“The adversaries are right in thinking that love is the fulfilling of the Law and that obedience to the Law is certainly righteousness.  But they make a mistake in this matter.  They think that we are justified by the Law.  Since we are not justified by the Law, we receive forgiveness of sins and reconciliation through faith for Christ’s sake.  This is not because of love or fulfilling of the Law; it follows necessarily that we are justified through faith in Christ…”

- Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Article V.

Courtesy of the Rev. Paul McCain’s blog, Cyberbrethren (originally posted by Justin Taylor), here’s a nice account, from Scripture, of the events of the first Maundy Thursday, which the church celebrates today.  .

For instance, let’s take Kenny Chesney’s song, “Everybody Wants To Go Heaven.”  The song goes like this:

“The Preacher told me last Sunday mornin’
“Son, you better start livin’ right. You need to quit the women and whiskey and carrying on all night.
Don’t you want to hear him call your name when you’re standing at the pearly gates?”
I told the Preacher “Yes, I do, but I hope he don’t call today.” Are you ready?

Everybody wants to go to Heaven.
Have a mansion high above the clouds.
Everybody wanna go to Heaven, but nobody wanna go now.

Said, Preacher, maybe you didn’t see me throw an extra twenty in the plate.
There’s one for everything I did last night,
and one to get me through today.
Here’s a ten to help you remember, next time you got the good Lord’s ear.
Say-
I’m comin’ but there ain’t no hurry
I’m havin’ fun down here. Don’t you know that-

Everybody wants to go to Heaven…”

Now I’m sure Kenny is only pointing out the obvious fact that our sinful flesh does enjoy doing what it does by nature: sin.  Even in Christians the Old Adam doesn’t want to stop doing what it loves, our old habits die hard.  But the first verse is interesting, with the exchange between the preacher and Kenny, where he advocates Kenny start “getting right with God” and stop his reckless living and sinning if he wants to enter into Paradise in the next life.  The preacher is telling Kenny that to into Heaven, he has to keep the Law, as in a form of works righteousness.  Kenny responds in the second verse by trying to grease the minister through the offering so the minister can then reciprocate and grease things between him and God.  It reminds me of the medieval Roman Catholic practice of the selling of indulgences, trying to buy your way, or someone else’s way, out of Purgatory and into Heaven, which was ultimately the spark that set off Martin Luther in the early 1500s in Germany.

I don’t know if this is based off a real exchange Chesney had, but we can certainly imagine he has had experience with such legalism, because why else would he write these lyrics and portray salvation in this manner?

Let’s move on.

I present Exhibit B, country music legend Alan Jackson’s, “Where I Come From.”  Examine the chorus for a moment:

“I said where I come from
It’s cornbread and chicken
Where I come from a lotta front porch sittin’
Where I come from tryin’ to make a livin’
And workin’ hard to get to heaven
Where I come from…”

Again, I’m sure Alan Jackson is just musing on a “simpler” way of life in the South, but we can see something of his ideas on religion present in the lyrics.  Here it isn’t hidden at all, we can see the same sort of works righteousness as in Chesney’s song. That a person has to do something and “work hard” to enter into Heaven.  Or at least that people think they have to.  It’s recycled Pelagianism all over again in this idea that we can somehow cooperate with God or have some power or merit to obey His commands and play a part in our own redemption.  Even after all these years after the Reformation its still present in the Church.  This includes “Protestant” churches even in the South…

But we know from the Scriptures that it isn’t this way at all.  That these well meaning, good hearted fellas from the South have got it all wrong.  Consider what the accounts of the crucifixion tell us about the criminals executed next to Jesus on crosses of their own.  Luke’s Gospel tells us,

“³⁹One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” ⁴⁰But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? ⁴¹And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” ⁴²And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” ⁴³And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

There were two criminals crucified with the God-Man, Jesus Christ. One of them mocks Him, and in his last hour still cannot face the fact that he is guilty for what he has done, both against God and against the governing power of the land, Rome (I had heard, on the God Whisperers I believe it was, that the Romans didn’t just crucify pickpockets or cat burglars.  These two guys didn’t just steal a piece of fruit from the market, they most likely had racked up a laundry list of charges against themselves.).  The other thief acknowledges he’s guilty of what he’s done and that he deserves it.  Though he received no mercy from the Romans, he knows that on the other side there is no way he’ll be able to stand before God on his own as he’s got no way to atone for his sins.  In his own judgment by the prevailing law of the land, he realizes his own rapidly approaching judgment before God.  He’s up the creek without a paddle, but he is given faith in the person crucified beside him, Christ.  This faith causes him to cry out, on this his only chance, the only hope he’s got in this slow death.  Christ’s grace, love, and mercy, through His blood ebbing out on the cross right in front of them both, covers what the criminal has done, and Christ responds affirmatively that the criminal will enter into His Kingdom that very day.  The temporal, earthly consequences of what that convicted felon has done will run their just course, but his Heavenly Father will acquit him because the punishment he incurred to God is fulfilled in Christ.

Next time you’re listening to the radio, take a moment to stop and think a bit about the lyrics…

“…The essence of Christianity is not in what we do or don’t do, it’s in the one in whom we trust.  Christians should not, although sadly they often do, view themselves as billboards for the faith.  We’re examples of mercy.  We’re examples of having been shown forgiveness.  We’re examples of God not giving sinners what they deserve.  We’re not examples of exemplary moral behavior or character.  We’re not; none of us are.

When St. Paul recommends his example, and he does this, if I’m not mistaken, in the Book of Galatians, he says, “I’m an example of God’s mercy.  That’s it.  God showed me mercy.  I was a terrible man.  I was a murderer.  I was a blasphemer “-he calls himself a blasphemer.   “And yet God showed me mercy.”  That should be what every Christian is about.  If you want to be a witness, then go out and be an example of how merciful God can be.  So that when people look at you they can say, “Wow, God would forgive someone like you?  Christ would die so that someone like you could have his sins paid for?”

And you can say, “Absolutely, there’s nothing in me that is worth recommending.”  Hey I think it was St. Paul who says, “I see that there is no good that dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.”

The strongest witness that Christians give to the world is one sinner telling another sinner where the Savior is.   Where salvation is.  Where forgiveness is.  Where mercy is.  I mean that is the one common trait to all mankind, isn’t it?  The one common trait to all mankind, with the exception of Jesus, is our sinfulness, our fallenness, our wretchedness.  We all have a common experience there.

Do I want to go out into the world and say to an unbeliever, “First of all let me tell you what we don’t have in common.  I’m morally better than you.  My life is of a higher spiritually quality than yours is.  I’ve moved beyond the sins you find so vexing.  I’ve overcome, I’m living a higher life’”?  Is that how we want to approach the sinful world?  Which is precisely how many Christians are counseled to approach the sinful world. Now I’m not talking about going out and acting arrogant, I’m talking about going out and not even telling the truth.  That isn’t even telling the truth.  You start with a lie and you also are starting with something you don’t have in common, or at least you think you don’t have in common, with the sinner you are trying to save.

How much better is it to say, “I’m just like you, in absolutely every way.  You’re sinful.  You’re fallen.  You’re wretched.  So am I.  You think you make mistakes?  You think you screw up?  You ought to see me.  You have a hard time controlling your thoughts, your words, your deeds?  You know that these things put you wrong with God?  Welcome to the club.”

That’s why we have the tag line here at Issues Etc., “For sinners only.”  The church is a sinners only club.  Only sinners get in.  If you’re not a sinner you don’t need it.

So we can approach the world saying, “I am not of a better moral caliber than you are.  I’m sinful.  I’m fallen.  I’m wretched.  As wretched and sinful and fallen as you are.  Let me tell you about someone who isn’t.  The one person who isn’t like us, but took all of our sin and all of our wretchedness and all of our fallenness on Himself for us.  Who lived perfectly in our place.”  If  we go out trying to set the moral example, all we’re going to leave unbelievers with is a big fat lie because they don’t believe it folks.  They don’t believe it.  They know that we Christians are as rotten as they are.  They know it.  They see right through it.

Show them someone who doesn’t have any sin, and yet took it all on Himself at the cross.  That’s called being a witness…”

This all starts at about 17 minutes into the segment.

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LCMS World Relief and Human Care

During the Medieval and Renaissance periods, some Italian city states rose to prominence as centers of commerce, like Genoa, Florence, and Venice.  In Northern and Western Europe, the Hanseatic League was formed by cities to control trade in the North Atlantic and Baltic regions.  Some city states still exist, like the nation of Singapore in Southeast Asia.

In 21st century American Christianity, the city state is alive and well.  The megachurch movement has given rise to little church empires all over the country, in which the head pastor is CEO and ruler.  In Houston, Texas, there is the vaunted Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church, most well known among the Prosperity-ites and Word/Faith-ians.  In South Carolina there is Pastor Perry Noble of Newspring Church, with his empire controlling territories in Greenville, Columbia, and Anderson (much like Genoa and Venice controlled islands and cities all over the Mediterranean Sea during the Medieval period).  In North Carolina, Noble’s good friend Steven Furtick reigns in Elevation Church in Charlotte.  The list goes on:  Mark Batterson runs National Community Church in the nation’s capital, Granger Community Church is located in Indiana (Granger has a big leadership team which reminds of Carthage’s ruling oligarchy), Bill Hybels is head of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, and we can’t forget to mention Rick Warren and Saddleback Church out in California.

These men run their own church empires like little popes and though claiming to be Protestants, they undermine the doctrine of sola scriptura, recovered in the Reformation.  Why, because they don’t hold themselves accountable to the Scriptures and they do not listen to criticism or rebuke.  Listen to the sermons, though many times Scripture is quoted  it’s often twisted and ripped out of context or mixed with self help hints and tips.  Many do not allow comments on their blogs, such as Noble and Furtick, and others only allow supportive comments and delete those from would be detractors, such as Mark Batterson’s blog.   Their word is Law, anyone who challenges them must be ignored and discredited by personal attacks and ad hominem arguments as to their character (see the Pajama Pages blog archives for more information).  They can bring quite a number of resources and technology to bear, and stick up for each other, as even Furtick once went after Osteen’s critics on his own blog.  And like any good ruler, they are charismatic and funny enough to keep public opinion on their own side to the point where even sound Biblical correction is portrayed as a below the belt personal attack and the accuser’s character is called into question.

This is not how Christians ought to treat brothers and sisters in the faith.  Imagine if Peter had ignored Paul when Paul came to discuss Peter’s concessions to the Judaizers, rather than listening to Paul as a brother in Christ and being corrected by him.  The church would have been torn in two in its infancy, but Peter listened to Paul and preached the true Gospel again without making it conditional with law.

I pray that these pastors would distinguish the Law from the Gospel and view criticism seriously, examining it in the light of the Scriptures and taking it to heart when shown that they have erred from God’s Word.

Oh, that they, and we in the LCMS now, and all Lutherans worldwide, would repent of our sins and actions, as Rev. Matt Harrison would say.   That we in other more confessional church bodies will not sit smug and feeling high and mighty.  That we would look to our own sins as well and repent and realize that we too will follow the ELCA and CORE if we do not take notice and above all trust in the forgiveness of Christ crucified for our transgressions.

Lord have mercy on us all.

“False doctrine of the Reformed and other sects: That a preacher does not have power to forgive sins in the place of God but should only proclaim the forgiveness of sins in general.  Against this the Lutheran Church teaches according to God’s Word (John 20:32; 2 Corinthians 2:10; 2 Samuel 12:13; Matthew 3:6; 18:17-20): The preacher can and should, at Christ’s command and in Christ’s place, forgive the sins of him who desires this forgiveness, and the Christian should consider that “his sins are thereby forgiven before God in heaven.”  For the Absolution is “not the voice of the man who is present, but the Word of God who here forgives the sin.”  It is chiefly for the sake of this comforting Absolution that we Lutherans retain private confession, in exchange for which Luther would not accept a thousand worlds. ” – Francis Pieper

Pelagius, living in the fourth century, denied original sin and taught that man could, through free will, follow the commandments of God on one’s own.  Jacobus Arminius, in the sixteenth century, taught “that a person participated in their own conversion” (Preus, pg 60) , that they become enabled by God to choose to believe in Christ.  In the nineteenth century, this sort of teaching resurfaced and was recycled and repackaged and once again was pushed to the forefront of Christianity.   Charles Finney, founder of modern revivalism, carried on with Pelagius’ and Arminius’ ideas and incorporated them heavily into his theology.

Preus discusses Finney’s deeply held belief that every person had the choice, the “responsibility,” to choose to accept Christ or to reject Christ (pg. 64).   So strong was Finney’s self determinist theology that he even denied Christ’s imputed righteousness to sinners.  On page 66 Preus lists the following quote from Finney:

“The doctrine of an imputed righteousness, or that Christ’s obedience to the law was accounted as our obedience, is founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption.  After all, Christ’s righteousness could do no more than than justify himself.  It can never be imputed to us…It was naturally impossible, then, for him to obey in our behalf.  This representing of the atonement as the ground of the sinner’s justification has been a sad occasion of stumbling to many.”

Here Finney came into, it is safe to say, outright heresy (Of course we never ought to fight against heretics with anything but the Word of God to show them the Truth of the Scripture in love and correction  so that they might too be brought to repent and be forgiven as we ourselves are shown mercy by God).  In saying that Christ the Lord’s shed bled does not forgive sinners, he’s denied the Scriptures themselves and the very purpose for Jesus entering our time and world.  Isaiah 53:4-5 foretells Christ’s crucifixion on our behalf:

“⁴Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

⁵But he was wounded for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his stripes we are healed.”

This “decision theology,” as it is commonly called, is still alive and well in American Christianity, as it has been around for centuries.  While many pastors and church leaders wouldn’t go to the extreme that Finney did to deny the Christ’s atoning death and resurrection, nevertheless the same ideas he propagated, as Arminius and Pelagius did before, are still are present in the church Now it can be seen on tv, or heard on the radio or from the pulpit in an “altar call”, as, “accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour,” or some variation thereof.  While well-intentioned, these invitations to “invite Christ into your life/heart,” carry on in making people think that their salvation lies in their own hands, when Christ has really fulfilled all that is necessary to rescue people from sin, death, and the devil.   This inward focus can be troubling when a person begins to wonder how exactly they open their heart, if they were sincere enough or if they didn’t open their heart wide enough for God.  It’s a bit like the picture of Christ knocking at the door to a house hoping the people will just let him in so He can do His work.  There are accounts of people repeatedly participating in altar calls trying to somehow get it right this time, to make sure they did it good enough this time…

Consider the following Scriptures:

Psalm 51:5,

“Behold I was brought forth in iniquity,

and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (ESV)

Psalm 14: 3,

“..there is none who does good,

not even one.” (ESV)

and Psalm 143:2

“Enter not into judgement with your servant,

for none one living is righteous before you.” (ESV)

So here David’s Psalms drive home the point that apart from Christ no one is righteous and can do a righteous deed on their own.   In the book, Preus, on page 69, goes to Ephesians, Chapter 2 to show where faith comes from and how one is made righteous.

“¹And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ²in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience- ³among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. ⁴But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved- ⁶and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace by you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:1-10, ESV)

St. Paul makes it clear here God is doing the action in converting and saving sinners through His Son Christ Jesus.  What can a dead corpse do on its own?  Nothing, it has ceased to function.  God gives this free gift of faith through the preaching of the Word and the distribution of the Sacraments.  It all comes from Him through Gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection.   Indeed, in Romans 10:14-17, Paul says,

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

In the notes for the above passage from Ephesians, the Lutheran Study Bible notes several passages from the Lutheran Book of Concord which address this point, and which I will use to end this post.

First up, from the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article II:10,

“Likewise, the Scriptures teach that a sinful person is not only weak and sick, but also finished and entirely dead (Ephesians 2:1-5, Colossians 2:13).”

and then, from the Formula of Concord, Epitome, Article II:3,

“Just as a dead body cannot raise itself to bodily, earthly life, so a person who by sin is spiritually dead cannot raise himself to spiritual life.”

Sources:

Preus, Daniel. Why I Am A Lutheran: Jesus at the Center. 2004. Concordia Publishing House. St. Louis.

Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, A Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord. 2006. Concordia Publishing House. St. Louis.