{"id":240,"date":"2012-06-06T20:50:04","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T01:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/?p=240"},"modified":"2013-04-15T23:56:34","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T04:56:34","slug":"martin-luther-and-the-continual-teaching-of-righteousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/2012\/06\/06\/martin-luther-and-the-continual-teaching-of-righteousness\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Luther and the Continual Teaching of Righteousness"},"content":{"rendered":"

“But this most excellent righteousness, the righteousness of faith, which God imputes to us through Christ without works, is neither political nor ceremonial nor legal nor work-righteousness but is quite the opposite; it is a merely passive righteousness, while all the others, listed above, are active.\u00a0 For here we work nothing, render nothing to God; we only receive and permit someone else to work in us, namely, God. Therefore it is appropriate to call this righteousness of faith or Christian righteousness ‘passive.’ This is a righteousness hidden in a mystery, which the world does not understand.\u00a0 In fact, Christians themselves do not adequately understand it or grasp it in the midst of their temptations.\u00a0 Therefore it must always be taught and continually exercised<\/strong>.”\u00a0 Martin Luther, “Lectures on Galatians (1535),”\u00a0Luther’s Works<\/em> vol. 26, pp. 4-5.\u00a0 [Emphasis added]<\/p>\n

*Disclaimer:\u00a0this post is more theological than usual, but I am a Lutheran historian at a Lutheran university.*<\/p>\n

Some pastors today want to focus their preaching less\u00a0on\u00a0salvation, or justification of the sinner (what Luther calls passive\u00a0righteousness here.)\u00a0 These pastors say things like, “we’ve heard all about justification and\u00a0Christ’s\u00a0love for us, now let’s move on to sanctification and doing good works.”\u00a0 I’m paraphrasing a Lutheran pastor (fairly recent graduate from an LCMS seminary) here.\u00a0 This pastor meant well and he clearly confessed the doctrine of\u00a0justification by faith in Christ.\u00a0 However, this particular presentation revealed a fatal error.\u00a0 Sinners, who are\u00a0also saints by faith and baptism, don’t ever move on.\u00a0 They must contiuously and constantly hear the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ.\u00a0Dr. Luther understood this very well from his study of the\u00a0Bible and his own experience.\u00a0 He expressed similar sentiments as those above in a sermon for Ascension Day preached in the early 1530s.<\/p>\n

“This doctrine of faith and salvation is the crucial one, and it cannot be mastered in a moment, but must rather be continuously<\/strong> taught and nurtured.\u00a0 For grace and its blessings are so great that the human heart is terrified when it hears God wants to open the gates of heaven so wide, and that when you believe in Christ there no longer is any\u00a0sin or wrath of God, nothing but pure righteouness.\u00a0 That is why the doctrine of faith must be constantly<\/strong> reveiwed, constantly<\/strong> emphasized, so that, as St. Paul says in Ephesians 4:15,\u00a0‘[we] may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”\u00a0Martin Luther, “Second Sermon for Ascension,”\u00a0\u00a0ed. and trans.\u00a0Eugene Klug, Luther’s House Postils<\/em> vol. 2, p. 134.\u00a0\u00a0[Emphasis added]<\/p>\n

Christians (saints\/sinners) don’t graduate to learning active righteousness as a new level of their spiritual life.\u00a0 First and foremost, they need to hear about God’s act of justification and passive righteousness.\u00a0 Notice, Dr. Luther points out that Christians\u00a0mature by hearing about justification by faith in Christ.\u00a0 That’s right, Christians become more mature\u00a0through passive righteousness.\u00a0 More preaching of the Law or exhorting Christians to active righteousness will accomplish nothing if we\u00a0“move on” from the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ.\u00a0 It is the Gospel, not just the first step toward some active life of discipleship.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“But this most excellent righteousness, the righteousness of faith, which God imputes to us through Christ without works, is neither political nor ceremonial nor legal nor work-righteousness but is quite the opposite; it is a merely passive righteousness, while all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-martin-luther-history","category-preaching","tag-righteousness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}