1517 Blogcast

One of the great questions occupying the minds of theologians and pastors alike is how the Church can respond to an increasingly pluralistic, diverse, global world where the Church is no longer in control of the dominant narrative. This emerging world is often called “postmodern,” a term that is steeped in undecidability, a term that resists any single definition.

We like to think there’s something in us, something we have or do or think or inherit that sets us apart, that contributes in some way to God’s love for us. God’s love, however, is perfect love, undeserved love, true charity, and we dare not want it any other way.

No matter how you spin it, regret is cyclical. Recurring guilt, brooding, and introspection can push us in at least two directions. We can become so despondent over our sins that we fall in on ourselves and decide that we have thoroughly wrecked God’s plan for our lives. If only I hadn’t lost my temper, I might have been promoted in my career. If only I had studied harder, I might have gotten into my dream college. If only I had seen the warning signs, I might have been able to identify the illness that devastated my loved one. At its heart, regret often whispers, “If only I hadn’t fallen into that stupid sin, I might have received the temporal blessing I crave.”

Ask a Law question, get a Law answer. For example, a religious leader asks Jesus a Law question: "Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in Moses' teachings?" Jesus gives a Law answer: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and most important commandment.

They say girls in our society should have nothing to worry about. They should have the opportunity for education and choices far beyond generations before. They should have the attention and protection of public agencies and groups. They should be free to live whatever definition of the American dream they hope to be true. Yet, our daughters are just as vulnerable as they always were.

Popular efforts to rehabilitate a positive function of the Law do indeed reveal a fear that the Gospel––if it is preached too aggressively and offered too freely––will authorize the license to sin. Those who are secure in their sins will be encouraged simply to sin all the more because Jesus, like an enabling parent, is oh-so-willing to forgive them; or at least this is the typical characterization.

Thesis 25 of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation is the final turn of it. It is nothing other than the first light of hope: justification before the Holy God by faith [in Christ] sola–that is, without works!

Aside from Luther's famous tract, On the Freedom of a Christian, almost every article I read on Christian freedom is written as a warning against exercising one’s Christian freedom at the expense of the weaker brother. This bothers me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I do not think sufficient time is given to defining the identity of the weaker brother. Second, few ever take a minute to understand the original issue Paul addresses and if such issues could bring another person into perdition and cause them to lose their faith. Has anyone ever lost their faith because a Christian showed up at a high school dance? Has anyone lost their faith because they saw a pastor smoking, or drinking a glass of wine? And if so, what exactly was their faith in?

The grace of Christ is the business of getting saved, doing nothing. Some simple language and grammar distinctions are important to get this right. Sometimes we hear the grace of Christ expressed as an offer of forgiveness requiring us to ponder and hopefully decide to have it. However, the Word grace means gift; it does not mean offer. We are saved by grace, and strictly speaking, not by an offer. Gifts must already exist, and whoever possesses them makes the decision and is responsible for conveying them to others.

But, Jesus uses kings and kingdoms to explain the reality of our life (Matt. 6:24). We are caught up in a battle between two kings and two kingdoms. And, whether we like it or not, we are ruled by one king or the other. We live in one kingdom or the other. King Money or, Mammon, is a war-monger, cruel and vicious. He rules by force. He makes laws about which emotions are good and which are a crime. He taxes everyone and everything. He sends our sons and daughters to fight and die to expand his kingdom.