81).
[1] Robert Kolb, Martin Luther, Confessor of the Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 72.
[2] All citations from Freedom of a Christian are from Martin Luther, Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (New York: Doubleday, 1961).
[3] Heiko A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000), p. 133.
[4] Kolb, Martin Luther, p. 60.
[5] Kolb, Martin Luther, p. 34.
[6] Richard B. Gaffin, By Faith, Not Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation (Bletchley: Paternoster, 2006), p. 103.
Volume 3 Issue 1
Spring 2018 | 74 pages
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Creature of the Word
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The Christ of Wisdom: A Redemptive Historical Exploration of the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament
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The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 22:46:19 GMT -5
Pulpit Speech: A Divine Cover-Up?
Michael J. Glodo
Associate Professor of Practical Theology
Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando
How is God both just and merciful? This is a first order question asked of any pastor by any person trying to reconcile God’s justice with his mercy. Our answer is often only to affirm that he is both and perhaps to explain why God’s justice must be satisfied. As the second of the Canons of Dort states it:
God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just. His justice requires (as he has revealed himself in the Word) that the sins we have committed against his infinite majesty be punished with both temporal and eternal punishments, of soul as well as body. We cannot escape these punishments unless satisfaction is given to God’s justice (2.1).
While it is important to proclaim that God is both just and merciful and why, it is to his greater glory that Scripture reveals how he is so, for it is in seeing the how that he is most fully the “blessed (̔εὐλογητός) God.” (Eph 1:3)
Pastorally, I have found the divine drama of Exodus 12 a useful, clear, and effective source for leading people to this divine beatitude. The key to seeing this in its fullness is a profound yet largely overlooked insight of Meredith Kline which reexamines the verb pesach (̔פסח) to reveal not only a helpful clarification to the modern translations, but to create a dovetail bond with Paul’s summation in Rom 3:26, “…so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”[1]
In Exodus 12:1-28 God’s explained what would happen in the decisive final plague in which the firstborn of Egypt would die and “on all the gods of Egypt [he] will execute judgments.” (v 12) As he would ultimately do in Jesus Christ, God would judge, but would also save by becoming himself the object of judgment. These two moves of God – to judge and to save – are expressed through the two Hebrew verbs ‘bar (עבר, vv 12, 23) and pesach (פסח, vv 13, 23, 27), but modern translations tend to obscure their sense.
Translated “pass through” (ESV, NIV, NKJV) or “go through” (NASB), ‘bar describes how God in the person of “the Destroyer” (מַשְׁחִית, v. 23, cf. 13) would go through the whole land of Egypt “to strike the Egyptians” (vv 12, 23), i.e. to put to death the firstborn of every household. Whether the Destroyer is an angelic emissary or a Christophany, God attributes the judging act directly to himself. Even though in other contexts with the al (עַל) preposition ‘bar can mean “pass over,” as in the sins of the people (e.g. Mic 7:18 where it is in parallel with נֹשֵׂא עָוֺן, “pardoning iniquity”), here it is clearly God’s action to punish the idolatrous and oppressive Egyptians by cutting off their posterity, including Pharaoh’s first born who was the presumptive heir to the throne. God is not merely “passing through” but is on a search and destroy mission in response to the cries of his people (Ex 2:23-24) in order to liberate them from oppressive slavery and to recompense the deeds of their oppressors while showing his supremacy over Egypt’s gods on the world stage (Ex 19:4; Dt 4:6-7; 29:2). NASB comes closest to capturing the sense, which is that God would “go throughout” the land in judgment. The use of “pass through” to translate ‘bar by most translations is potentially confusing in light how the second key verb, pasach (פסח, vv. 13, 23, 27), is translated as “pass over” (ESV, NKJV, NIV, NAU) since the use of “pass” in both suggests a similarity of action.
More problematic, however, is the translation of pasach as “pass over.” While consistent with translation of the noun pesach, “Passover,” it erroneously suggests that God “skipped over” or left untouched the Israelite houses. Kline’s reexamination of the meaning of the verb pasach helps us see that God is not merely skipping those houses (and therefore the sins) of the Israelites, but he is preemptively shielding them and thus delivering them from his own wrath by vicariously standing in their place. God is not ignoring the sins of his people, but in the midst of this great drama of judgment he is atoning for them.
As Kline notes (497-98), the verb pasach appears only here and in 2 Sam 4:4; 1 Kgs 18:21, 26; and Is 31:5. The adjective pisseiach (פִסֵּ֔חַ), “lame” (e.g. Lev 21:18; Dt 15:21), and the context of the verb pasach in 2 Sam 4:4 seems to have influenced the verb’s translation in its other contexts. Although “to make lame” for the verb is warranted by that context, Kline regards the 2 Sam 4:4 as a different verbal root. The essence of his reexamination is to allow the more clear usage in Is 31:5 to illuminate the others.
a Like birds hovering (‘wp), so the LORD of hosts
b will protect (gnn) Jerusalem;
b’ he will protect (gnn) and deliver it;
a’ he will spare (pasach) and rescue it.”
This promise of God to protect his chosen dwelling place invokes the avian image of God as a great bird protecting its nest (497-98).[2] Parallelism in Hebrew poetry can provide great help in understanding obscure terms. Here the sharing of the same verb by the b and b’ lines (gnn) forms a pivot or crux which draws the verbs of the a and a’ lines into closer association. Thus the clear imagery of ‘wp, “to hover,” sheds light on the rarer pasach suggesting a similar meaning – i.e. “to hover, overarch.” God will spread his protective wings over Israel in Jerusalem just as he had done in the Sinai wilderness (Ex 19:4; Deut 32:10-11), the same thing God in the glory cloud would do by the Red Sea shortly after the first Passover (Ex 14:19-20). Translating pasach as “hover” is further supported by the LXX choice of σκεραζω, “to cover,” to translate two of the three instances in Ex 12.
This sense of pasach fits as well or better than “limping” in 1 Kgs 18:21, 26. Thus Elijah challenges the people not to “hover” between Yahweh and Baal (v 21) while the narrative depicts Baal’s prophets as unsuccessfully conjuring over the bull prepared for Baal by “hovering” over the altar.
Is there anything else to suggest that pasach in Ex 12:13, 23, and 27 should be translated as “hovered over” or the like? Turning from the biblical to the historical-cultural context Kline says yes.
Outside the Bible, depiction of deity in avian fashion was common in ancient Near Eastern iconography and literature. Familiar is the use of bird emblems for gods in Egyptian religion…An important parallel to the Glory-theophany phenomena in the Bible is the widely attested motif of the winged sun-disk used to represent the divine majesty. Of special significance for the interpretation of the paschal event in Exodus 12 is the appearance of this winged symbol of divine glory on door lintels…It is within this world of avian and portal symbolism that the meaning of the Lord’s paschal act of salvation is to be sought (498)
Archaeological artifacts of Egyptian door facades, including tombs, show representations of Egyptian gods – particularly the winged-disc sun god – carved or painted on the lintels; the gods who were expected to safely accompany the deceased to the afterlife. But on the night of the Passover, on the lintels of the Israelite houses, there was no Egyptian god depicted but rather a symbol of Israel’s God hovering over that house. So then, while God in the Destroyer was executing judgment throughout Egypt, God the protector simultaneously hovered over the Israelite houses in a shielding stance.
Kline completes his case by addressing the noun pesach, “Passover” (503). It occurs in the OT only as a proper noun describing the Passover, i.e. it does not have a general usage. However, the Egyptian sach, meaning “booth” which can refer to the previously-mentioned Egyptian tombs with the winged sun God carvings, with the definite article p’ – p’sach – suggests a play on words. The borrowed Egyptian noun under the influence of the now-understood Hebrew verb becomes a memorial Hebrew noun to remind Israel (and perhaps polemically the Egyptians) that on the morning after the Passover they had emerged from death houses into newly-consecrated lives with and for God – from that day on, the firstborn of every house in Israel belonged wholly to the Lord (Ex 13:2).
But this was not simply God versus himself, a “house divided,” for the form in which God hovered over the Israelite houses was the blood of the Passover lamb. “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it” (v 7). The blood of the unblemished, year-old male lamb, so closely identified with God’s protective activity that it is the sign which signifies God’s personal presence, signified to the Destroyer that he had no work to do at that house – a death had already taken place, the death of an innocent substitute.
On that night, every Israelite house, just as every Egyptian house, became a house of death. As Kline sums up:
[H]ouses of death fill the scene in the drama of the pesah lyhwh [“Passover to the Lord”] in Exodus 12. Every house in Egypt was turned into a house of death that night (12:30, 33). Most literally, the house of the pharaoh, residence of the divine king according to Egyptian ideology, became a funerary sh-ntr [“tomb shrine”]. And is that not what the Israelite houses became also, marked as they were with the blood of the lamb?…This death-signifying blood—that is, the lamb slain—was at the same time the pesah, the covering that protected from the death stroke. (507)
So now it is that we can see in Exodus 12 God’s answer to the question of how justice and mercy meet. Contrary to popular understanding, it’s not a matter of “good cop” Jesus contending with “bad cop” God the Father or a Marcionite “unhitching” ourselves from the Old Testament in order to live under the grace of the New, but rather the full participation of the fullness of God in which he righteously judges all sin and mercifully take the place of the sinner who, like John the Baptist, sees “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). God saves believers from his own wrath, not by “skipping over” their sins, but by covering their sins by his self-sacrificing death as symbolized in the lamb. God saves us from himself by becoming the object of judgment.
To ask how the slain lamb can represent at once the death judgment of God inflicted and a protective shielding from that blow is to inquire into the judicial heart of the gospel of justification by grace. The answer lies in the nature of the death judgment suffered by the lamb. It was a vicarious, expiatory act of sacrifice, a suffering of divine wrath in the stead of others, so providing them with a place of refuge from that wrath passing over the world.
The wonder of grace deepens when we recall that by reason his personal Presence hovering (pasah) over the Israelites houses, the Lord himself was their shielding shelter (pesah). The lamb is the pesah and the Lord is the pesah. Both are true because the Lord becomes the lamb (507, emphasis added).
The Christian, including those at death’s door, has the assurance of Christ’s cross anticipated by the blood-stained death door of the Passover. For on the night on which Jesus was betrayed, all were delivered from death except him who went out into the darkness of that Passover night (Jn 13:30). As we dwell under the shadow of God’s protective wings, we “will not fear the terror of the night / nor the arrow that flies by day” (Ps 91:5), for “if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31). Thus God in Christ is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Rom 3:26) As the Passover shows, for God to do one without the other is for him to be less than God. But “from his fullness we have all received” (Jn 1:16).
As a foretaste in the Passover and in fullness in Jesus Christ,
Steadfast love and faithfulness meet;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Faithfulness springs up from the ground,
and righteousness looks down from the sky (Ps 85:10-11).
This is why not only the is and the why, but especially the how of God’s plan is to the praise of his glorious grace (Eph 1:6, 12). Or as Newton so eloquently penned
Let us wonder grace and justice,
join to point to mercy’s store.
When through grace in Christ our trust is,
justice smiles and asks no more.[3]
[1] Meredith G. Kline, “The Feast of Cover-Over,” JETS 34.4 (Dec 1994): 497-510. Scripture citations are from the ESV unless otherwise indicated.
[2] Kline develops the avian imagery of God beginning with Gen 1:2 and recurring throughout Scripture, particularly in relation to the work of the Spirit, in his Images of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980). He demonstrates that this imagery is particularly associated with the work of God the Spirit as concretely manifested in the divine glory, hence he can speak of these manifestations as the “Glory-Spirit.” Kline’s pneumatology of the Old Testament in which he correlates the progress of redemption with the Spirit remains largely unappropriated by the church. Elsewhere Kline notes profoundly that “pneumatology is the realm of eschatology,” Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue (S. Hamilton, MA: Meredith G. Kline, 1986) 22.
[3] John Newton, “Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder.”
Volume 3 Issue 1
Spring 2018 | 74 pages
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In This Issue
Creature of the Word
Solus Christus: Against the Idol Making Factory
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The Christ of Wisdom: A Redemptive Historical Exploration of the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament
Rediscovering the Holy Spirit: God’s Perfecting Presence in Creation, Redemption, and Everyday Life
The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 22:48:44 GMT -5
A Lunchtime Conversation with Carl Trueman
The Orlando campus of RTS celebrated Reformatin500 with a visit from Dr. Carl Trueman, professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. In addition to four lectures on Martin Luther, he joined the seminary for a community lunch when Academic Dean Michael Allen posed some questions to him.
On the Priesthood of Believers
An idea we often hear about, almost as a cliché or mantra that seems to undermine the confessional teaching on pastoral ministry is the idea of the priesthood of all believers. What is Luther’s real concern and how do we perhaps sometimes misperceive that?
That has an interesting history because Luther certainly drops the rhetoric or at least the rhetoric is somewhat muted after 1525, with the Peasant’s War (with crazy people going on the rampage). Luther becomes much more of a hierarchical elitist after 1525.
The idea first emerges in his writings in 1520 in The Freedom of the Christian Man, where he talks about faith being that which unites us to Christ: that joyful union, like a man and a wife, between the believer and Christ. Luther argues from the universal priesthood of Christ to the universal priesthood of all believers. Because Christ for Luther is both priest and king, and united to him, believers partake of his priesthood and kingship.
For Luther that doesn’t shatter all ideas of competence in the church. In his 1539 treatise, “On the Councils of the Church,” Luther argues for ordination, being set aside to gospel ministry, as a mark of the true church. The church will have those who are in the position of elders or ministers. What it really means for Luther is that every Christian is to manifest in their life the priesthood and the kingship of Christ. As Christ dies for us, so we are to give ourselves sacrificially for our neighbors. As Christ rules the church by serving the church, so we are to demonstrate our lordship over the created realm by serving our neighbors. Luther’s view is being funneled through his theology of the cross, where everything is flipped on its head and is the opposite of what you might actually expect.
The priesthood of all believers for Luther is certainly a powerful idea, but it is also somewhat of a subtle idea. The rhetoric that Luther uses of freedom and universal priesthood is picked up by many in a more raw political sense. There is an interesting shift in political language that takes place between 1500 and 1520. If you were a peasant in 1500 and you were sitting in a pub and someone asks you, “Your life is miserable, what are you looking for in life,” you’d probably have said, “I’m looking for justice. I want justice.” If you’re having the same conversation in 1520, you probably said, “I’m looking for freedom. I’m looking for liberty.” You’d mean the same thing by it, but the language has morphed. In 1520, when Luther uses the language of freedom and universal priesthood, he is drawing on these kinds of impulses in the wider culture in order to make his writings catch the imagination. The problem that emerges of course is that his writings are misunderstood in a very worldly, political way.
Luther’s Sacramental Theology
Thinking about Luther’s view on the sacraments, how much sympathy do you have for him? He may not have been correct on everything, but are there elements of it that are positive benefits?
It is a very good question. The joke at Westminster Seminary is that my Reformation class should be called “Luther and a Couple of Other Guys.” I’m not a big fan of Zwingli for a whole variety of reasons. (Not least, because he thinks Hercules is in heaven!) There are some bizarre aspects to Zwingli’s theology.
But I can’t answer your question without explaining how I understand Calvin historically. When Calvin is in Basel early in his career, he is unique among the young humanists who are reading Protestant literature and getting excited about it, because he is the one who likes Luther. The other men there – Bullinger and company – are all Zwingli men. I’ve tended to think of Calvin as wanting to be with Luther on the Lord’s Supper, but ultimately knowing that Luther’s view of the Lord’s Supper pushes you into some pretty terrible Christological problems relative to the ancient church creeds and trajectories of thinking through the Middle Ages. The communication of attributes (which is really elaborated by Luther’s followers, not so much by Luther) certainly from a reformed perspective raises all kinds of Christological problems. And I think that Calvin cannot go with Luther on the Lord’s Supper.
But Zwingli is worse. The pure memorialism just doesn’t make sense of the seriousness that Paul ascribes to the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians, for example. Why are people falling asleep if the Lord’s Supper is nothing? Why is it having this devastating effect? And so, my sympathies lie with what Luther is trying to achieve: that the Lord’s Supper is important; that it does strengthen us for our Christian walk; that we’re embodied human beings and God’s grace reflects that. The taking of the Lord’s Supper does seal on our hearts the gospel. So I can’t go with Zwingli.
But I can’t go with Luther’s metaphysics of presence if you could put it that way. On baptism, there is not a lot (other than the fact that I would frame baptism in covenantal categories), on the significance of baptism as Luther sees it, and it seems to me to be compatible with the Reformed perspective – I’d have to think about that more – but on the Lord’s Supper, I can’t go with the Christology. I think what Calvin does is set what Luther is trying to achieve on a sound catholic theological footing.
Luther on Predestination
With regard to Luther and Calvin on election or predestination, is Luther basically similar to the later accounts you find in Calvin, or are they substantively different?
I would frame my answer in this way: Both Luther and Calvin belong to a broad Augustinian tradition that we can trace back through the Middle Ages through Gregory of Rimini, Thomas Bradwardine, and Thomas Aquinas, right the way back to the Pelagian controversies of the early fifth century and then back to the Apostle Paul. So I would approach the question by saying “let’s not isolate these two guys and just do a point by point comparison. Let’s set them within the broader western tradition.”
Having said that, I would say that Luther’s Bondage of the Will is the most radically determinist treatise on predestination written in the sixteenth century. When he makes the being of God the axiom for determinism, then everything is determined. Now, Luther never repeats that and some scholars have said he never repeats that because he never really believed it and he backed away from it.
That’s not necessarily the case. I’ve written a book on history and fallacies and I’ve never written on that since then. Not because I’ve repudiated the book, but I’ve got nothing else to say thus far; I’ve said everything I want to say on that issue. It seems perfectly acceptable to me to think that Luther held to the views he held in 1525 when he died in 1546. Having said that though, this book is the most radically unnuanced, and determinist treatise on predestination. So, an attempt to divide Luther and Calvin on predestination by making Calvin somehow harsher, I think, would fall at the first hurdle. That’s a trendy thing to do perhaps, but the texts don’t say that.
And what does Luther say is his favorite book that he’s written for which he is most proud at the end of his life? Luther said that the three things worth outliving him were The Bondage of the Will and his two catechisms. Everything else could be assigned to the dust bin
Theological Debates Then and Now
If Luther was unduly influenced by some of the many things going on around him, are there parallel instances today, particularly in the Reformed world, where theological debates may be about more than theological debates?
Yes, I’d say theological debates are always more than theology. There are always personalities involved, and personalities shape how things play out. There is clearly a personal rivalry between Luther and Karlstadt. They represent both different theological visions, but also different personal ambitions as well. Are there parallels today? For sure.
I think that American culture is, compared to western European and definitely to British culture, more preoccupied with celebrities and powerful individuals. And you see that in the Christian world. People often tend to identify with an individual or a small group of individuals rather than a denomination or a tradition. That’s not to say that the British approach is any better, it’s just different.
I think there is something in American society that invests a lot of trust and confidence in individuals, even in the political system. In Britain, you don’t vote for the Prime Minister. You vote for the party. And whichever is the biggest party appoints the Prime Minister. I voted conservative, but I never voted for Mrs. Thatcher because I wasn’t in her constituency. In America, you vote for your head of state. And unlike Germany where the head of state is by and large a symbolic/ceremonial position, the American head of state has huge power. I think that’s symptomatic of a particular American pathology, if I could put it that way. And the question is particularly personal to American evangelicalism.
Beyond symptomatic, do you think it is formative for how we think about that in the church?
Yes, I think it can be. I remember a few years ago going around the classroom and asking students to name the pastor who has been most influential in your life. And not a single student mentioned their local pastor (other than those who happened to go to John Piper’s or Tim Keller’s church), but everybody mentioned basically somebody they heard online. That was sort of stunning to me. So the guy who actually cares for you week by week has had no influence on you at all? I think they didn’t mean that, and if I’d framed the question differently or probed further, the local guy would have come to some significance. But the instinctive response to the question of most influence was John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, the big names of the day. It wasn’t Joe Smith who pastors my local Baptist church of fifty people and who’ll be there for me when I’m ill in hospital.
Two Things to Glean from Luther
Quickly: can you name one or two things that Carl Trueman might wish Reformed folks would glean from Luther that often get overlooked?
I think a sense of humor, which is an important thing to Luther for survival. This is a serious point. How does he survive mentally? His sense of humor was a very important way of dealing with danger and chaos. I think it’s also a very good way of not thinking too highly of yourself. Mocking yourself is an important skill to have. Setting yourself up. Luther has it in spades. That would be one thing.
The other thing: Luther has a powerful theology of the Word preached. That I think is important for pastors to grasp. Because having a good theology of preaching should enhance your confidence in the pulpit.
So those two things: a sense of humor and a theology of preaching.
Volume 3 Issue 1
Spring 2018 | 74 pages
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Creature of the Word
Solus Christus: Against the Idol Making Factory
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The Christ of Wisdom: A Redemptive Historical Exploration of the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament
Rediscovering the Holy Spirit: God’s Perfecting Presence in Creation, Redemption, and Everyday Life
The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism
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