Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)

Today is the commemoration of the author of Cur Deus Homo? (Why did God become man?)

Luther and Calvin on Church and state

Pastor Bror Erickson of Toole, Utah reviews the book: Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) (Paperback).

Johannes Bugenhagen

Today, April 20, commemorates the pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Although his first encounter with Martin Luther’s thought (On the Babylonian Captivity of the Chuch) did not meet a favorable impression, he studied further and came to appreciate the doctrine of the Reformation.

As Martin Luther’s pastor and confessor, Bugenhagen came to occupy a prominent place in the Reformation. It is especially in the areas of biblical and liturgical studies that he made his greatest impact. Bugenhagen (Pastor Pomer) greatly assisted in Luther’s work of translating the Holy Scriptures into the German tongue.

In a letter to Hamburg in 1528, Pomer outlined a set of church regulations (Kirchenordnungen) which established him a the great organizer of the Reformation in northern Germany and Scandinavia. He either wrote, or had a hand in writing nine different Kirchenordnungen in these areas, earning for himself the name “Apostle of the North.”

Bugenhagen’s greatest influence on me came through his commentary on the Psalms which has not yet been translated into English. In this work, he helps the reader to see that every Psalm is ultimately about Jesus of Nazareth and, by extension, all those who are baptized into His body, namely the Church. See Maurice Schild, “Approaches to Bugenhagen’s Psalms Commentary (1524),” Lutheran Theological Journal, 1992 26:1, 63-71.

CrossTalk: The Greatest of These Is Love

We are never told that God is faith or that God is hope. But we are told that “God is Love.”

And that’s what makes love “the greatest of these.” Love is the very nature of God. It is who He IS.

This is confessed in all three articles of the Creed.

He is “the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” He creates out of nothing because it’s His nature to love. He creates not because He needs to... Not because we asked Him to... Not because we deserve to be created... Rather, God is our Maker out of sheer will to bestow His love on that which is nothing.

Likewise, He redeems me from sin without any merit or worthiness in me. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.”

And He Makes us holy out of his abundant giving and not because we deserve it. I cannot by my own reason and strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to Him but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel...

God, by His very nature gives freely and fully to that which is nothing.

This is the image of God which He also gives to us by His love. The imago Dei consists in our sharing God’s own freely-giving nature. “We love because He first loved us.”

Divine Love (agape) is sourced in the giver of the love and not to any extent in the recipient. God loves not because you are lovely but to make you lovely. (Eph 5)

Now, as soon as I state it that way, it’s upsetting because it’s offputting. To think of ourselves as having no intrinsic worth or value but only that which our Creator and Lover bestows upon us, insults our self-esteem (self-love).

And it doesn’t seem to matter how much value God thus gives us. Even though He freely and willingly exalts us to sit at His own right hand, the very fact that this is purely a gift and undeserved, unearned is maddening. We don’t want God to love us like this. We want to be loved for our own inner qualities—for something that we have apart from God's giving or in addition to God’s giving—something that we can bring to the relationship.

But it is this very desire which is our fallenness. By this we reject and refuse our lover-God and run off to other gods who cannot give us anything that we need, but who whisper sweet nothings in our ears about how lovely we are in and of ourselves without God.

Even though we fight this sinful desire to have another God, the very fact that we have the desire at all, is our greatest need.

It is in response to this utter inability to willingly receive the love of God that God Himself became a man. God becomes a man in order that, as a man, He might receive this abundant love “for us men and for our salvation.”

Jesus, according to His human nature, does not share our idolatrous desire. Rather, He truly, fully and without qualification WANTS to be loved by God. And He IS loved by God. “This is My beloved Son.” He receives for us what we cannot receive for ourselves. And He gives this received love to all who are united with Him.

And by being baptized into Christ’s Person, we receive with Him all of God’s good gifts
...including the image of God which was lost in desire for autonomy. In Christ, and only in Christ, are we restored to our created capacity to love one another as God loves us. In Christ we love freely and willingly—not for our own sakes or because of the qualities of those we love—but purely out of sheer goodness. The love which is the image of God “does not seek it’s own.”

...nor is it “puffed up.” To have Christ’s true human nature given to us means not only that we can truly love as God loves...but also that we have the capacity to receive this love from others. To be loved in spite of our faults and sins and not because of our innate goodness is what we need the most but want the least.

Fallen humanity is always puffed up—unable and unwilling to receive what you haven’t earned and don’t deserve. But the new humanity created by God by His incarnation in Jesus is now given to receive such love not only from God but also from our neighbors.

Humbling ourselves before one another to receive also from each other what we don’t deserve, this too is God’s gift to us in Jesus Christ. The love that God bestows upon us in Christ both recreates us in the image of God to give freely to others while also restoring us to our true place as creatures receiving freely from God through all of our neighbors.

This is the love of God being giving and being received in the body of Christ, His holy Church.

Tomorrow is Good Shepherd Sunday

“I am the Good Shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.” Our Church teaches that, “a seven-year-old child knows what the Church is, namely, holy believers and sheep who hear the Shepherd’s voice”(Smalcald Articles XII). These words teach that the Church is, at heart, made up of two things: 1) the voice of the Good Shepherd, and 2) those who know His voice. Accordingly, if a person wishes to be certain of salvation, it is necessary first, that he be certain that the voice which he hears is the voice of the Good Shepherd and not some hireling. Second, he should ask whether he is listening to that voice or ignoring it. For it is in hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd that the saving power of His death and resurrection comes to you. As He says, “I lay down My life for the sheep.” Namely, if you are a sheep of His fold, it is for you that Christ gave His life. Nowhere is this dynamic so concretely played out than in the Divine Service. Here the flock of the Good Shepherd hears His voice from heaven and is healed by His stripes.

CrossTalk: Seeing God

It is certainly true to say that Jesus is God. But there something even more beautiful to be said: God is Jesus. To say this is to see God in the fullness of His glory.

The statement: Jesus is God, immediately brings us to ask: who is God? Here our minds spin off into a thousand directions offering all kinds of theories about who God is and what He is like. Then, each of these different answers are simply imported into our picture of Jesus.

Not surprisingly, we construct in our minds a “Jesus” who is exactly like the “God” that we imagined before we ever knew of Jesus. From this direction, Jesus forever remains in second place and irrelevant to our real understanding of God. That’s a big mistake.

Jesus Himself wants us to turn this thinking completely on its head. “He that has seen Me (Jesus says) has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The Bible teaches that Jesus “is the express image of His (the Father’s) Person” (Hebrews 1:3). If we want to know anything at all about God, we must fix our eyes on Jesus—His words, His works, His personality.

When we take our eyes off of Jesus and seek to know something about God before—or beside—or in addition to Jesus, our view of God will be confused and off the mark. Imagining a God apart from Jesus, we can easily accuse God of being unjust or evil when He warns us against death and hell as He so often does in the Bible. And thinking of God in such terms makes it impossible to put our trust in Him or in His gracious Words.

Such ungodly thoughts, however, simply cannot enter our minds so long as we are standing at the foot of the cross and looking up at God. It is impossible to look upon God as He hangs on the cross and say, “How can you be so evil as to condemn people to hell?” This accusation is unthinkable for the simple reason that you are accusing the very One who is giving His very life to rescue the world from death and hell! Such an accusation can only make sense as long as we are thinking about some other God out there who is not Jesus on the cross or, at least, not fully Him.

This is the reason why the Apostle Paul was determined to know and speak about nothing other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). Only in Jesus—and, most especially, Jesus on the cross—does God reveal Himself fully and truly. Jesus on the cross is not only one face of God among many. This is not one way of seeing God among a number of possible alternatives; rather, “Truly, this Man is the Son of God” (Mark 15:39).

We are quickly approaching the observations of Holy Week and Easter (March 28-April 4). These are the most important and oldest celebrations in the Christian calendar. They focus our attention on the main point of the Bible narrative: that Jesus, the God who became a man, came down from heaven in order to suffer and die and rise for you. Keep your eyes fixed on Him and you will know the One True God.

I invite you, this season, to come and hear the very center of the Bible’s message. Have your attention once more focused on Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Here you see the One True God for who He is and what He is truly like. Here you will truly gaze upon the glory of God and be given Life in His name (John 20:31).

CrossTalk: Forgive Us Our Traspasses

Forgiveness is one of those words that is often on our lips but rarely in our hearts. It is regularly heard but seldom understood. So today, let’s seek to understand it.

Forgiving does not simply happen with the passage of time. It is a willing act. Forgiveness is not helplessly waiting for the passage of time to dull your feelings or fog your memory. Nor does forgiveness say, “don’t worry about it,” or “no big deal.” These are excuses to minimize the debt. They say that what you did wasn’t really wrong, it wasn’t that serious, or that you are not to really blame. Such statements are fraudulent forgiveness. Genuine forgiveness says: “What you did was both wrong and inexcusable. But I won’t demand that you pay. Instead, I will pay the debt myself.”

As hard as it is to forgive like this, it is just as hard to be forgiven. For to be forgiven requires you to admit, “I was wrong and I have no valid excuse.” Saying this does not earn your forgiveness (that has to be earned by the forgiver). Rather it makes us want to be forgiven. As long as you want to justify your actions, you cannot want to be forgiven. For this reason, pride is the enemy of forgiveness. Whether you are confessing your sins to God or to another person, pride kills our desire for true forgiveness.

So forgiveness requires two things. It requires us to empty ourselves of all pride when we do wrong. And it requires the forgiver to pay the whole debt. That’s real forgiveness.

But real forgiveness is a rarity. When we are wronged, we usually fake forgiveness but don’t really give it. We file our hurts away in memory banks so that we can use them as leverage on later debts. This way we retain the power to avoid confessing our own sins against others. Thus, instead of living in the peace of mutual forgiveness, we live with temporary and fragile truces. And when we are wronged, we are reluctant to say anything out of fear of upsetting the truce. Without forgiveness, we fear that naming our hurts will only open the flood gates for our own unforgiven sins to be trotted out in a hopeless attempt to “reconcile” accounts—matching up sin for sin, wrong for wrong, injury for injury. Such counterfeit forgiveness leaves behind a string of broken relationships that litters our lives.

But there are worse consequences than these. The problem goes deeper than just poisoning our relationships with one another. The problem strikes at the heart of the Gospel itself. If, in our personal lives, forgiveness is no longer asked for and given in its true sense, we start to believe the lie. And when this happens, the forgiveness of God in Christ becomes just as hollow for us as the counterfeit forgiveness that we offer our neighbors.

Don’t let this false forgiveness color your view of Christ. Instead let the true forgiveness of Christ inform your forgiveness for others. For Jesus always and only deals in real forgiveness. As the true Forgiver, He has already paid your debt by His death on the cross. And as the true Forgiver, His forgiveness toward you is never based on the passage of time, or your good behavior. Nor does He store your sins away to be brought up later as tools of control. Rather, in Christ, God promises you that He will not think anymore of your sins, or bring them up against you, or allow your sins to harm His feelings toward you.

Knowing this we can lay aside all pride and joyfully confess our sins knowing that God will forgive them truly. And so we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”