Thesis Nine from Walther’s Law and Gospel says: You are not rightly distinguishing Law and Gospel in the Word of God if you point sinners who have been struck down and terrified by the Law toward their own prayers and struggles with God and tell them that they have to work their way into a state of grace. That is, do not tell them to keep on praying and struggling until they would feel that God has received them into grace. Rather point them toward the Word and Sacraments.
Now, this is long one. Walther spends more than a quarter of his time on just this thesis alone. We’ll likely just take a few weeks on this. This really is a wonderful Lutheran distinction from all other denominations. We do not depend upon our feelings in the Church. Feelings are subject to the Fall into Sin, just as are our minds, bodies, and souls. Our feelings lie and deceive us all the time. We can feel completely and utterly alone, and yet, have someone standing next to us, praying for us, supporting us. We can feel hated and scorned, yet no one in the world feels that way about you. We can feel loved and adored, and everybody actually hates you because you’re a self-aggrandizing jerk. Feelings lie. You can’t trust them.
Yet, if you look at the practice of many of the denominations out there, this what they ask you to trust; they ask you to feel things about God, or to feel prepared to go to the Supper, or to feel close to Him. This really isn’t too different than the Mormon doctrine of determining the truth of the Book of Mormon by feeling a burning in your bosom. To me, that’s probably heartburn from too much pepperoni. But, even if we were to trust our feelings, feelings lie. They can be turned and twisted by Satan and his minions, much less our own sin. They can be made to say that we feel things are true when they are not, or false when they are true.
It’s not to say that feelings always lie; it’s just that they can. Consider when the Apostle Peter was preaching in Jerusalem: he preaches a scathing indictment on the Jews gathered there, and those who were listening to him were cut to the quick–they felt guilty beyond despair. Does Peter tell them to look inside themselves and see that they are really loved by God in this? No! He tells them to repent and be baptized, every one of them, for the forgiveness of sins.
This is what we do then. You might hear, or even think things like: I have doubts God loves me, it’s hard to believe He’s there for me, how can He save one like me? Hear His Word, friend, and receive the Lord’s body and blood. He would not give them to you if He did not love you. Hear of His steadfast faithfulness toward you. Hear of His promise to raise you from the dead. Our Lord would not give you these things if He didn’t love you, if He didn’t forgive you, if He wasn’t going to fulfill His promises to you. If you were to depend on your feelings, man, you might just get so lost. When we doubt, our feelings are not our friends.
We place our hope, we place our focus on the Gospel into objective things, real, tangible, truthful things that cannot be swayed. We preach the Law to make sinners repent of their sins and then follow it with the Gospel that they might live. And the Gospel, that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, to save you, is located in the Word and Sacraments. We are a Sacramental Church, for we truly believe, and are correct in believing, that the very Jesus who lived, died, resurrected, and ascended is located in every Word of Scripture, in every morsel of bread, in every sip of wine, in every drop of water.
You may not always feel like dropping down to your knees and shouting Hallelujah every item your hear the Word or receive the Sacraments, but the faith which is located in you does. This makes us different than most of the other denominations out there. We don’t need to feel close to God; we are close to God. We don’t need to feel motivated toward outward expressions; our Lord gives us His outward expressions to hold on to. If we depend upon our feelings, we build our faith on a false foundation, a foundation of sand, a foundation that is shifting, and it will fall. But, if we build our confession upon the objective Word and Sacraments, these will never give way. We’ll build out more of this next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment