Jesus Traded Places With Us and Declared, "It is FInished!

Jesus Christ’s final words, hanging upon that cross, were: “It is finished” (John 19:30). What does that mean?

 

It means that when Jesus Christ showed up twenty centuries ago, he had not come to start a new religion. He had come to end all religion.

 

Religion is about what we do for God. The message of Jesus—what he called “the gospel” or “happy announcement”—is about what God has done for us.

 

Religion hands us a stack of bills to pay. The gospel hands us a blank check.

 

The Central Message of Christianity

 

The central message of Christianity is not what many people think—including many people who have been attending church their whole lives. Like an adopted orphan who has trouble accepting that his new parents really love him, we all deeply believe that God deals with us on terms of religion, not gospel.

What then is the central message of Christianity?

 

The core message of Christianity is not that God condemns or judges or punishes. The primary message of Christianity is not that God teaches or commands or instructs. The main message of Christianity is not even that God helps or strengthens or empowers. The central message of Christianity is that God substitutes.

 

We understand this in theory from everyday life. A substitute teacher fills in for the regular teacher who is out sick that day. A basketball player comes off the bench to sub in for a tired or injured player.

And what was happening when Jesus was on that cross, uttering his final words, “It is finished”?

 

He was completing his work as our substitute. He was subbing himself in for us, if we will have him. But this was not like one basketball player for another. It was more like a king subbing himself in for a condemned prisoner.

 

On the cross, Jesus was suffering the death, the sentence of condemnation, that all of us deserve. He exhausted the full penalty that our sin deserved, for any who desire it. And so he said: “It is finished.”

 

The Devastating Problem

 

How does this land on you? Maybe it sounds interesting, but not all that compelling.

 

Perhaps you believe there are people out there who really need some major forgiveness from God—our prisons are full of them. But you’re doing okay. Maybe the notion of a king substituting himself for a condemned prisoner raises your eyebrows—I’m not a guilty prisoner, you may think.

 

You’re friendly with your neighbors and drive the speed limit. You don’t know what handcuffs feel like and you never dropped out of school. You vote as any thoughtful citizen votes and you try to look out for your fellow human beings. Maybe you’ve even given some money to charitable causes from time to time.

May I be so bold as to share a bit about myself?

 

All of the above is true of me too. And I’m violating the commands of the God who created me left and right.

 

Take the Ten Commandments, for example. The first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). In other words, God should be the number one person in my life that I’m trusting in. But I find myself trusting in myself all the time—counting on my own abilities, trusting in my reputation, enjoying what others think of me, drawing strength psychologically from financial savings. Not a single day goes by that I do not break that command.

 

The sixth command is, “You shall not murder.” I’ve never killed anyone. But Jesus said we’ve broken that command if we get angry with another person (Matthew 5:21–26). I get angry all the time, even if I’m usually able to keep it beneath the surface.

 

The seventh commandment is, “You shall not commit adultery.” Once again, Jesus got to the heart of things and said that we’ve broken that command if we lust in our heart toward a woman (Matthew 5:27–30). I’ve broken that one countless times.

 

I’ve broken the ninth commandment, not to lie, many times—a little bending of the truth, a shaded explanation of something that casts me in a slightly better light. I’ve broken the tenth commandment, not to envy, anytime I’ve looked at another person and wished I had an ability or possession of theirs.

Truth be told, I’ve broken all the com­mand­ments.

 

I’m breaking God’s commands left and right. So are you.

 

The Even Deeper Problem

 

But our problem is deeper than just breaking God’s commands.

 

Breaking God’s rules is the symptom, not the disease. The disease is what the Bible calls “sin.” Sin is the dark twistedness within that causes us to live for ourselves. As we go through life, all we know is to live for Self. Even acts of love or neighborly friendliness, when honestly examined, are really just so that we will feel better about ourselves or so that others will think well of us.

 

We may not feel that sinful—just as a fish doesn’t feel that wet. But we don’t feel it only because we’re immersed in it all the time.

 

Think of it this way. If sin is the color blue, it isn’t as if convicted felons have lots of blue and the rest of us are pretty much clean and white. Rather, everything that every one of us says, does, or even thinks has some taint of blue to it. We can’t turn our sinfulness off any more than we can change our eye color.

But when Jesus showed up, he was different. He never broke any of God’s commandments. He was the one person who didn’t live for himself. He lived for others. He laid his life down for others. We view other people in terms of how they can serve the purpose of making my life better. We live a “your life for mine” existence. Jesus stands out brightly across the millennia of human history as the one person who ever truly lived a “my life for yours” existence.

 

He had no blue.

 

“I Want to Trade Places with You”

 

You and I break God’s commands all the time. And deeper than that, we have sin within—lots of blue. And here’s what Jesus is saying to you, right now:

 

I want to trade places with you.

 

Jesus kept all God’s commands and was perfectly white—no blue at all. He was the one person who ever lived who deserved not to die.

 

But he went to the cross and was condemned unjustly and died. He therefore is able to offer himself as the substitute to any who will have the honesty to admit their desperate need for it and take him up on that offer.

 

Let me be clear: He’s not offering to trade places with you assuming you will resolve to do better from now on.

 

He’s not offering to trade places with you, but with a clause built into the contract that allows him to step out of the trade if we don’t hold up our end of the bargain.

 

He’s offering to trade places with you wholesale. Once and for all. No matter what the rest of your life looks like. In this trade, you become as permanently unpunishable as Jesus Christ is, now in heaven. The morally consistent Christian and the morally inconsistent Christian are both as permanently guiltless as Christ himself.

 

That surprising trade is what Jesus was talking about when he declared, “It is finished.”

 

He was saying that the full price for sin had been paid for anyone who is willing to receive it. His death on the cross was not just any death—it was the death that absorbed the deserved condemnation of anyone down through the centuries who desires the trade that Jesus offers.

 

If Jesus wanted you to complete the deal from your end, he would have said, “It is begun.” But he said, “It is finished.”

 

All that’s left is for you to receive it. Acknowledge your desperate sinful condition and tell Jesus that you would like to take him up on his offer of a trade.

 

Your badness does not disqualify you for this trade. Your goodness does not qualify you for this trade. What qualifies you is knowing you don’t qualify.

 

Collapse into the open arms of Jesus Christ. As you say to him of your efforts, “It is hopeless,” he will say to you of his efforts, “It is finished.”

 

The Way Forward

 

If you will accept the trade that Jesus offers, everything will change in your life.

 

I don’t mean you’ll suddenly make more money or get sick less often. Actually, in some ways life will get harder for you if you accept his offer. A prisoner of war escaping from a concentration camp will face more intense attack from the enemy than he ever did inside the camp.

 

But when you say yes to Christ’s offer, everything changes. You’re alive.

 

It’s like a baby moving from the womb to the outside world, or a statue coming to life, or a spell being broken. Not only are all your sins forgiven; you get your humanity back. You get your dignity back. There’s a new meaning and direction to your life. You discover a surprising buoyancy and joy from within, a glow and a calm that you can’t explain. Death no longer terrifies you. Your desires start changing, from the inside out. All these are indications that the Holy Spirit has taken up residence within you. God the Son trades places with you, so that God the Spirit can live within you.

 

You get back the you that you were created to be.

 

All for free. All of grace. Just by humbling yourself enough to admit that you deserve the cross of condemnation that Jesus went to in your place.

 

And you will continue to sin. In fact, you will be more aware of your sinfulness than ever before. At times it will feel like you’re getting worse, not better. And that’s why Jesus Christ’s words “It is finished” will be yours to cherish the rest of your life. He never asks for a trade back. Once his completed work counts as yours, it always will. That’s the whole point. It’s done. There’s nothing good you could ever do to add the finishing touch to his work on the cross, and there’s nothing bad you could ever do to take away from his finished work.

 

Your Actual Life

 

That’s it. Pretty simple.

 

You lay down your bad and your good, your irreligion and your religion, and believe the gospel.

You hand Jesus your sin and shame, and he hands you his finished work and perfect record. It’s what he loves to do.

 

Perhaps at this point you long for all this to be true, but new questions or doubts are bubbling up.

Maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t have it in me to be a very good Christian.”

 

And Jesus Christ would say to you: I will walk with you every step of the journey. I will be your Friend and Guide.

 

Maybe you say, “My parents will think I’ve gone crazy and I’ll suddenly be an outsider within my own family.”

 

Jesus says to you, I will give you a new family.

 
A place of true acceptance and belonging, among my people. They will be your true brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers.

 

Perhaps you respond, “I have baggage from my past that no one else knows about.” He says, I do. I know you better than you know yourself. And I still want you.

 

“You want me in spite of my baggage?”

 

No, I want you because of your baggage.

 

“But shouldn’t I leave my sin and guilt behind before coming to you?”

 

I can’t trade places with you if you do that.

 

“The thing is, there’s messiness and failure and sin not only in my past but in my present.”

 

All the more reason for you to accept my offer, and let me trade places with you once and for all.

 

And perhaps in a final wave of despair and longing, you whisper: “It’s futile.”

 

And the Lord Jesus Christ lifts your face by the chin, looks you in the eye, and says:

 

 

by Dane Ortlund, (PhD, Wheaton College) serves as senior pastor of Naperville Presbyterian Church in Naperville, Illinois. He is the author of Gentle and Lowly and Deeper. Dane and his wife, Stacey, have five children 

It is finished.

The Christian Life Is More than ‘Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again’

In the 1970s, Barry Manilow had a hit song called “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again,” in which he longs
for the emotional intensity he once felt for his lover. He wants again the feeling “that made [him] shiver, made [his] knees start to quiver.” Now, all that is gone and all he’s left with is a sense of yearning.

I wonder sometimes if much of evangelical Christianity could be summed up by the title of that song. Many of us, when we first came to faith, felt electrified by the gospel and captivated by the Spirit. Scripture leaped off the page. Every sermon hit home. Worship moved us to tears. Prayer came easier. We craved togetherness with the community of faith.

But over time, the emotional experience began to feel different. The highs weren’t as high. Our eagerness waned. We kept doing the Christian things that mark out a faithful life: serving others, reading our Bibles, worshiping, and giving. But the initial joy didn’t feel the same. And now, across the landscape are congregations filled with people going through the motions, yearning to feel that spark again. All of us, just “tryin’ to get the feeling again.”

When the Fire Fades

I’m grateful for books that put words to this experience. Kyle Strobel and John Coe’s When God Seems Distant may prove life-changing for believers who wonder what God is doing as spiritual seasons shift and our feelings fluctuate.

For many of us, when those initial excited feelings fade, we wonder if we’ve lost “the love [we] had at first,” as Jesus said to the Ephesian church (Rev. 2:4). If I’m no longer “in love” with the Lord the way I once was, and if I no longer feel the same joy and enthusiasm about spiritual activities, am I backtracking? Am I regressing?

Because we tend to measure God’s activity by our experience, we think he’s only “showing up” when we feel a certain way. We assume he’s near only when we feel passionate.

So what happens when we don’t feel that enthusiasm anymore? We assume one of two things: Either God must be distant or something must be wrong with us. And since we know by faith that God promises to never leave us or forsake us, we’re drawn more to the second explanation. Something’s wrong with me. My faith is malfunctioning. I’m a spiritual fake.

Filling the pews of churches all over the world are Christians who sit for sermons and sing the songs who, in their heart of hearts, are convinced, I’m a spiritual failure because I don’t feel everything I’m supposed to feel.

That assumption makes total sense. It’s also very often wrong.

Season of Consolation

Kyle Strobeland John Coe dig deep into the Christian tradition to reframe that experience. The early years of the Christian life often include a season many pastors and theologians have called “consolation.” It’s the excitement that marks our initial conversion or awakening to God’s love. It’s a gift. It’s like milk for spiritual infants. God, in his kindness, sweeps into our hearts and grants us an experience of joy and sweetness.

But the season of consolation isn’t permanent. The impermanence isn’t because God is stingy but because he is fatherly. The New Testament assumes we’ll grow. Paul rebukes the Corinthians because they’re still drinking milk when they should be ready for solid food (1 Cor. 3). The Christian life is developmental. Babies aren’t meant to stay babies. Yes, the early season of faith may have been marked by emotional intensity, but that doesn’t mean it was marked by maturity.

We were spiritual newborns, wide-eyed with wonder at the beauty of God and the gospel. That’s a beautiful experience, and we ought to thank God for it. That’s when God flooded our hearts with desire for him. That’s when the beauty of God lifted us out of the mud long enough for us to see the mountains. We should want to experience that kind of wonder as we progress in our faith. (I wrote The Thrill of Orthodoxy to call us press deeper into the reality and wonder of Christian truth so we see and feel the gospel’s dazzling power.)

But here’s the reality. As we draw closer to God, we’ll encounter deeper layers of unbelief, self-reliance, fear, pride, envy, lust, and anger still residing in our hearts. As beautiful as the season of consolation may be, another season follows . . .

Season of the Desert

Strobel and Coe turn to a biblical image to clarify what many of us experience next: the desert. What did Moses tell the children of Israel? “Remember that the LORD your God led you on the entire journey these forty years in the wilderness, so that he might humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands” (Deut. 8:2, emphasis added).

God’s deliverance wasn’t the end of the story. The desert was next. The desert was a test, designed to excavate the heart.

The same is true for us. In the early days, the waves of consolation lift us. Later, the waves subside, and we begin to notice what’s beneath the surface. All the junk at the bottom of the lake starts showing up as the waters of consolation are drawn back, and we see what’s really in our hearts. The anger we thought was gone returns. The compulsions we assumed were defeated reappear. The pride we didn’t know we had still puffs up our ego. Suddenly, the spiritual life feels less like floating and more like trudging.

Counterfeit Solutions

When the Christian life doesn’t feel the way it used to, we assume we’ve got to do whatever it takes to generate that feeling again. So we look for methods, techniques, and hacks. We hunt for the spiritual equivalent of a coach at halftime who will pump our will full of passion so we can make it through another week.

Sometimes we do this with worship. Sometimes with camp. Sometimes with conference culture. Sometimes with “new routines” and “fresh strategies” and a constant search for the next spark. Sometimes with spiritual disciplines.

Strobel and Coe worry that we turn to willpower to manufacture the feeling of consolation again. We cultivate a “good Christian” persona. We pray like we imagine a good Christian would pray. We talk or act in pious ways. But in truth, we’re offering God an avatar, not ourselves. And then we wonder why we’re bored. Or why it feels fake. Or why we don’t see the change we’d like.

The better approach is to recognize and acknowledge why it’s difficult to be present in our prayers, why we struggle to believe God’s Word, why we resist this excavation of our hearts. Following the example of the psalmist, we shouldn’t come to God with polished piety. We should start wherever our heart is in the moment. Why do the wicked prosper? Why is my soul downcast? Why has God abandoned me? Why don’t I feel what I should right now? That’s honest prayer. Drawing near to God in truth.

What’s better? Feeling “on fire” for the Lord, or feeling the fire of the Lord that exposes and burns away our sins? To be honest, I like the feeling of being “on fire” way more than I like feeling the fiery conviction of holiness that unveils my remaining sin and self-righteousness. But it’s the latter experience that marks true growth into godliness.

Read the Seasons

One of the gifts of Strobel and Coe’s book is the language it recovers from the Christian tradition. The walk of faith may begin with the feeling of consolation, and there may be seasons when those feelings return. But it’s precisely walking by faith and not by sight (or by feeling!) that takes us into the desert, and sometimes into deeper desolation, when God seems absent, not just distant.

In the end, though, the goal of the journey is communion with God: to know him, to abide in him, to receive him and to offer ourselves back to him, to trust and depend on him as we walk.

When God seems distant, don’t assume he doesn’t care. And don’t assume the experience means something’s wrong with you. This is often God’s way of maturing us. Strobel and Coe say it’s better to ask not “How do I get the feeling back?” but instead “Lord, what does faithfulness look like here?”

Faithfulness in desolation means showing up just as we are, not with an eye to impressing God or anyone else. We acknowledge the feeling of distance. We persevere in obedience even without immediate emotional reward. We no longer try to cover up our inadequacy with “good behavior.” Instead, we expose our hearts and admit what needs healing,

Draw near to God. You draw near. Not the version of yourself you wish were true, but you in all the mess that the desert has uncovered. That’s the walk of faith.

by Trevin Wax - vice president of resources and marketing at the North American Mission Board and a visiting professor at Cedarville University. A former missionary to Romania, Trevin is a regular columnist at The Gospel Coalition and has contributed to The Washington Post, World, and Christianity Today. 

Biblical Masculinity is Sacrificial Responsibility under God, Carried Out in Ordinary Obedience that Rarely Draws Applause

As G. K. Chesterton once warned, men are being discipled with their feet firmly planted in midair, as G.
K. Chesterton once warned. When you’re trained to live suspended between contradictions, you don’t move forward with confidence. You drift wherever the cultural winds happen to blow.

The air we’re breathing right now is confused, and that confusion shapes how men think about themselves, their homes, and their responsibilities. It presses in quietly at first, then loudly, until many men no longer know what obedience even looks like.

It began in a garden, long before there were headlines to argue over or trends to follow. Genesis shows us a good design at the beginning. God created man and woman in His image, different by design and meant to complement one another in ordered harmony.

Then the order fractured in a way that still echoes today. Eve stepped into leadership God had not given her, and Adam stepped back from leadership God had commanded him to carry. When it all fell apart, Adam did not bear the weight of his failure and instead pushed responsibility onto his wife.

Sin did not erase what God made good. It bent it out of shape and twisted what was meant to function in harmony into a pattern of conflict. The design remained, but it was no longer operating as it should.

That distortion shows up in predictable ways. Women are tempted toward control, and men are tempted toward abdication and blame. We see the pattern everywhere because the pattern has been with us from the beginning.

This tension did not originate in culture. Culture amplifies what the Fall introduced and then sells it back to us as progress. A feminized world is not the result of strong women, but of sinful distortion in women and sinful abdication in men.

The answer to Adam’s failure is not better techniques or stronger personalities. It is a better Man who did not fail when obedience was costly. Where Adam stood silent, Christ spoke truth and stood firm.

Where Adam withdrew when responsibility pressed in, Christ stepped forward and embraced the cost of obedience. Where Adam blamed his bride, Christ bled for His bride. The contrast is not subtle, and it is meant to reshape how we think about leadership.

Christ restores manhood by reordering obedience, not by inflating ego or celebrating dominance. His model of strength is quiet endurance under the authority of the Father. He shows us that real leadership absorbs cost instead of shifting blame.

Men do not mature past the cross, and they do not outgrow their need for repentance. They grow by staying near it, returning again and again to the place where pride is put to death. Formation begins there and only continues if it remains anchored there.

Biblical masculinity is not domination. It is sacrificial responsibility under God, carried out in ordinary obedience that rarely draws applause. You do not learn manhood by watching culture, and you do not recover it by reacting to culture. You learn manhood by looking at Christ and ordering your life under His authority.

What Acting Like Men Actually Looks Like

Scripture is concrete about formation and does not leave masculinity in the realm of vague sentiment. It calls men to be watchful, to stand firm in the faith, to act like men, and to be strong. That is not bravado, but obedience with backbone.

Acting like men looks like paying attention to spiritual danger instead of drifting through temptation. It looks like standing firm when truth is unpopular and costly. It looks like leading in repentance before leading in direction.

It also looks like bearing weight instead of dodging it. It looks like choosing obedience when comfort would be easier and compromise would be rewarded. These habits are formed slowly through repeated, costly choices.

Men are not formed by comfort, and they are not strengthened by endless affirmation. They are formed by responsibility carried over time. You either take responsibility for your formation, or you allow the world to deform you into something weaker than you were meant to be.

The disorder we see around us did not start in courtrooms or classrooms, and it did not originate in political movements. It started in a garden when God’s order was rejected. That rejection still multiplies confusion wherever it takes root.

When God’s order is dismissed, confusion spreads into every sphere of life. When men abdicate their God-given role and responsibility, distortion follows close behind. The pattern is ancient, and the consequences are still with us.

The world does not need louder men who perform strength. It needs stronger men who practice obedience when no one is watching. It needs men who carry weight instead of performing outrage.

The call placed on men is simple in its clarity, but not easy in its cost. It requires watchfulness, firmness, and strength that grows through obedience. Stand watch, stand firm, act like men, be strong, and go and do likewise.

Note: This article is an adapted from a recent sermon by Virgil Walker

A New Heart – The Righteousness of Christ

When we despair of ourselves, we repent of these self-justifying schemes and allow
ourselves to be shaped by God, covered in Christ’s righteousness, and reborn with a new heart.

In an exchange with Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1525, the reformer Martin Luther debated the matter of free will with the great Humanist thinker. At the end of his treatise, De Servo Arbitrio [On the Captive Will], he told Erasmus, “You and you alone have seen the question on which everything hinges, and have aimed at the vital spot.” [1] For Luther, how you understand the human will is imperative for understanding how God works through the gospel to bring faith.

What does it mean to have a bound will? To answer this question, we must take a step back. For Luther, humans are creatures of the heart, that means that everyone is captivated by something or another. Whatever we make of the will, it is beholden to the heart. And this captivation is not an easy ride. The human heart is stormy, swaying under the spell of four different emotions:

A human heart is like a ship on a wild sea, driven by the storm winds from the four corners of the world. Here it is stuck with fear and worry about impending disaster; there comes grief and sadness because of present evil. Here breathes a breeze of hope and of anticipated happiness; there blows security and joy in present blessings. These storm winds teach us to speak with earnestness, to open the heart and pour out what lies at the bottom of it. [2]

For the Reformer, we are not natural born Stoics indifferent to our emotional reactions but instead we are creatures under the spell of our passions.

Whatever we think about the will, it is not neutral, like a customer choosing options in a big box store or a diner at a buffet line but instead as indebted to and driven by fear, grief, hope, and joy. But there is good news. The gospel comes to open our hearts, enjoy Christ, and liberate us from our defenses. Luther likened us to beasts of burden ridden by either God or the devil and our hearts as being controlled by the one holding the reins. Throughout the Scriptures we learn that God loves his own. Given that truth, our hearts should be captivated by God, but they become ensnared in idols, projections of our sense of value and worth. For the most part this projection is tied to merit. We use our idols to verify to our weak egos that we matter (see The Denial of Death by Ernst Becker).

All humans are captivated by something or another and look to that power to uphold them and validate the meaning of their lives

Preachers must be vigilant with how they address their hearers. Your hearers, of course, live in a context, whether a city, suburb, or the country, driven by a political stance, and beholden to whatever glitter or entertainment that captures them. To be sure, all humans are captivated by something or another and look to that power to uphold them and validate the meaning of their lives. All humans live from an ideal that gives them meaning. But there is evidence that purely secular approaches to establishing meaning, such as the quest for authenticity, are no longer working. Otherwise, why would so many be anxious and depressed?

In Luther’s day and in some versions of religion, it is impossible to untether “free will” from the attempt to acquire merit. In this perspective, Christ is, at best, an accessory. Speaking some years ago in a local church about the theology of the cross (for which Christ is never an add-on), a man countered me by saying, “You can talk all you wish about a theology of the cross, but I have landed a well-paying job, a great house in the burbs, and a beautiful wife. I just don’t experience a theology of the cross.” I instinctively replied, “take your pulse!”

Bound to Justify Yourself

All people with bound wills will look at Christ as an accessory. In Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, secular people evaluate religion in a twofold way: they see religion, first, as making people ethical and, second, as helping people emotionally. Now, this way of looking at religion reduces it to its utility. It has no sense of honoring God for his own sake and possibly little sense for loving your neighbors for their own sakes. But the gospel as a promise cannot be reduced to its usefulness. It is God’s means to rescue people from sin, death, and the devil. It is not translatable into a program to help us successfully navigate life, let alone accrue merit for eternal life. Of course, if our lives are grounded in the gospel, we can have access to the assurance that they are lived out wholly within God’s embrace. That can afford us a modicum of security in this life. The point is, whenever you preach, you are preaching to an audience of bound wills.

The gospel as a promise cannot be reduced to its usefulness. It is God’s means to rescue people from sin, death, and the devil.

How should that shape your preaching? All those to whom you preach are folks captivated by something or another. That means, everyone to whom you preach lives as if they have a crush on someone or something. (Do you remember the hold that crushes had on you when you were an adolescent?) We are creatures of desire. Augustine was right that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. That which we desire provides us with our sense of meaning, value, and purpose. Paradoxically, there is a sense that our desires choose us rather than we choose them. Not only do they choose us, but they possess us. Some years ago, a class gave me pushback that they were all individuals who “did their own thing.” My response to them was, if that is the case, then why are you all wearing the same designer label jeans? In their imaginations they were striving to be unique individuals and thereby become authentic. But what was really driving them was the unrecognized desire to fit in with their peers.

Luther taught that God’s law, if taken seriously, would prove to us our inability to keep it from the heart and so prevent us from using it to achieve merit. He showed that the law would give us “self-knowledge,” the awareness of our inability to make ourselves to be no longer incurvated, turned-in-on-ourselves, and love God for his own sake. The more the law hammers this truth home, the more likely we would despair of ourselves. Again, paradoxically, such self-despair is a good thing. It shows us that self-justification will never give us the security in our relationship with God that we crave. It shows us the futility of attempting to justify ourselves and so allows us to become open to God’s work on us. That is, God can really begin to work his mercy and goodness in Christ for you when you stop trying to prove your worth. We experience a “new intellect and will” giving us the power to “curb the flesh and to flee the righteousness and wisdom of the world.” [3] Of course, this means that Christian life is a battlefield between old and new.

There are a lot of ways that people use to justify themselves. As seen above, some might use their belief in their financial success at improving their relationship with God. Others might find their ultimate meaning in the politics which they hold dear. Others might find it in their success in whether they are movers and shakers in their place of employment or their families. In all these schemes, Christ is marginalized as an accessory. When we despair of ourselves, we repent of these self-justifying schemes and allow ourselves to be shaped by God, covered in Christ’s righteousness, and reborn with a new heart.

As Luther points out in his Postil for the 3rd Sunday after Easter, many of those to whom you preach wrestle with God in hiddenness. [4] They deal with the deus absconditus, perhaps even stronger, a Christus absconditus. Christ no longer seems present and kind. Instead, he seems to have disappeared. Such an absent Christ leaves us exposed to the law’s accusations of not living up to its goals. Many people suffering from the experience of an absent Christ find themselves caught or trapped in temptation, anxieties, adversities, and many forms of suffering. Christ is present as merciful when he is preached.

Preachers as Fools for Christ

Luther interprets this experience as a way by which God reinforces the reality that an exercise in our free will to secure our worth falters. Certainly, Luther is an advocate of good works. But works are only good when they are done neither from a slave mentality which fears punishment in hell nor from the quest to secure payment or reward in heaven like a hireling. Instead, works are good when we live to supply our neighbor’s needs and not use our neighbor for our own benefit. In faith, God’s love, which is ever gushing, flows through us to accomplish good in our various vocations in the world. When experiencing God in hiddenness, we discover that our works cannot secure Christ’s presence. Only the word can do that. Our wills may be bound to believe that through our choices we can accrue merit. But merit does not cut it with a God who is committed to be merciful. Echoing Paul, Luther believes we encounter our own foolishness in this thought. Yet Christians also embrace the foolishness of trusting in Christ alone: we become fools for Christ.

Again, as preachers your job is to hand over the goods. Give Christ to your people. Luther often preached as if his mouth was Christ’s own. It is an effective tool for delivering the gospel.

Placing Salvation in the Best of Hands

When I preach, some tell me how much they appreciate that I emphasize that God’s grace is “for you.” Too many other preachers present the gospel as if it were a program for either personal or social improvement. Bound wills need to hear that Christ forgives them and plants a whole new heart within them.

Renewed men and women to whom the Spirit has brought faith will work to make the world more just and peaceful.

Preaching to bound wills is less about offering the congregation a program for self-improvement and more about delivering Christ’s benefits, bringing the goods of forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation. Many preachers are rightfully concerned that Christianity can impact social health within the world. The best way to do this is to secure anxious consciences in Christ and bind up those who are deeply wounded. Renewed men and women to whom the Spirit has brought faith will work to make the world more just and peaceful.

A preacher who understands the nature of the will as the crux of theological understanding and especially how it impinges on the preaching task might join in rejoicing with Luther at the end of his treatise on the will, in one of the greatest passages in all his writings:

For my own part, I frankly confess that even if it were possible, I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive toward salvation. For, on the one hand, I should be unable to stand firm and keep hold of it amid so many adversities and perils and so many assaults of demons, seeing that even one demon is mightier than all people, and no one at all could be saved; and on the other hand, even if there were no perils or adversities or demons, I should nevertheless have to labor under perpetual uncertainty and to fight as one beating the air, since even if I lived and worked to eternity, my conscience would never be assured and certain, how much it ought to do to satisfy God. For whatever work might be accomplished, there would always remain an anxious doubt whether it pleased God or whether he required something more, as the experience of all self-justifiers proves, and as I myself learned to my bitter cost through so many years. But now, since God has taken my salvation out of my hands into his, making it depend on his choice and not mine, and has promised to save me, not by my own work or exertion but by his grace and mercy, I am assured and certain both that he is faith and will not lie to me, and also that he is too great and powerful for any demons or any adversities to be able to break him or snatch him from me. [5]

God’s mercy is nothing that a “free will” would choose. But mercy is what sinners need and what God offers them for Jesus’ sake. To deny “free will” is no downer. Instead, it affirms that everything is in the best of hands in God’s will. “Not my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22:42). So, preachers: Be bold in your calling as one of God’s delivery guys. No other message in today’s world is as important as preaching the gospel as God’s promise to forgive sins for Jesus’ sake

 

by Mark Mattes is associate professor of religion and philosophy at Grand View College in Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of "Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty," "The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology," "Imaging the Journey," and "Law and Gospel in Action."