The Uncultured Saints: Recent Episodes
Higher Things®
Saying “God is everywhere” is not helpful or useful, when you think about it. It just confuses things, especially when God has chosen to locate Himself in specific places. In the Old Testament, His presence was visible, tangible, and interact-with-able. And in the New Testament, God became Man in the person of Jesus. And so the things that are true of the human Jesus are also true of God Jesus. When we try to describe the person and two natures of Christ and make sense of it, no matter how logical and rational we are being, we’re going to end up in heresy.
Every single thing you do in church — both the traditions explicitly given in the Bible, but also the smaller stuff — should point you to Jesus. If it does, it’s good. If it doesn’t, it’s bad. But it’s definitely not meaningless. The things that we do, the space we do them in are all meaningful. They aren’t “worship” in and of themselves, but they help us understand and convey the truth of the doctrines we hold. What you believe influences what you do and what you do influences what you believe. When you believe a thing, it’ll change your behavior. When you behave a certain way, it’ll change how you think about it.
God has given us the image of Christ descending into hell, kicking open the doors, being victorious over the demons for our comfort. This doctrine doesn't stand alone. It’s tied to His incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. When we try to make logical sense of Christ’s descent into hell, we end up putting victory right back into the Satan's hands. Because when we describe it as Scripture does, it doesn't necessarily make a lot of rational sense. But at least we still end up focusing on Christ, and Him preaching victory over sin, death, and the devil. And that's right where we should end up: talking proclaiming Jesus, the Gospel for the comfort of troubled consciences.
We sinners have a way of taking good things from God and messing them up, including the Lord’s Supper. God has given us specific words to describe what’s it is and what’s going on. But those words don’t make sense, they’re not reasonable. So we have to try and figure out what Jesus really means, because He obviously can’t mean what He’s saying. We take God’s gift, take it apart and try to put it back together again in ways that make sense to us. But God’s Words don’t describe reality like our words do. They actually create reality which we receive by faith.
Once upon a time, there was a controversy among Lutherans. (Shocker!) One camp said the Law has no place in the life of the Christian anymore and good works will spontaneously spring forth without any sort of instruction or guidance. But when we work to set aside the Law, to free ourselves from the Law’s curse, we forget that we already ARE free of the Law’s curse, in Christ. Jesus didn’t need the Law to command or threaten Him about how to best love God and us, but He still kept it. And because we are not yet perfect in this life, we still need the Law to guide us and show us what love looks like.
We can make choices about all sorts of things in our lives. But the theological doctrine of free will is not about whether you can choose what to eat for breakfast or which color shirt to put on. It’s about whether we’re able to contribute anything to our own salvation, whether we can choose to believe, whether we can "help" God help us. When it comes to worldly things, we are free to make choices as we encounter the different options. But when it comes to the things of God, not only can we not choose to help ourselves be saved, we even fight against God saving us.
When we change the clear words and teachings of Scripture to make things more palatable for sinners, the meanings change too. We actually begin to believe we can say things better and more logically than God’s Word. Applied to the doctrine of original sin, the way we talk about sin affects the way we talk about God. If God wants things to be this corrupted, sinful way and does nothing about it He’s an evil god. But if He wants it to be better, and doesn’t want to just burn it all down and start over, He works through brokenness and sin to bring about good for us.
It makes for viral social media statements to say that not only do good works not save you but they’re harmful to salvation. But it’s totally not true. Necessary doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be forced to do something. It can also mean that it just happens through you, necessarily, and make you love it. Nobody is saying that sinning is great, you should go out and sin more! But bragging about how we are fulfilling the law, demeaning others for not talking enough about good works, measuring of other peoples’ good works…all of it pulls away from Christ. Our peace is not in saying we should talk more about doing good works. Our peace is found in Christ forgiving sinners and making us so holy that good works would manifest themselves.
Justification is a fancy $5 church-word that makes us sound smart when we use it. But what does it mean? It’s all about how we are saved and made right before God. As sinners, we look to ourselves — our choices and our actions — to gauge whether we really are Christians and measure how we’re doing to stay Christians. That’s probably not the best way to go about things. It actually gets dark and twisted. When we put the focus on us, even just the tiniest bit, it’s not on Jesus. If our faith is a process, it’s not finished. If it’s about our journey, it’s not about Jesus or what He did on the cross for us.
What’s the big deal about saying my nature is sinful or my nature is corrupted by original sin? It seems like a puny detail to focus on…but it’s really not. If we get this wrong, it messes up all our theology. Sin isn’t just the actions we do, it’s hereditary, a fatal disease we ALL inherit. And yet, sin is not who we are, it’s a condition we have. Original sin means that something has changed from the way we’re supposed to be, the way that God created all of humanity to be. This doesn’t mean that we have an excuse to sin just because it comes naturally to us. It means that we need a Savior.
In spite of all the smiles and material successes, at the end of the day, most of us know we’re not doing or being our best selves. We can always do better. There is a huge chasm between who we are and who we want to be. The entire self-help industry has been built up to try and bridge that divide. When Christians talk about sin, the world hears it as a religion trying to prevent people from fully and freely living out their lives the best they can. But the reality of the situation is that sin is exactly WHY we fail, and why we never really get to where we want to be.
Sometimes we think it’d be helpful to use character voices to distinguish Law and Gospel. The Law is that which God demands from us. And if you don’t fulfill it, the Law will also threaten punishment. It kind of offers salvation…if you keep it perfectly. God gives the Law to us for three good purposes, none of which are to frustrate us, but to show us who God is. In contrast, the Gospel has no threats, demands nothing from us, and doesn’t command anything from us. Instead, it proclaims that everything that needs to be done to save us all been done for us through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, and that all of our sins are forgiven in Him.