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C. W. F. Walther was a well-known Lutheran theologian of the 1800s
in the U.S. A devotion book formed of excerpts from his sermons
entitled: God Grant It was translated by Gerhard P. Grabenhofer
and published by Concordia Publishing House in 2006. This book has a
particularly useful quotation appearing on pages 863-864.
There are, however, more subtle enemies of the cross who present a better appearance. They teach that Christ is God's only begotten Son, that He died a substitutionary death of atonement, and that a person becomes just before God through faith and not by works. But they proceed to deny grace and salvation to all who receive this doctrine at face value, without any personal claim of worthiness, in exclusive reliance upon the Word of the Gospel that is sealed to them by Baptism and Holy Communion. They do this by continually preaching about repentance, conversion, being born again, and sanctification, but they do not have mercy on the poor sinner and they do not want to give any comfort to those who can say nothing of themselves but that they are poor, lost sinners. They do this by describing the faith and justification and pardon of a person in such a way that the Gospel appears to show a person how he himself must earn grace and climb to heaven under an unbearable yoke. They do this by calling the Savior a hard Man and a Moses with thunder and lightning; they portray Him as ruling over His own with an iron scepter. The preachers of these severe doctrines are the most dangerous enemies of Christ and His holy cross. They terrify sinners and keep them from Christ. Without saying it, they teach that Christians must build their state of grace and their salvation upon their own works. They drive the sheep of the Good Shepherd away from the sweet pasture of the life-giving Gospel and into the desert sant of the Law. They are guilty of causing thousands to go astray and to seek grace without ever finding it. |
Yes! Wait a minute. First let's define terms. Sanctification as used here is the so-called "narrow" sense and refers to the living of our lives in this world according to God's laws and rules. Living in a God-pleasing way is the goal of sanctification. This is certainly a good thing and it is necessary. However, can we loose track of some other important truths by placing most of our emphasis on sanctification. What we can easily loose is the truth of the Gospel, that our works, how we live this life, our sanctification does not and cannot determine if we will be saved. A fancy way to say this is that our justification is not to be mixed with our sanctification. Human beings have a problem however. We are each tainted with original sin that corrupts our thinking. It is in our tainted nature that we go looking for things we can do to make God happy with us in order to assure that we will not be punished eternally. We are inclined to look for such things. Thus, it is easy to be swept away by sanctification being taught from the preacher's pulpit. Another gotcha to be careful about is that emphasizing sanctification can lead us humans into believing that we have the power to satisfy God's law, that is to be perfect. In fact, we can never satisfy the law on our own works. None of them are perfect, especially the ones of which we might be especially proud. Though our works can never truly be pleasing to God, we know the Gospel that teaches us that we are cleansed by Christ. We inherit His righteousness (goodness) just as if it were our own. Though our works are all corrupt, we get the perfection of Christ. God looks at us through the perfection of Jesus and sees us as perfectly obedient to all His laws. We are forgiven all our sins. This Gospel good news is what gives us the power and motivation to seek to follow God's laws.
What is in a name - our name? Do we consider ourselves more real people than others? Are we the only ones we believe are saved? NO to both these questions. Rather, we are those who are gathered (in fellowship) around what we consider authentic Lutheranism.
Martin Luther's Rose. Courtesy Lutheran-Church Missouri Synod (see link for Luther's description).
Then you may ask: what does authentic Lutheranism mean? It means many things, which other areas of this website and portions yet to be written will describe in further detail, but here is a brief overview. Real Lutherans are those who acknowledge their state of being lost, blind and enemies of God. In otherwords, they recognize the full severity of the judgment of the Law upon themselves. They are not looking to themselves to have the power to break out of that state. Instead, they are wholly dependent upon God to provide what is needed. This He did through Christ Jesus who came as our substitute to die on the cross in our places and thereby grants us His righteousness. This is the full recognition of the blessings of the Gospel.
Having all our needs supplied by Christ, we never take our eyes off of Him. We wouldn't want to take our eyes off of Christ to be involved in worship that is focused on ourselves, on people and on their entertainment. We wouldn't want to take our eyes off of Christ to have the focus of preaching and teaching be the development of holy people who, some suppose, do good works on their own.
Another way to describe what is real-Lutheranism has to do with the Theology of the Cross. Real-Lutheranism does not get caught up in the Theology of Glory as many churches and pastors seem to be. Much more on this subject to come.