Brent Kuhlman

Dr. Luther’s 1520 “Concerning Good Works”[1]

“It is written in Proverbs 1:20 that divine wisdom cries out her commandments publicly in the streets, in the midst of the people and at the gates of the cities.  This signifies that they [i.e. good works and God’s commandments] are abundantly present in all places, in all walks of life, and at all times.”[2]

 

Introductory Ramblings

 

“But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood.  He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.  Where, then, is boasting?  It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law,” (Rom 3:21-28; cf. also Rom 4; Gal 3).

 

Dr. Luther speaks this way in his remarks concerning Psalm 51: 

 

This is the twofold knowledge which David teaches in this psalm, so that the content of the psalm is the theological knowledge of man and also the theological knowledge of God.  Let no one, there ponder the Divine Majesty, what God has done and how mighty He is; or think of man as the master of his property, the way the lawyer does; or of his health, the way a physician does. But let him think of man as sinner. The proper subject of theology is man guilty of sin and condemned, and God the Justifier and Savior of man the sinner. Whatever is asked or discussed in theology outside this subject is error and poison.  All Scripture points to this, that God commends His kindness to us and in His Son restores to righteousness and life the nature that has fallen into sin and condemnation.[3]

 

Consequently, there “is only one cause for justification, namely, the merit of Christ” and “this promise is the sole cause, the first, middle, and last cause; that is, everything in justification.”[4] 

 

Justification by faith alone in Christ’s merit alone as confessed by Dr. Luther and the Lutheran Confessions has been critiqued in many and various ways:  monotonous, obsessive, and essentially an empty suit. Trent condemned it following the teaching of Thomas Aquinas who considered justification as one question among many others and that justification is not just the forgiveness of sins.[5]  Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and the author of The Quest for the Historical Jesus claimed that justification by faith was only a ''minor crater'' in the ''larger crater'' of Pauline theology. Justification is not a main theme in Paul, he said, but a subsidiary doctrine.[6]  Similarly, Hans Küng: “Justification is not the central dogma of Christianity … the central dogma of Christianity is the mystery of Christ.”[7]  Paul Tillich pushed justification this way: “accepting oneself.”[8] 

 

One of the most pointed critiques of the sola fide, coram deo, propter Christum justification is that it is a legal fiction. One of the ways Protestants (even “Lutherans”) express this is Swedenborg’s (1688-1762) sarcastic attack: “the Lutheran is locked up in a darkened room his entire life. Pacing back and forth in the room, unable to see anything, he searches for light by repeating only one sentence to himself: ‘I am justified by faith alone; I am justified by faith alone; I am justified by faith alone!’’’[9]  In other words, after Swedenborg’s spiritual awakening or conversion through dreams and visions on Easter weekend of April 1744 his critique goes like this: Dr. Luther and all you Lutherans with your sola fide talk of justification are now ironically curved in on yourselves.  Worried to death about YOUR salvation!  And therefore you poor saps are not concerned with anyone or anything else.  The Reformation – too individualistic – too subjective – too inward focused. YOU BAD, BAD, QUIETIST LUTHERANS! Your teaching is a legal fiction! You’re not righteous because you’re not “made righteous” at all through some verbal declaration. Where’s the love? Where are the actions and deeds? The good works?  Oh, that’s right, you Lutherans are against good works. So let’s get the love cranked up!     

 

All this is the theological bed of mistress Rome.  Remember her?  A real and true justification comes from God’s grace (the performance enhancing drug that helps you reach your potential / the substance that perfects your nature)! Faith is never sufficient. It is never enough coram deo.  It can never be alone when it comes to salvation. For that, faith must be formed by love (fides caritate formata) and you, with the help of God’s grace, must do what is in you (facere quod in se est).  Justification / salvation is a process, a continuum that runs according to the matrix of morality.  Consequently, the declaration of “justified” or “saved” only comes at the end or top of the vice to virtue ladder when you’re finally morally pure (after the acorn has become the oak tree).  

 

So you’re righteous because you’ve been made righteous? Just to be tweaky, that’s the biggest FICTION I’ve ever heard or seen!  Show me someone that has been made righteous!  Liberal or revivalist, Fundamentalist, Southern Baptist, Berean, Willow Creek, Emergent, Coffee House, Roman, Antiochian, Greek, Russian or Byzantine! They all say you have to be like Jesus (made righteous).  Ever found anyone like Jesus?

 

As I look around all my Protestant, Roman, and Eastern Orthodox friends don’t act righteous.  Some try very hard in their Avis Rent A Car “we try harder” existence. Others don’t try very much or hardly at all. But none have reached the goal as far as I can see.  Have you ring neck clergy types ever married or buried one of these Jesus clones in your congregation?  What about you?  How’s the being like or imitation of Jesus going?  I haven’t seen anyone like that!  Especially me!  Especially you!  I know you confessional Lutherans and all your non-Lutheran friends!  Talk about walking, talking fictions when it comes to being made righteous! Such living is a tremendous, tyrannical burden:  law. Ironically, there is no room or freedom for works of love precisely because you are always looking at how you’re doing as a pilgrim on way to salvation – being made righteous – being like Jesus.    

 

I contend just the opposite of course:  the gospel that proclaims salvation is not the goal of life but its foundation.  And by so doing I remain a very “naughty” Lutheran.  The sola fide, coram deo, propter Christum justification, that is to say, LIVING BY FAITH, is the new life! Living by faith is God’s new creation in the way of 2 Corinthians 5.   Faith that justifies coram deo, propter Christum comes by hearing Christ’s word (Rom 10:17).  That divine gospel word is an efficacious word that does and gives what it says. The gospel brings death to the old Adam and life for the new man.  God does it. He gifts death and resurrection through the word of the gospel that proclaims all sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake.

 

Therefore, “a good tree bears good fruit,” (Mt 7:17). Dr. Luther rightly confesses: “Faith, therefore, does not originate in works; neither do works create faith.”[10]  And: “Faith … is a divine work in us which changes us and makes us altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers; and it brings with it the Holy Spirit.”[11]  The baptized are holy.  They are holy only because Christ’s holiness is imputed to them through faith in Him.   

 

Sinners, saved by grace (favor Dei, propter Christum) and not by works, “are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” (Eph 2:10).  Faith that justifies coram deo, propter Christum, brought about by the gospel, bears fruit. The fruit of such faith is love that manifests itself in many ways.  Faith, like a very fertile Michelle Dugger from Arkansas-like woman, gives birth to children.  Faith is, “a living, busy, active, mighty thing … It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them.”[12]  Oswald Bayer understands Dr. Luther’s profound point this way. Just the opposite of all the critiques:

 

Martin Luther understood the event of justification in its social and cosmic breadths just as profoundly as he perceived it in its existential depth.  To him as a biblical interpreter, particularly as the Old Testament scholar he primarily was, it was precisely the social and cosmic breadth of justification that was disclosed to him by its existential depth.  Not only our relationship to God and ourselves is made new through justification by faith but at the same time our relationships with ‘all creatures’ are renewed.  Even a new perception of space and time is included in our new relationship to God and to the world … Justification is not a separate topic apart from which still other topics could be discussed. Justification is the starting point for all theology and its affects every other topic.  Not only concerned with me individually and my own life-story, it is also concerned with world history and natural history. Justification is concerned with everything.[13]

 

We will witness some of this with Dr. Luther’s 1520 benchmark work, Concerning Good Works. Dr. Luther not only sees what needs reformed in the spiritual realm but also in the temporal sphere.  And the Ten Commandments provide God’s will into these matters. His was a deep concern for all of life: life before God and life before neighbor because the died-for and redeemed sinner is put back into proper relationship / realigned coram deo, coram hominibus, coram mundum.    

 

The Highest and Most Precious Work: FAITH!

 

What is so good about good works?  They are good if commanded by the Lord. “The first thing to know is that there are no good works except those works God has commanded.”[14]  Those, of course, are contained in the Ten Commandments. So Matthew 19:16-22 comes chiming in. Can’t ignore the Ten Commandments at the expense of the glitter and shine of man’s opinions, laws, customs or ceremonies.

 

And with the Ten Commandments (the loci of good works) Dr. Luther makes this startling remark. “The first, highest and most precious of all good works is faith in Christ.”[15]  Is he just making this up?  No.  He got that from the Lord Jesus himself.  After all, when the Jews asked him “”What must we do, to be doing the work of God?’  Jesus answered, ‘This is the good work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent,’ [Jn 6:28-29].”[16] 

 

Faith!  The first, highest and most precious of all good works!  All good works exist and flow from faith. “I want very much to teach the real good works which spring from faith.”[17]  In faith all works become “equal, and one work is like the other; all distinctions between works fall away, whether they be great, small, short, long, many, or few.  For the works are acceptable not for their own sake but because of faith.”[18]  Faith and Jesus go together.  When one says faith one is saying Jesus. He is the Jesus that died to atone for all sin. He is the Jesus that appeased God’s wrath against all sin in his Good Friday dying.  Consequently, God does not damn you but mercifully saves you in and through his Son Jesus the Christ.  Thus Dr. Luther:  “But if you ask where faith and confidence may be found or whence they come, it is certainly the most necessary thing to know. First, without any doubt it does not come from your works or from your merits, but only from Jesus Christ, freely promised and freely given.”[19]  And then Romans 5:8-11 comes ringing in.   

 

So faith is the sure and certain confidence that God the Father is well pleased with you for Christ’s sake. Even in times of trouble. Even when it appears that God is hidden and angry. Even in the face of death “faith and confidence make precious before God all that which others think most shameful, so that it is written even of death in Psalm 116[:15], ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.’”[20] And then even in the midst of the most intense Anfechtung: “Beyond all this is the highest stage of faith, when God punishes the conscience not only with temporal sufferings but with death, hell, and sin, and at the same time refuses grace and mercy, as though he wanted to condemn and show his anger eternally … To believe at such times that God is gracious and well-disposed toward us is the greatest work that may ever happen to and in a man.”[21]

 

But where is such “faith” in God found or taught in the Ten Commandments?  Answer: in the promise of the first commandment! Yes, that’s right I said it, the first commandment!  Well, Dr. Luther is the one who says it.  “Now this [faith] is the work of the first commandment, which enjoins, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods.’  This means, ‘Since I alone am God, thou shalt place all confidence, trust, and faith in me alone and in no one else.’”[22]  Just as idolatry takes place in the heart so does the true worship of God.  In the first commandment you have God’s promise that He is your God and that He will take care of you and all that you need.  He is God for you!  And so Dr. Luther brings up Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4 – worship in spirit and in truth – FAITH! “And this faith, this trust, this confidence from the heart’s core is the true fulfilling of the first commandment.”[23] 

 

Consequently, the first commandment receives top priority among the rest of the commandments.  There is a reason why it is the first commandment. After all, the divine gift of faith bestowed in and through the gospel breaks, crucifies, or drowns the sinner’s incurvatus in se (curved in on yourself) existence so that the new man can emerge and arise to live before God for the sake of the world and his neighbor around him.  God’s gift of faith loosens your clenched fists and turns them into giving and serving hands.  God’s gift of faith puts an end to your relentless ambitatio divinitatis (desire to be god) and your incessant narcissism so that you can be a human again – the creature that lives the new life of faith toward the true God (Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth – and YOU – “without any merit or worthiness in me”) and show love for others!  Through the first commandment God would put an end to all your human potential coram deo (or “in things above” as Dr. Luther puts it in the Bondage of the Will) and at the same free your potential to do as much good and provide as much help as you can with all your might and reason coram hominibus (before man, or “in things below,” Bondage of the Will). 

 

In addition, the first commandment is the first because all good works can only flow from faith! Again, a good tree bears good fruit. And so Dr. Luther writes:  “And because this commandment is the very first of all the commandments and the highest and the best [the one] from which all other proceed, in which they exist and by which they are judged and assessed, so its work (that is, the faith or confidence that God is gracious at all times) is the very first, highest and best from which all others must proceed, in which they must exist and abide, and by which they must be judged and assessed.”[24]  Faith in God’s promise of mercy for Christ’s sake in the first commandment “must be the master-workman and captain in all the works, or they are nothing at all.”[25]

 

Critical and primary is that God gives.  To borrow the language of Kant:  He is the categorical giver and gift!  Remarkably He gives Himself to sinners. Sinners receive (divine passives). Faith suffers and perceives this. Dr. Luther, in his 1528 “Great Confession” expressed this most clearly: 

 

These are the three persons and one God, who has given himself to us all wholly and completely, with all that he is and has.  The Father gives himself to us, with heaven and earth and all the creatures, in order that they may serve us and benefit us.  But this gift has become obscured and useless through Adam’s fall. Therefore the Son himself subsequently gave himself and bestowed all his works, sufferings, wisdom, and righteousness, and reconciled us to the Father, in order that restored to life and righteousness, we might also know and have the Father and his gifts.  But because this grace would benefit no one if it remained so profoundly hidden and could not come to us, the Holy Spirit comes and gives himself to us also, wholly and completely.  He teaches us to understand this deed of Christ which has been manifested to us, helps us receive and preserve it, use it to our advantage and impart it to others, increase and extend it.  He does this both inwardly and outwardly – inwardly by means of faith and other spiritual gifts, outwardly through the gospel, baptism, and the sacrament of the altar, through which as through three means [mittel] or methods he comes to us and inculcates the sufferings of Christ for he benefit of our salvation.[26]

 

This kind of giving of Himself for us and for our salvation is incredible. Faith trusts this God. And so Dr. Luther in the Large Catechism maintains:  “Through this knowledge [of the Creed / connected with the first commandment] we come to love and delight in all the commandments of God because we see here in the Creed how God gives himself completely to us, with all his gifts and power, to help us keep the Ten Commandments:  the Father gives us all creation, Christ all his works, the Spirit all his gifts.”[27]  We that have been given to, pass on gifts to others with love.

 

The first commandment and faith go together. Faith in the promise of the first commandment fulfills all the commandments and all the other commandments flow from the first.[28]  And so the just live by faith – the new life – a human life by which faith gives birth to deeds of love. The died-for and redeemed sinner doesn’t just pace back and forth in his dark, curtain drawn room saying:  “I am justified by faith!  I am justified by faith!”  No.  The divine gift of faith freely and boldly goes into the world, the boardroom, the bedroom, kitchen, living room, school, hospital, nursing home, football field, mission field, etc. “to perform all works in that grace, whatever those works may be.”[29]  Those works are described in the rest of the commandments. When they are done in faith they are pleasing to God.  In other words, they are “good.”  We delight in them (against ourselves / against the ambitatio divinitatis) for they are God’s good and holy will for us to use in service to the world and those around us.

 

The Second Commandment

 

Like all the works that God expects in the commandments this too is lightly regarded and ignored.  Listen to people talk.  The wrench slips.  What does the mechanic say?  Does he bless the wrench?  No, he curses it.  He calls on God’s most holy name in order to send that piece of metal to eternal hellfire!  Or God’s most holy name is called upon in a very frivolous manner. Like when the schoolgirl says over and over again:  “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”  or  “Jesus f’in Christ!”  Not a call for help or for mercy but just a throw away term hooked with the utmost vulgarity.

 

Here, however, we are to use God’s most holy name properly. This can only be done in faith and the certainty of God’s mercy for Christ’s sake.  “This work must be done in the same faith as inwardly motivates all the others.”[30]  In addition there is the truth that a, “man can find God by no work other than faith and trust … no other work can bring a man to God. It is for this reason that the second commandment forbids us to use God’s name in vain.”[31]  And then come all the other works in this commandment: “to honor, call upon, praise, preach, and glorify his name.”[32]

 

All that will keep you busy for a lifetime. No need to invent anything else to do. “For, tell me, what moment can pass in which we do not unceasingly receive God’s blessings, or on the other hand, suffer adversity?  But what else are God’s blessings and adversities than a constant urging and stirring up to praise, honor, and bless God, and to call upon him and his name?”[33]  And with that Psalm 51:14-15; 84:4; 34:1; 1 Corinthians 10:31; and Colossians 3:17 come blasting in.  Then Dr. Luther recounts the parable of the Pharisee and the publican in Luke 18:10-14.  Why is the one rejected and the other accepted?  The Pharisee trusts in his works.  The publican pleads for mercy calling on God’s name.

 

And what do we learn from this parable?  “It is always the case that the higher and better works are, the less show they make … For it is an easy matter to name the name of God and to write his honor on paper or on a wall; but genuinely to praise and bless him in his good deeds and confidently call upon him in all adversities is, next to faith, truly the rarest and highest of works.”[34]  In addition, we are warned to “flee from and to avoid all temporal honor and praise, and never to seek a name for oneself, or fame and great reputation, so that everyone may sing your praises and talk about you.”[35]  Instead of using God’s most holy name for incurvatus in se, “the correct use of honor and a good name is when God is praise through serving others.”[36]  That is in the way of Matthew 5:16 of course which Dr. Luther references.

 

Another work from the second commandment is to “call upon God’s name in every need.”[37]  Psalm 50:14-14 is then quoted.  More works are included in this commandment. They are that we should not “swear, curse, lie, deceive, or conjure with God’s holy name, or pursue other misuses.”[38] 

 

Then come some remarkable and quite shocking observations from Dr. Luther.  Scandalous we might say in today’s church scene.  “But the greatest and most difficult work of this commandment is to protect the holy name of God against all who misuse it in a spiritual manner.”[39]  For those of you in Rio Linda that means to hallow God’s name by teaching God’s word purely and to speak out against those that do! “Verboten!  Verboten!”  Not hardly. In Dr. Luther’s day those misused God’s name spiritually would be the papists and Anabaptists who were both Enthusiasts of the highest order.  And today the same applies.  Even with the Enthusiasts that roam around within “Lutheran” circles.

 

And what may be even more repulsive to some is that Dr. Luther maintains that not only the pastor but, “every Christian” must speak up against the spiritual misuse of God’s most holy name at any time or any place. Even if it means resisting temporal authorities!  “For the holy name of God we must risk and give up all that we have and all that we can, and show by our deeds that we love God and his name, his honor and his praise, above all things, that we trust in him above all else, and that we look to him for every good. By this we confess that we regard him as the highest good, for whose sake we renounce and give up all other possessions.”[40]

 

Dr. Luther is no quietist!  Faith is active in love.  Even in temporal matters.  And so he contends with regard to this commandment that, “we must offer resistance to all wrong, wherever truth or righteousness are violated and abused.  We dare make no distinction of persons, as some who fight most actively and busily against the wrong which is done to the rich, the mighty, or their own friends, BUT WHO ARE QUITE QUIET AND PATIENT WHEN WRONG IS DONE TO THE POOR, OR TO THOSE OF LOW ESTATE, OR TO THEIR OWN ENEMY.”[41]  Dr. Luther quotes Psalm 82:2-5. 

 

Such resistance for the sake of honoring and praising God’s name includes contending with the spiritual authorities when they are in error. “It is also the nature of this work to resist all false, seductive, erroneous, heretical doctrines and every misuse of spiritual power.”  Dangerous you say?  Absolutely! Might be removed from the roster of the congregation or the clergy roster you ask?  Definitely a possibility!  After all, they’ll quote Luke 10:16 and the fourth commandment against you in order to promote their error.     

 

So look around everyone.  Plenty to do.  Plenty to pray.  “It is high time that we earnestly pray God that he hallow his name.”[42]  And God would use you as His instrument in these works of love described in this commandment. “He wants us to work with him. He does us the honor of wanting to effect his work with us and through us.”[43]

 

The Third Commandment

 

Dr. Luther immediately speaks of the “plain and perceptible” works in this commandment.  They are the, “divine service, such as hearing mass, praying, and hearing a sermon on holy days,” that are to be done “in the certainty and confidence of God’s favor” otherwise they are worthless.[44]  That’s important.  After all, most people go to church to give something to God. “We do not think that we are to receive something out of the mass into our hearts, learn something from the sermon and appropriate it, or seek, desire, and expect something in prayer.”[45]  No wonder.  After all, the bishops and priests don’t preach the gospel nor do they teach properly so that these works are done in faith. 

 

Therefore, when you go to the divine service attend with your “hearts.” And what Dr. Luther means is that, “we must listen to the words of Christ when he institutes the mass and says, ‘Take eat; this is my body, which is given for you.’ In like manner he says over the cup, ‘Take it and all of you drink of it; this is a new everlasting testament in my blood, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins …”[46] In other words, believe that all this is for you.  For you Christ promises that in this meal He bestows His body and his blood with the bread and wine. 

 

In addition, for you He has “added a wonderful, rich, great testament in which are bequeathed and distributed not interest, money, or temporal possessions, but the forgiveness of sins, grace and mercy unto eternal life, that all who come to this memorial shall have the same testament. He died with the intent that this testament become permanent and irrevocable.  In proof and evidence of this he has left his own body and blood under bread and wine, instead of letter and seal.”[47]  Jesus does not lie.  He gives what He promise.  Faith trusts His promise.  As you believe so you have!  Therefore, “praise and thanksgiving will follow with a pure heart”[48] for this testament’s gifts.

 

Regarding the sermon Dr. Luther makes this perceptive, evangelical, comment:  “The sermon ought to be nothing else than the proclamation of this testament.”[49]  In other words, the sermon should extol and proclaim what Christ gives in the Sacrament:  given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.  Through the sermon we should know that the Sacrament is Christ’s last will and testament not the atoning sacrifice for the living and the dead Roman mass to participate in Christ’s atonement as the bride of Christ. The Lord’s Supper is Christ’s gift to sinners. “This sacrament is the gospel.”[50] 

 

The sermon should make people aware of their sins so that they will have a hunger to come to the Lord’s Supper for the promise of forgiveness. Therefore you, can’t have preaching without the sacrament according to Dr. Luther.  “For Christ has so strictly commanded that the gospel and this testament be preached that he does not even wish the mass to be celebrated unless the gospel be preached.”[51]  And then he quotes 1 Corinthians 11:26. And in total opposition to today’s false dichotomy between maintenance versus mission pastors Dr. Luther states: “For this reason it is dreadful and horrible to be a bishop, pastor, and preacher in our times, for no one knows this testament any longer, not to mention that they ought to preach it, although this their highest and only duty and obligation.  They will certainly have to account for the many souls who perish because of such feeble preaching.”[52]  So, “see here!  This is the only ceremony or practice Christ has instituted for which his Christians are to assemble and the only ceremony they are to keep and observe with one accord.”[53]    

 

Prayer too, is the exercise of faith.  James 1:6-8, Mark 11:24, and Luke 11:9-13 are cited. Therefore, “we are to lay our need before God in prayer”[54] because He promises to hear and to answer.  Don’t worry about your worthiness!  What matters are God’s command to pray and His promise to hear and to answer. But for what are you to pray? No better mirror Dr. Luther says “in which to see your need than the Ten Commandments.”[55]  There you will quickly discover what you need. When you listen to the first table of the commandments you see that you fear and love yourself instead of God. You praise and honor yourself, not God.  You don’t go to the divine service to receive the Lord’s gifts.  You are bored with His word and indifferent to Christ’s body and blood. You don’t want to pray.  You disobey authorities.  You hate your neighbor.  You fool around.  You covet what isn’t yours.  You are a miserable wretch!  Here you see what you need in order to ask for help and God’s forgiveness for Christ’s sake.

 

According to 1 Timothy 2:1-3 you join the church in prayer. The ecclesia orans “has no greater power or work against everything that may oppose it than such common prayer.”[56]  Intercessory prayer preserves and builds the church. Abraham’s praying for Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18 is referenced as well as James 5:16-18 and Psalm 33:18; 145:18.  So also then, look at needs of your neighbor.  “God’s commandments drive us to our neighbor’s need, that by means of these commandments we may be of benefit only to others and to their salvation.”[57]  

 

The Sabbath day rest according the third commandment is now this: “that we let God alone work in us and that in all our powers do we do nothing of our own.”[58]  In His word and sacrament God gives sinners rest. The Sabbath Day rest runs in the way of Isaiah 28:21 that says, “‘He takes upon himself an alien work, that may do his own proper work.’  What does that mean? He sends us suffering and unrest to teach us to have patience and peace.  He bids us die that he may make us live.”[59]  Law and gospel.  Death and resurrection.  God at work for the sinner.  “This is what is means to observe the day of rest and keep it holy. It is this that a man ceases to rule his own life, then that he desires nothing for himself, then that nothing disturbs him:  God himself leads him.”[60]

 

Dr. Luther once again then shows the relationship between the first three commandments. 

 

It is for the sake of this faith [in God’s mercy for Christ’s sake] that all the other commandments and works have been instituted. See what  pretty golden ring these three commandments and their works make of themselves!  See how the second commandment emerges from the first commandments and its subject, faith, and runs into the third, and the third in turn works back through the second into the first!  The first work is to believe and to have a good heart and confidence in God. From this flows the second good work, to praise God’s name, to confess his grace, to give all honor to him alone. Then follows the third, to worship God by praying, hearing the sermon, meditating upon and pondering God’s benefits, and, in addition, chastising oneself and keep the flesh subdued.[61] 

 

But as a baptized disciple who trusts Jesus -- be prepared to be attacked and to encounter much suffering.  The devil will rage against you.  Like he ravaged Job.  But the Lord will use such things so that faith calls “upon God’s name and to praise him in such suffering.  So faith comes right through the third commandment, and back into the second again.  And through that very calling on the name of God and praising him, faith grows and comes into its own.  In this way strengthens itself through the two works of the third and second commandment. Thus faith goes out into works and through works comes back to itself again, just as the sun goes forth to its setting and comes again at its rising.”[62] 

 

Then Dr. Luther shows the parallels between the commandments and the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer!  The Lord’s Prayer, too, puts good works in their proper order or place! When you prayer “Our Father, who art in heaven,” these are the words of faith (first commandment) that does “not doubt that it has a gracious Father in heaven.”[63] When you pray “Hallowed by thy name,” you are doing what is required in the second commandment: “faith desires that God’s name, praise, and honor be glorified, and that God’s name be called upon in every need.”[64]  When you pray “Thy kingdom come,” you are praying that the works of the third commandment are done.  “Thy will be done” encompasses the rest of the commandments, the second table, “in which faith is further exercised toward our neighbor, just as in the first three it is exercised in works toward God.”[65]  And so these works are good.  They are commanded by God and are pleasing to him as you do them via faith in Him as merciful.  Want more?  All right. Dr. Luther proceeds to the second table.

 

The Fourth Commandment

 

Interesting that this commandment begins with the word “honor.” In the Large Catechism it is because parents are God’s “representatives.”[66]  The good work of honoring includes obedience and fear mingled with love, fear mingled with love and confidence.

 

According to this commandment the parental units have responsibilities. They are to raise their children according to God’s word (commandments 1-3).  Dr. Luther warns parents so that they do not “train their children [only] for worldly honors, pleasure, and possessions.”[67] Referring to Isaiah 57:5 and Jeremiah 7:31 he maintains that the parents who “train their children more in the love of the world than in the love of God, and let their children go their own way and get burned up in worldly pleasure, love, enjoyment, lust, goods, and honor, but let God’s love and honor and the love of eternal blessings be extinguished” are sacrificing their children to idols just like King Manasseh did.[68]

 

Parents, look at your children.  These are the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the alien that God has put before you.  God gives you children and puts them under your care so that “they may learn to trust God, to believe in him, to fear him, and to set their whole hope upon him … that they may learn to despise temporal things, to bear misfortune without complaint, and neither fear death nor love this life.”[69]  Raising children is God pleasing when done through the “chief work,” faith, “confidence of God’s favor.”[70]

 

Then Dr. Luther expands obedience to parental units to other authorities. Mother church and her spiritual leaders are included as an authority in the fourth commandment. This was absolutely incredible for Dr. Luther to teach.  After all, so many of the spiritual rulers would not do their duties, they forced human rules and ceremonies on the church as God’s word, and they would not let the gospel be freely proclaimed and given.  Therefore, they do not deserve any honor according to the fourth commandment.  Instead of calling for a church council to deal with these matters, Dr. Luther pleads that the temporal rulers should work toward evangelical reform in the church according to the first three commandments just like children have to work for reform in the home when parents abdicate their vocation.   

 

Temporal rulers are also included in this commandment. Romans 13:1-7; Titus 3:1; 1 Peter 2:13-14 are referenced.  Interestingly Dr. Luther advises resistance against spiritual authorities when they are wrong but not to resist temporal authorities when they are wrong.[71]  Why?  “It is less disastrous when the temporal power goes wrong than when the spiritual power does.  For the temporal power can do no real harm because it has nothing to do with the preaching of the gospel, or with faith, or with the first three commandments.”[72]

 

The temporal authority “must also be very wise and not always try to impose his own will, even if he has the right and the best of all reasons to do so [like creating a utopia on earth] … When a prince rules according to his own mad will and follows his own opinion he is like a mad driver who rushes straight ahead with his horse and cart through bushes, hedges, ditches, streams, uphill and downdale [sic], regardless of roads and bridges. He will not drive for very long. He is bound to smash up.”[73]  Utopian rulers (and ideologues) are the most tyrannical and dangerous. In their effort to build a classless society millions have been sacrificed at the altar of creating a new humanity.  Watch out for the utopians![74] 

 

Does this mean that temporal authorities should not strive for the best? Of course not. But one must keep in mind that advances (technological, biological, ecological, economical, sociological) made are not equivalent with bringing about the kingdom of God on the earth! Advances or reform in the political realm can never be said to be done in the absolute or consummate (secular chiliasm). They take place in small, itty-bitty steps and one can only be satisfied with what is at hand because humanity cannot ultimately master or control the future.

 

Therefore, Dr Luther mentions some at hand or in the moment tasks to which the temporal authorities should do “as an exercise of faith”[75].  They should attempt to put an end to gluttony and drunkenness, restrain lavish spending on clothes, stop the usurious tzingskauff, curb the bishops from using the ban, and rid the land of brothels.[76]

 

Another work within the fourth commandment is that employees should obey their employers.  Titus 2:9-10; 1 Timothy 6:1; and 1 Peter 2:18-19 are invoked. And such obedience is to flow from faith. And at the same time the employers are to treat their employees equally and justly.  That may even include “occasionally overlook[ing] some things and wink at their faults for the sake of peace.”[77]  Colossians 4:1 is quoted.  And then Dr. Luther throws in the obvious: “that a wife ought to be obedient to her husband as her lord … On the other hand, the husband should love his wife, overlook some things, and not deal harshly with her,”[78] as the New Testament teaches.

The Fifth Commandment

 

Meekness is the work that flows from faith here. No tit for tat.  No quid pro quo.  Quite positive.  This is a meekness shown to your enemies. It returns “good for evil, speaks well, thinks the best of, and prays for those who do evil” as Christ says in Matthew 5:44 and Paul in Romans 12:14.[79] 

 

Loads of work to do here.  Keeps you busy all your life.  “Let him set his enemy before him, keeping him constantly before the eyes of his heart as an exercise whereby he may curb his spirit and accustom his heart to think kindly of his enemy, which him all the best, care for him, and pray for him; and later, when the opportunity occurs, speak well of him and do good to him … See what a short commandment this is! Yet it is a long one, in which many possibilities to do good works and exercise faith are set forth.”[80]  Quite simply, faith in a gracious God leads the baptized believer to be gracious towards his neighbor (even if your neighbor is your enemy)!

 

The Sixth Commandment

 

The spouse announces after two decades of marriage: “I don’t love you anymore! I’m filing for a divorce!” That’s that.  No questions allowed.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect $200.00.  Generally speaking, when that scenario takes place the spouse who wants the divorce has been cheating.  And in her mind it’s all just hunky dory even though it is not God-pleasing and very deadly spiritually (incurvatus in se).

 

But “in this commandment, too, a good work is commanded which embraces much virtue and drives out much vice.  The work is called purity or chastity.”[81]  Once again a commandment is viewed in the light of justification. “For just as the certainty of God’s favor toward us never ceases to live and be active in us, so, too, that certainty never ceases to warn us in those matters pleasing or displeasing to God. As St. John expresses in his epistle, ‘You do not need anyone to teach you, for the divine anointing, that is, the Spirit of God, teaches you all things [1 John 2:27].”[82]  Faithfulness and chastity are good works. They please God.  And think of all the positive aspects or temporal benefits in the family and society!  Immense.

 

The Seventh Commandment

 

Right away we see how justification works in the life of the baptized. It not only prohibits theft but it speaks positively.  And that is the life of “‘selflessness,’ a willingness to help and serve all men with one’s own means.”[83]  Dr. Luther goes on.  “Faith teaches this work of itself … Such a man is absolutely certain that he is acceptable to God:  therefore, he does not cling to money; he uses his money cheerfully and freely for the benefit of his neighbor.”[84]  And once again Dr. Luther says that “this kind of selflessness should extend even to enemies and opponents.”[85]  Luke 6:32-36 and Matthew 25:35-46 are referenced.

 

The Eighth Commandment

 

The tongue.  The tongue is to be employed in order to tell the truth:  Wahrheit sagen!  Speak up for the cause of your neighbor. That is the opposite of giving false testimony.  And speaking the truth includes not only regarding temporal matters but also “the gospel and the truth of faith.”[86]  Even if that means using the truth of the gospel against the bishops, pope or king!  In order to speak the truth in all matters, “faith must be the foreman behind this work.”[87] 

 

The Ninth and Tenth Commandments

 

“The last two commandments are perfectly clear. They forbid the sinful lusts of the flesh and the coveting of temporal goods.”[88]  Interestingly, Dr. Luther says that these evil desires don’t harm the neighbor.  Yet they nag at you until you die!  And that struggle against these desires will go on until then. Therefore, “death is both profitable and desirable,” and the treatise concludes with the cry of faith, “For this may God help us, Amen.”[89]

 

Conclusion

 

The sinner is justified by God’s grace through faith in Christ Jesus who is the propitiation for all sin.  He does all salvation’s achievement and salvation’s bestowal: “It is finished!” “He who believes and is baptized will be saved!” “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins!”  “Be of good cheer!  Your sin is forgiven!” “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation!  The old has passed away the new has come!”  This new creation in Christ’s total achievement and bestowal of salvation opens up the old creation in new ways to faith.  Faith now sees the rainbow for what it really is: God’s promise of protection through life. Faith sees a loaf of bread for what it really is:  God’s promise to provide – to give daily bread.  Faith sees the neighbor as the recipient of love: God’s physical sermon that you are to love your neighbor as you love yourself!  Faith is the captain.  Faith is active in love. 

 

Dr. Luther wanted to show how Christians should practice and use faith in all good works and that faith is the first and foremost work. As gifts, faith springs up and flows from the blood, wounds, and death of Christ.[90]  There you see that God loves you – that He is delighted with you!  Faith in Christ who is the Redeemer fulfills the law not our deeds or actions. Faith contains everything in the first commandment. That commandment is fulfilled only through faith and not our works / love.  Therefore it opens the vista for the fulfillment of the other commandments.  Not to be used for salvation coram deo (that’s been done at Good Friday / Holy Baptism) but for the descent of the service of love for the neighbor and the world.  Faith as the new creation and the new life is not a retreat from the world BUT a return to the world as God’s very good redeemed creation by which He speaks through means (creatures).  Dr. Luther states it in this way.  We, the redeemed, are already,

 

in the dawn of the life to come, for we have begun to recapture our knowledge of the creatures that we lost with Adam’s fall. We can see the creatures properly now, more than was ever possible under the papacy.  Erasmus had little interest here.  He never investigated how the fruit is formed and prepared and made in the mother’s womb, and hence had little regard for the glorious estate of marriage.  Beginning with the grace of God, however, we can know God’s wonderful works and miracles even from the little flowers, when we consider the divine omnipotence and the divine goodness.  We thus laud and praise and thank God.  For we see in his creatures the power of his Word, how mighty he is. He spoke and it came to be [Ps. 33:9] – even in a peach stone, for in due time the very hard shell will open up for the soft core that is within.  Erasmus completely misses such things.  He does not consider them.  He sees the creatures as a cow sees a new barn door.[91]

 

And for all this we pray as we leave the altar and depart into God’s creation:  “We give thanks to You, almighty God, that You have refreshed us through this salutary gift, and we implore You that of Your mercy You would strengthen us through the same in FAITH toward You and in FERVENT LOVE toward one another …”

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

Rev. Brent W. Kuhlman STM

Trinity Lutheran Church, Murdock, NE

26 August 2010