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The Monstrous Uncertainty

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The Monstrous Uncertainty The monstrous uncertainty In the name of Jesus . offered as a sacrifice for the living and the dead to lessen that time of purging. Monks The Reformation rediscovery of a discussed earnable merit both condign (full righteousness from God through faith in merit) and congruous (half-merit). At the Christ – faith alone in Christ – opened the pinnacle we find the axiom facere quod in se gates of paradise for Luther. As he reminisced est (“to do what is in you”), the comforting in 1545, this changed everything for him. “A assurance that when one does what is in totally other face of Scripture showed itself to them (that is, their best!) God will certainly not me” ( Luther’s Works [LW] 34:336-337). Knowing deny them grace. And still, even with that now that there is a righteousness from God in softening of the severity of God’s “Be holy,” no Christ, he saw the work of God as “what God one ever knew, nor could ever know, where does in us,” the power of God as that “with they stood with God. Against this monster, which he makes us strong,” and the wisdom Luther held up God’s promises: “When this of God as that “with which he makes us wise,” happens, a man can never be certain about and so on and so forth. He did not only the will of God but is continually forced to understand Romans 1 and those long-hated waver and finally even to despair. It is psalms, but also passages like 1 Corinthians impossible ever to decide what God wills and 1:30, “It is because of him that you are in what is pleasing to Him, except in His Word. Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom This Word makes us certain that God cast from God – that is, our righteousness, away all His wrath and hatred toward us when holiness and redemption.” Finally he knew. He gave His only Son for our sins. The Finally he was certain. sacraments, the power of the keys, etc., also make us certain; for if God did not love us, He Raging against this joyful certainty is what would never have given us these. Thus we are Luther called in his 1535 Galatians lectures, overwhelmed with endless evidence of the “this monster of uncertainty” ( LW 26:386). favor of God toward us” (LW 26:388). Luther aimed these words at the pope who directed Christians to look to their own “good We have the evidence of God’s favor which deeds or perfection,” “at our own works and overcomes the sin that plants doubt and the merits,” instead of “at God Himself as He devil and flesh that create uncertainty. It is in promises, and at Christ Himself, the Mediator” the Word, the promises of God, promises (LW 26:387). For centuries this horrible about forgiveness, life, and salvation in that monster raged and rampaged its way through one name above all names: Jesus Christ, the Christian Church. Christians bought named that “because he will save his people indulgences and prayed to saints. The faithful from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). It is in the performed satisfactions to gain absolution. Word made visible: the Baptism Peter says Christians saw purgatory looming and saves us and the Sacrament Jesus says is for wondered just how much purging they would our forgiveness. Here we look when all else go through before they found their way appears different, when all else says through the pearly gates. The Mass was otherwise. Here we look when that monster, 1 that uncertainty, comes and says otherwise righteousness not my own “but that which is about God, that God is different than the through faith in Christ – the righteousness Scriptures say, that God hates you and that that comes from God and is by faith” the only place for you is in hell because of (Philippians 3:9). Luther tied all this your great wretchedness (which is, of course, confidence, comfort, and uncertainty up in the true apart from Christ and faith in Him). Jesus pronoun “our” in Galatians 1:4 (“who gave directed us to the Word of God when He himself for our sins”): “Especially practice this talked about the wise man hearing “these pronoun ‘our’ in such a way that this syllable, words of mine and putting them into practice” once believed, may swallow up and absorb all by building on the rock, because the gates of your sins, that is, that you may be certain that hell cannot overcome that rock, that Word of Christ has taken away not only the sins of God, for “Heaven and earth will pass away, some men but your sins and those of the but my words will never pass away” (Matthew whole world. The offering was for the sins of 7:24, 16:18, 24:35). the whole world, even though the whole world does not believe” ( LW 26:38). Standing at the center of that certainty is the righteousness of God, that righteousness This righteousness, this justification, this “from God…that is by faith from first to last” declaration of God for the sake of Christ (Romans 1:17), the righteousness that Paul Luther set at the center of theology. In the calls “justification” in Romans 3. The Large Catechism he said this is why the uncertainty that destroyed Luther, that led church exists, exchanging the word him to hate God, disappeared only when the “justification” for “forgiveness” just as the Holy Spirit gave him Paul’s understanding that Formula of Concord does: “Everything, this righteousness is from God alone, by God’s therefore, in the Christian Church is ordered grace alone, through faith in Christ alone, toward this goal: we shall daily receive in the revealed by the Holy Scriptures alone (“to Church nothing but the forgiveness of sin which the Law and the Prophets testify,” through the Word and signs, to comfort and Romans 3:21). The uncertainty disappeared encourage our consciences as long as we live when Luther saw Christ as God intended him here. So even though we have sins, the ‹grace to be seen: “the sacrifice of atonement,” so of the› Holy Spirit does not allow them to that God could “be just and the one who harm us. For we are in the Christian Church, justifies those who have faith in Jesus” where there is nothing but ‹continuous, (Romans 3:25-26). The Word showed Luther uninterrupted› forgiveness of sin” (LC, II:55). In the Jesus of the blessed exchange: “For Christ the Smalcald Articles he called it “the first and died for sins once for all, the righteous for the chief article” and said “Nothing of this article unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter can be yielded or surrendered, even though 3:18). The Word showed him the God of heaven and earth and everything else falls…. reconciliation: “That God was reconciling the Upon this article everything that we teach and world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s practice depends, in opposition to the pope, sins against them…. God made him who had the devil, and the whole world. Therefore, we no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might must be certain and not doubt this doctrine” become the righteousness of God” (2 (SA, II:1, 5). Notice the use of the word Corinthians 5:19, 21). The Word showed him “doubt.” We must not doubt justification. If we the righteousness that makes all other kinds doubt this, then we have nothing else to hold of righteousness look like garbage, a 2 on to. Worse, we will begin to create other This is what God desires for us: confidence, objects of faith. hope, assurance, certainty. It stands at the center of the promise, that you can know this Melanchthon made similar statements in the about God, and thus, through faith in Christ, Apology of the Augsburg Confession. He about yourself. Consider Romans 5:1, called justification the “chief topic” that “opens “Therefore since we have been justified by the door to the entire Bible” (Apology, IV:2). faith we have peace with God through our Notice that description. Justification is not just Lord Jesus Christ.” Consider the use of the the most important doctrine of Scripture, but word “world” ( kosmos ) in key justification justification is the starting point of theology, passages like John 1:29 (“takes away the sins the doctrine that evaluates the others (Mattes, of the world”), John 3:16 (“God so loved the 10). We do not isolate justification from the world”), 2 Corinthians 5:19 (“God was other doctrines. Justification informs all other reconciling the world to himself in Christ”), 1 doctrines, as Franz Pieper said, either as an John 2:1-2 (“but also for the sins of the whole antecedent flowing into justification or a world”), and even in the negative sense in consequence flowing out of it (Pieper, II:404). Romans 3:19 (“the whole world held Further, all doctrines “serve” justification accountable to God”). Then there is the use of (Pieper, II:513-514). “all” in Romans 5:12-19 (“justification that brings life for all men”) and 2 Corinthians 5:14- Then Melanchthon talked about the 15 (“one died for all, and therefore all died”). confidence and assurance justification gives: Pile on the pronouns both personal (“for our “But let us remember that the Gospel gives a sins,” “his love for us”, “who reconciled us to sure promise of the forgiveness of sins.
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