Here is his sum of the joyful service of the Christian:
He ought to think: ‘Although I am an unworthy and condemned man, my God has given me in Christ all the riches of righteousness and salvation without any merit on my part, out of pure, free mercy, so that from now on I need nothing except faith which believes that this is true. Why should I not therefore, freely, joyfully, with my whole heart and with an eager will do all things which I know are pleasing and acceptable to such a Father who has overwhelmed me with his inestimable riches? I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbor, since through faith I have an abundance of all good things in Christ’…Behold, from faith thus flow forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a joyful, willing, and free mind that serves one’s neighbor willingly and takes no account of gratitude or ingratitude, of praise or blame, of gain or loss. For a man does not serve that he may put men under obligations. He does not distinguish between friends and enemies or anticipate their thankfulness or unthankfulness, but he most freely spends himself and all that he has, whether he wastes all on the thankless or whether he gains a reward. As his Father does, distributing all things to all men richly and freely, making ‘his sun rise on the evil and on the good’(Mt.5.45), so also the son does all things and suffers all things with that freely bestowing joy which is his delight when through Christ he sees it in God, the dispenser of such great benefits. (75-76).
Luther concludes that believers live not in themselves but in Christ by faith, and not in themselves but in their neighbors, by love. “Otherwise he is not a Christian. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor” (80). This is faith working through love. Gal 5:3.
Evaluation
The focus of public preaching and private pastoral ministry must be to set forth Christ
for us. God has given him for us. God has raised him for us. God is good and trustworthy, and he freely offers all things, in Christ, to us. Therefore, the trustworthiness of the Word, and the necessity of faith is everything. This must be the goal of all ministry. What we want to do for everyone is to enable them to believe in Christ as he is offered in the Word.
Luther is not antinomian; he does not believe that we are not obligated to keep God’s law once we are Christians. He says we must, because we are still sinners and subject to temptation and to continuing unbelief. The law continues to tell us that our righteousness is available only in Christ himself. However, even as it instructs us as believers, the law has a largely negative function for the believer. Luther does not make a sound theological place for God’s law as the believer’s delight. It is just the gospel that overcomes the problem of law. “If I am outside of Christ, the law is my enemy, because God is my enemy. But once I am in Christ, the law is my friend, because God is my friend.”
[6] It is the deepest desire of my heart to obey God’s law and to do this in faith. Faith works through love.
Luther’s doctrine of
sola fide in 1520 is closer to “union with Christ by faith alone” than to “justification by faith alone.” His major metaphor is the union of the believer and his Bridegroom. That brings the wonderful exchange between Christ and us. Faith is the wedding ring that brings us into union with Christ, our bridegroom. Luther clearly includes justification in this. An alien righteousness, Christ’s righteousness, belongs to us by faith alone. But the more precise idea of his perfect, finished, and final righteousness, counted ours once for all time, is not here yet, because Luther speaks about our righteousness growing over our lifetime.
Later biblical reflection would clarify this, and Luther would be clearer about it too. God in free grace, reckons the righteousness of Christ to us, when we simply entrust ourselves to him. It is not present, ongoing renewal that is the ground of God’s justifying verdict. Nor is it faith, considered in itself, that grounds God’s pronouncement. Christ’s sacrifice for us is the only basis of our being forgiven, fully, and perfectly and once for all. In 1520 the brownies were still a little chewy. It took some time for this fully biblical idea of justification to bake completely.
However, having said this, I think Luther’s idea of the glorious exchange by union with Christ is sound and biblical. Union with Christ by faith alone truly is the “freedom of a Christian.”
When we receive Christ by faith alone, we receive his righteousness as a completed gift, and consequently we are accounted righteous by God once for all. And it is
also true that our hearts are cleansed, what we term “sanctification,” by this union. What Luther calls the good works of a good man, notice, a changed man, are the fruit of this union.
John Calvin would later put it like this:
Therefore, that joining together of head and members, the indwelling of head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him of the gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not contemplate him outside ourselves from afar, in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us, but because we put on Christ, and are engrafted into his body—in short, because he deigns to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him. (
Institutes 3.11.10).
I close with these beautiful words of Luther:
Who then, can appreciate what this royal marriage means? Who can understand the riches of the glory of this grace? Here this rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him… as the bride in the Song of Solomon says [2:16], “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (80-81).
[1] Robert Kolb,
Martin Luther, Confessor of the Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 72.
[2] All citations from
Freedom of a Christian are from
Martin Luther, Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (New York: Doubleday, 1961).
[3] Heiko A. Oberman,
The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000), p. 133.
[4] Kolb,
Martin Luther, p. 60.
[5] Kolb,
Martin Luther
Hearing the Gospel and the announcement of what God has done in Christ for sinners is the good news and free gift to all who believe!