Preacher’s Personal Life

97 Luther Thoughts for Preachers – Conclusion

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

97LutherSo for the past couple of weeks I have been blogging through Luther’s lesser known 97 Theses.  Let’s finish them up and wrap up the series.

(93)-94. This holds true also of the saying that the love of God may continue alongside an intense love of the creature.

Luther refers to “a kind of subtle evil” in arguments that try to balance what he sees as mutually exclusive.  In this case, he wants to push away from some kind of balancing of love for God and love for non-God.

95. To love God is at the same time to hate oneself and to know nothing but God.

Loving God is seen as the opposite of sin, which is self-love and hatred of God.  When we reduce sin to misdemeanors and “sins” then we can easily lose sight of this.  At the heart of the human problem is the human heart and the problem is profound!  A lot of Christian preaching leaves listeners very content with their elevated view of themselves, and the teaching easily turns into top tips to be a better you.  We must not let humans be the residual focus of our preaching.

(96-97). Luther ends with two theses that urge the reader to conform their desires, using the language of will, in every respect, to God.  It is clear for him that Christianity cannot be about dutiful obedience running parallel to rebellious heart inclinations.  If we are His, then our will really should desire what God does.

I hope these posts have been helpful.  At the very least, may this nudge us to take a look at Luther’s 97 Theses and wrestle with what he was proposing for debate.  Perhaps his poking at foundational questions will make a difference to us in our understanding of Christianity, of humanity and of ministry.

It isn’t enough to educate and encourage conformity of external behavior.  That option may be tempting, but it isn’t what the Gospel is all about.  Too much of Christianity is shaped as much by unquestioned assumptions as it is by Scripture itself.  The devil would love to keep us thinking highly of ourselves and little of God.  Sadly, as preachers we can so easily fall into serving that hellish agenda.

May our hearts be drawn to Christ, and may our preaching offer the radical balm of the gospel to a profoundly sinful humanity.  People desperately need what they will never find in themselves or their own behavioural resolutions, but only in Christ himself.

Evangelising Me

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The human problem is far greater and deeper than we’ve ever imagined.  Not only are we all guilty before God, but we are also dead-hearted toward God and we don’t have His Spirit uniting us with Christ or with each other.  This was not God’s design.  He made us to live in the freedom of guiltless fellowship with Him, our hearts being stirred continuously by the Spirit so that our lives might be lived in the abandon of response to the love of God.

The problem is profound, but the gospel is truly a glorious solution to all of this. In Acts 13 we find Paul in Pisidian Antioch (modern-day Turkey).  He preaches a biblically saturated sermon in a Jewish synagogue, urging the listeners to trust in the risen Christ for forgiveness of sins and justification.  He warns them not to reject the message and the writer describes Paul and Barnabas urging the new believers to “continue in the grace of God.”

So the grace of God was the emphasis, referring to the forgiveness of sins and justification.  The focus is on the guilt being dealt with because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Simple trust in his work at Calvary makes it possible to be legally justified. A clear conscious.  A record wiped clean.  Satan may bring up memories and guilt, but we are free of that if we are recipients of God’s grace.

My sin, O the bliss, of this glorious thought,

My sin, not in part, but the whole,

Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.

Our “criminal record” before God is such a serious issue, but it can be wiped clean by the grace of God.

So what about the rest of the problem?  Does this passage only point to the legal, but not the relational problem?

The passage goes on to describe Paul’s return the following week and concludes with a summary from verse 49.  The word of the Lord spread through the whole region, but as was typical, the reaction of the non-responsive religious folk drove Paul and Barnabas away.  But the story ends with this: “And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.”

This is the fruit of the grace of God at work.  It was not merely legal, as amazing as that is.  It was relational too.  These people who had been dead in their hearts are now filled with the Holy Spirit and their hearts are alive to God with overflowing joy.  There is the legal and the relational, the forgiveness and the friendship.  That is the grace of God – big enough to deal with the whole problem!

I know my tendency is to allow the gospel to reduce to a merely legal and forensic offer.  If I am witnessing to someone else or preaching, I do okay – that is, I know that it is more than that and try to communicate the richness of forgiveness and real union, true relationship with Christ.  But, personally?  I think I tend to let the gospel shrink as I live my own life.

That is, it is easy to allow my gaze to be drawn by lesser attractions, and it is easy to go quiet in my relationship with God and start walking through the day apparently alone, and it is easy to start to see myself as just a sinner saved, technically, legally, in my status, by God’s wonderful justification.  I don’t think this is what it means when it speaks of continuing in the grace of God.  I certainly don’t think this is what it means to be filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

The Gospel is amazingly good.  The world needs to hear it.  And as we live out our Christian lives, our hearts need to hear it too.

97 Luther Thoughts for Preachers – Part 9

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97LutherLuther’s 97 theses, for preachers. Give some thought to this one:

76. Every deed of the law without the grace of God appears good outwardly, but inwardly it is sin. This in opposition to the scholastics.

Was Jesus ever satisfied with external conformity? Or did Jesus go after the inner issues in the religious folks he spoke with? Strangely we can be tempted to settle for mere outward godliness in our churches. Why? Maybe because it is easier to pastor superficially? Thank God the Good Shepherd doesn’t pastor us this way.

77. The will is always averse to, and the hands inclined toward, the law of the Lord without the grace of God.

Amazingly, we are always going to be drawn by the lie of autonomy, of independence, even in respect to godliness. Instead of just speaking of others, let me ask us as preachers, do we ever lean toward good behavior in our own strength so that we can function with God at arms length?

78. The will which is inclined toward the law without the grace of God is so inclined by reason of its own advantage.

So are some people just more spiritually sensitive and “naturally” good? Not according to Luther. Unless God is at work, every one will be completely self-serving, however it may manifest itself.

79. Condemned are all those who do the works of the law.
80. Blessed are all those who do the works of the grace of God.

There are two types of people in the world, and in the church. It isn’t younger brothers and older brothers, at least not in the sense of the way we think of them. On the one side there are sons sat at the table in the embrace of their father. On the other there are older and younger brothers living in rebellion, hidden or overt, who want only the benefits of their father.

97 Luther Thoughts for Preachers – Part 8

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97LutherContinuing my preacher’s journey through Luther’s lesser known 97 theses:

68. Therefore it is impossible to fulfill the law in any way without the grace of God.

The gravitational pull of a post Genesis 3 world will always pull us toward a morality that is bereft of the presence of God. This is the tendency we have: to try to be like God, apart from God. Let’s never settle for obedient compliance over genuine relationship with God by His Spirit.

69. As a matter of fact, it is more accurate to say that the law is destroyed by nature without the grace of God.
70. A good law will of necessity be bad for the natural will.
71. Law and will are two implacable foes without the grace of God.

I want to leave these theses rather than summarizing them. As a human being I am naturally in total opposition to God being God. Telling me to behave by his rules will only incite rebellion, or . . .

72. What the law wants, the will never wants, unless it pretends to want it out of fear or love.

Unless the person is fearfully self-protective, or loving self in some way. Thus the written code will gain a variety of responses, from younger brother rebellion to older brother self-righteousness, but nothing on this continuum is actually a good result. Seems hopeless?

73. The law, as taskmaster of the will, will not be overcome except by the “child, who has been born to us” [Isa. 9:6].

Our only hope is Christ himself. Apart from him we are deeply in trouble with a terrible foe. So as a preacher? I must, must, must preach Christ – the only hope. But if I reduce Christ and start to preach law in some way, the result will not be greater godliness.

74. The law makes sin abound because it irritates and repels the will [Rom. 7:13].
75. The grace of God, however, makes justice abound through Jesus Christ because it causes one to be pleased with the law.

Only the grace of God can create a new taste, a new inner relish…hang on, I am drifting into Jonathan Edwards now. God can do what the law never could, stirring the heart with a new appetite for good.

97 Luther Thoughts for Preachers – Part 5

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97LutherLast time we surveyed 18 of the 97 theses, but now we need to slow down a bit . . . Luther deserves more than summary and survey here:

37. Nature, moreover, inwardly and necessarily glories and takes pride in every work which is apparently and outwardly good.

Until we see this, we will always be on the brink of moralizing in our preaching.  Surely it is better for people to live good lives rather than bad lives?  It is good for those around, but for the individual?  Their flesh will dictate a self-glorification through pride in anything good . . . thus rendering that good, bad.

So what?  We need to stop preaching as if people are close to God’s glorious standard, but one blotch makes for less than perfection, one miss makes for less than 100% . . . in reality nobody is at 99/100.  Even the best of us, apart from Christ, are absolutely bad.  0/100.  Every apparently good work is corrupted by misplaced glory.

38. There is no moral virtue without either pride or sorrow, that is, without sin.

0/100.  Something about our hearts is key here.  It is easier to preach for external performance, but we would do well to ponder where he was leading with this statement.  Pride?  Self-love.  Sorrow?  Self-love.  Self-love?  Sin.

39. We are not masters of our actions, from beginning to end, but servants. This in opposition to the philosophers.

Speaking of the heart, who is in control?  The supposedly self-moved responsible individual is in Luther’s sights.  He highlights his opponents as being the philosophers, but here he is going after common sense, or could we say, serpent-sense?

The weight of this statement is immense.  Every human lives the lie that we are free, independent and self-moved.  Apparently I am the master of my destiny, but Luther thinks not.  At the heart of the human problem is the human heart.  If we preach simply to apply imperatives to performance, then we may not only be falling short of preaching texts in context, we may actually be preaching biblical truth in a serpent-like way.  Serious stuff.

40. We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds. This in opposition to the philosophers.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics teaches the common sense logic that we become good by practice.  Common sense cannot be assumed correct in a fallen world!  The Bible teaches the opposite.  God makes us righteous and then the fruit flows from that transformation.  It has always been hard to change a tree by adjusting the fruit.  Preachers often try.

Worldly Church

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Worldly-Church1-300x225Another recent post on the Cor Deo site:

On a normal street in a town near somewhere, there is a church.  I won’t describe the building in any detail because this may cause you to either disassociate yourself from it and start pointing the finger at others, or to feel like I am pointing my finger at your type of church.  Let’s just say it is a church not unlike yours or mine.

This post presents an analogy that may be more than a bit relevant to how we preach on sin in our churches.  Click here.

The New Normal

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The-New-NormalThis week I am catching up on posts I have written for the Cor Deo blog in the past few weeks.  Just in case you missed one . . .

Everyone assumes their perspective is a healthy and balanced one.  If we can see one person off in one direction, and another off in the other, we must be the one holding the privileged position of balance.  But maybe we need to take an often-overlooked factor into account.

This post ponders the impact of living in a post-Genesis 3 world . . . a reality that should impact every sermon we preach!  Click here to go to the post.

Why Bible Reading is Down – Part 2

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BookYesterday we pondered two issues raised by Peter Enns’ article.  First, that people read the Bible in fragments, and second, that people read it a-historically.  Here is the third finding he lists:

3. Bible reading is down because people read it in isolation

Too true.  When did the “personal devotions” approach to Bible reading become the only legitimate approach to Bible reading?  I am very excited to embark on another season of Cor Deo next week . . . six months of studying God’s Word and pursuing God’s heart with a group of friends passionate to know God more.  I wouldn’t trade that for anything.  Perhaps you need to pray about finding someone with whom to enjoy the Bible.  Not to drown it in dull fill in the blank questions.  Not to discuss it at length until one person’s theological hobby-horses send the other to sleep.  But open-hearted delight-filled enjoyment of discovering God together.  And that is not about hunting for applications as the first order of business, but about pursuing the God who has first loved us.

Enns finishes his article by suggesting we should “read big, read real, read together.”  I agree.  Might I add that we should “read big, engage historically informed imagination and chase the personal God.”

To see Enns helpful post, click here.

I can’t help but think there may be some other important factors too.  Let me list a few and see if you would add any:

4. Bible reading is down because some preachers don’t motivate reading by their own lack of enthusiasm for enjoying Scripture (hard to be infectious if you don’t have the disease)

5. Bible reading is down because some preachers don’t expect people to actually read the Bible (and people will live down to that kind of expectation)

6. Bible reading is down because technology and instant communications is changing the way this generation engages with any books

7. Bible reading is down because preachers with an over-emphasis on application and utility has reduced the appetite for chasing God Himself (a self-focused engagement with Scripture will always diminish appetite for a revelation that works in the opposite direction)

What would you add?  And just to complete a bit of a messy post, how about a brief counterpoint too?

I wonder if Bible reading really is down?  Generally I would accept the assertion.  But among a lot of people I meet, there is a great passion for Bible reading.  These kinds of studies are always open to spin in respect to who is in the sample.  I had a conversation recently with someone asserting that the under-30’s are leaving the evangelical church in unprecedented droves. I pointed out that I don’t know any under-30’s who love Jesus who are leaving the church, and perhaps the stats may actually be pointing to nominal church-goers?  It is hard, statistically, to measure true faith.