10/31 – Romans 3 [19–28] – Why Lutherans Look Different: Faith Alone

Grace to you and peace in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Why do we call ourselves “Lutheran”? For the most part I suppose this is something that we just take for granted. It’s always been that way, but when you stop and think about it, it seems a little strange. Why would we, living in America in the 21^st century, want to name ourselves after a 16^th century German monk?

I’m sure you all know we don’t worship Martin Luther. Martin Luther didn’t die for us; Martin Luther’s writings are not God breathed, like the Bible. We are not saved by faith in Martin Luther. In fact Luther himself was fairly upset with the label “Lutheran.” That’s because it was people who were making fun of us, people who wanted Martin Luther killed, people who wanted the Church corruption to continue because it made them a lot of money; it was they who coined the term “Lutheran” as a way of dismissing Luther’s doctrine, beliefs, and teachings. So why do we use it? Why do we call ourselves Lutheran?

The Book of Hebrews tells us to:

Remember your leaders, who speak the Word of God to you… imitate their faith.¹

That’s what we are doing when we call ourselves Lutheran. We are remembering, not worshiping, Martin Luther who spoke the Word of God to us, like the many pastors who have come and gone over the last 500 years. Those who have sacrificed their own opportunities in other venues to care for the souls of God’s most precious treasure, His children.

Of course we can remember Martin Luther in a lot of different ways, and much of what is written about Luther is filled with all sorts of interesting details concerning the man and his times. In fact there are two major Hollywood movies about his life, because Luther’s life includes such dramatic and exciting events.

Sometimes people are disappointed with what they learn about Martin Luther. You see in addition to the drama and excitement, history reveals a man with some serious character flaws. Someone who suffered from terrible times of depression, and someone who used very hard, and sometimes a bit foul, language against his adversaries. For someone who knows very little about Luther, except that he was a hero of the faith, it can be rather shocking to learn about his faults and failures.

Now I don’t suppose it does much good to dwell on anybody’s sins and weaknesses, not even Martin Luther’s. Yet it should not be a surprise to discover them in anyone, including Martin Luther. The Bible tells us to expect it. We heard in the Epistle reading this morning:

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.²

“All” the Bible says, all of us have sinned: high and low, famous or unknown, all of us, including Martin Luther. Just so we’re clear, it’s not just we who think so. Luther knew it quite well himself, that he was a sinner. In fact in the Small Catechism Luther wrote, for the instruction of the young, he said, “we daily sin much, and indeed deserve nothing but punishment” for our sins. At any point in life, self-examination in the light of God’s standards, and God’s definition of perfection, reveals the same thing, we fall short of what God desires and expects. His demand is for perfect holiness, but our performance always falls far short.

Sinfulness is something we all have in common with ourselves and the great reformer. When we hear of his harsh language, or lack of tack, we know precisely what that means because we can be guilty of the very same things. Now there’s a lot that separates us from Luther’s world: time, culture and customs, but one thing that has remained constant through all the centuries is human nature. We are made of the same stuff as Martin Luther. The faults and flaws of people in the 16^th century are the same as today.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.³

So what can we do about it? That’s the really important question. How do we overcome the sinfulness that has stained us to the very core of our being? As a young man, Luther thought he had it all figured out. After a close call with death by lightening and the overwhelming, imposing, thoughts of God’s judgment, Luther decided to join a monastery where he could devote himself full time, for the rest of his life, to the quest for salvation by means of a life of prayer, meditation and other pious efforts.

What happened? Luther threw himself into living the life of a monk. He later described it this way:

I was a good monk, and I kept the rule of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to Heaven by his monkery it was I. All my brothers in the monastery, who knew, me will bear witness. If I had continued any longer, I would have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading and other work.⁴

In spite of all his efforts however, Luther remained what he had been before, a sinner. Because nothing he did could change that very real and true reality, any more than we can change ourselves or escape that very real and true reality about ourselves. We might be able to make some adjustments in the facade, in our outward behavior, for a while. We can learn some manners, we can make some changes, which is all fine and good, but what God wants is more than outward change. He wants our heart, our soul and our mind. He wants our very being to the marrow of our bones and the root of our spirit. God wants what God’s Word says, and as Jesus taught us when He described the greatest commandment of God’s Law:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind.⁵

Then Jesus added that the second greatest commandment:

Love your neighbor as yourself.⁶

These two commandments are the basis for all 613 commands found God’s Holy Law, and what they demand is an internal attitude of selfless love, directed first to God, and then to our neighbors.

Who can do that? Who can really do what God demands? Who can meet God’s definition of perfection? Who can meet a human definition of perfection? No one can, just as Luther came to realize, in spite of everything he tried to do in the monastery. In fact the more he tried the worse it got. Nothing seemed to change his heart. At times Luther began to think God wanted to condemn him. He became intensely frustrated in trying to find peace through his own efforts. Luther said:

I was myself, more than once, driven to the very abyss of despair, so that I wished I had never been born.

Love God? I hated him!⁷

“I hated him.” Can you imagine the horror Luther must have felt when he reached that point in his life? He was supposed to love God with his entire being. Instead his inability to measure up to God’s Law had punished and pushed him in precisely the opposite direction, so that instead of Heaven, Hell was opening its deadly maw for Martin Luther.

In a strange way however, God’s Law was doing what it was supposed to; what it is supposed to do to us. Luther was trying to use it as a way to please God, to become right with God, and to prepare himself for eternity, but he kept finding that he just couldn’t do it. That is exactly what the Bible says is supposed to happen. Listen to what the Bible says:

By works of the Law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.⁸

We may not have the intense experience Luther had in confronting our own sinfulness, but what the Law said to Luther it also says to us. There is no hope for a right relationship with God based on our efforts or works. As we work through the Catechism in a year we remember that the first three Commandments, the first table, are all about our relationship with God, but that relationship is one way. It is God’s relationship with us, not our relationship with Him. Every facet of that relationship is God coming to us. Not us going to God.

So, when we see the Lutheran label attached to something it ought to remind us that we are so very much like Martin Luther in the most basic and simple ways: in our weakness, in our faults, in our sinfulness, as we stand in the piercing, burning revealing light of God’s Law.

Of course, “Lutheran” means a whole lot more than that. The image of Martin Luther, that probably stands out most clearly in our minds, is Luther as a man of faith. We recall his great acts of courage and his persistent faith in the face of ominous threat and opposition.

For example, at the Diet of Worms⁹ in 1521. By that time Luther was already well known, but had been condemned by Church authorities. So now government officials called him to appear before the mightiest men in Church and state, and Luther was asked to take back, to recant, his writings. That would have been the easy way out, but Luther refused to deny what he had written, on the basis of the Bible, in the confession of Christ. Not even the presence of the Holy Roman Emperor could shake Luther’s resolve. It was a glorious moment. When we hear the word “Lutheran,” it ought to remind us of Luther’s bold faith.

In fact, “faith” is practically the motto of the Lutheran Church. One popular way of summing up the spiritual insight, that brought Luther out of the despair of his sinfulness, and that prompted the courage he displayed at Worms, is the expression we are, “justified by faith.¹⁰” Luther, of course, didn’t invent this idea. He found it in the Bible:

We hold that one is justified by faith, apart from works of the Law.¹¹

We need to understand this correctly, because sometimes people think that the actions of our faith is what saves us, when it is really the object of our faith that saves. In other words, some people mistakenly turn faith into a work, or a job, for the believer which somehow compensates for sin. The reality of Scripture is far different, because faith saves only because it is aimed at, focused on, the Savior Jesus Christ. It is not our faith, but the faith instilled in us by the Holy Spirit, which relies on Jesus, and rests on Jesus. It is for Jesus’ sake, God declares us not guilty.

Now there are a lot of false religions in the world. Some even call themselves Christians. Some even call themselves Lutherans. Yet they fail to adhere to these basic, fundamental, critical, precepts of the one true Christian faith. There are other “faiths.” We have seen some who have such intensity of faith that they are willing to, in violent suicide, kill for their religion. That kind of faith, no matter how sincere or intense, cannot save them from sin and sin’s affect, because it relies on a false god. Faith in someone, or something, other than Jesus cannot save. Jesus Himself said:

I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No one goes to the Father except through Me.¹²

Even Christians are tempted to substitute fake faith for faith founded in the Lord. Some trust in their works like the young Martin Luther did. Others trust in their church membership. They may state, “I believe what my church teaches,” whether they know what it teaches or not. They may proclaim their years of membership. They may attend church regularly, and participate in all the rites and ceremonies of their church. All in a false and self-confidence in believing they are doing the right thing. Yet Luther belonged to a church and he performed all the rites and ceremonies that his church prescribed, but none of it worked. None of it gave him comfort. None of it gave him peace. None of it saved him. None of that does anything for you now, but condemn you. Institutions, no matter how venerable, or ceremonies no matter how pious, cannot compensate for sin. It can only become, what Ambassadors of Reconciliation pointed out to us, as a false idol.

Another false faith arises when people trust in their experience, or their emotions; great religious feelings they have had at certain times in their lives, when they have really felt “the presence of God.” The problem is, what you feel is fickle. Experiences come and go, feelings are here today and gone tomorrow. They provide no firm foundation for faith.

It is true of course that Luther himself had a powerful emotional experience when God finally opened his heart, soul and mind, to the Gospel good news in Holy Scripture. After struggling so long under the weight of his own sinfulness, he was overjoyed and relieved to learn from the Bible, salvation was his as a free gift through faith in Christ. Not by works lest anyone would boast.¹³

Luther wrote about that experience stating he felt as if he had been “born again” and “had entered Paradise itself through open gates.” After many years of searching for the assurance of salvation, the Lord finally provided it in His Word, and Luther experienced an enormous relief, and the greatest joy.

It wasn’t the experience that saved Luther, nor was it the joy, that gave him security. The emotions and the feelings were a result of the salvation God had already won for him. The message of what God had done for him, in Jesus Christ, caused the experience of peace, comfort and joy.

True faith, saving faith, the faith that overcomes Death, is faith in Jesus Christ alone; not experience or emotion, not institutions or works, not famous or infamous people. It is all and only Jesus. Listen again to what the Bible says:

The Law and the Prophets bear witness to the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as the payment for sin, by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins.¹⁴

By Jesus’ perfect life of obedience, in which He did what we are unable to do, by His perfect sacrifice on the cross as the one time perfect payment for all sin, and by His triumphant resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ has done everything necessary for our salvation. He has paid the price and won the victory. Forgiveness, eternal life, and resurrection from the dead are all perfectly secured in Him.

Faith simply receives what our Lord has accomplished. Faith is the hand of a poor beggar, and into this hand God pours all that Jesus has done. That is why, in the 16^th century, those who followed Luther, in proclaiming this Good News about Jesus, came to accept the label “Lutheran.” This intended insult, is received by us as a label of pride and honor.

That is also why we still use the label “Lutheran” today. It is a way of reminding people that we are like Martin Luther. First in our sinfulness, in our inability to save ourselves, in our desperate need for a Savior. Then, far more importantly, it calls us to follow the faith Luther taught, to find forgiveness, eternal security, everlasting life, and the sure hope of the resurrection of the body, in one place and one place only. In Jesus Christ, the world’s only Savior.

Amen.
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