Confessing Evangelical

John H July 17th, 2009

A book I cannot recommend highly enough: J. David Hawkins’ short memoir, The Useful Sinner. This was mentioned on the Mockingbird blog recently, and Mockingbird kindly sent me one of the free copies they were offering, despite the international postage. If Mockingbird still have any copies, do ask them for one; if they don’t, them try to hunt one down anyway (not easy, alas, as it’s out of print).

As the Mockingbird post explains, it’s the story of a corporate lawyer whose life was turned upside down: first by his exposure as an adulterer who had betrayed both his wife and his friend and employer (with whose wife Hawkins had committed adultery); second by his experience of the grace of God as his wife forgave him and they rebuilt their marriage.

Above all, though, it’s a moving and powerful account of maintaining faith in the all-forgiving grace of God while living through the worldly consequences of one’s actions – including the judicial vengeance of the cuckolded husband. As Hawkins writes:

My sin had ignited a fire of evil and before it was extinguished it spread in many ways. The evil flowed, like lava, in a glowing slithering path, engulfing and harming those it touched.

In all, it took six years for these consequences to be fully worked through. I won’t spoil Hawkins’ story by describing what these consequences were, or their final outcome. But the end result is described by Hawkins as follows:

Louisa and I have come to see God’s grace as a complex unfolding mystery of beauty and provision, wrought with loving care in the midst of circumstances which from our human perspective often seem hopeless.

Hawkins describes his book as being aimed at anyone “who is now in the midst of pain and trouble of his or her own making”, and I’m sure it will be of great help to those in that position. But it is just as big a help for all the rest of us who can identify with those words of Paul, which Louisa Hawkins read to her husband on the night he confessed his adultery to her:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate to do. For what I do is not the good I want to do: no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. - Romans 7:15,19.

• Books , Theology
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John H November 9th, 2008

In the comments to my post on the Jesus Prayer as a summary of the gospel, Kletos commented on “the distinction between mercy as not getting what you deserve and grace as getting what you emphatically do not deserve”.

I think that’s a useful distinction in many ways. God’s mercy could, in principle, have extended merely to forgiving our sins: remitting the punishment we deserve for rebelling against him, but otherwise leaving us in a “neutral” position. But he has gone further, by adopting us as his sons and daughters, giving us a “living hope” and “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Peter 1:3-5). Not merely removing the “negative” (mercy), but giving us more “positive” than we can ask or imagine (grace).

However, while I can’t comment on the technical distinctions between the two words and their equivalents in the original biblical languages – and would welcome any input on this from those better qualified – I still think the word “mercy” remains valid as a summary of the whole of God’s saving work and its benefits for us.

A couple of reasons for this:

• The word “mercy” is often used (particularly in older translations) to translate the Hebrew word hesed, which� other translations render as “steadfast love”. Contrast, for example, Psalm 136 in the NRSV and AV. Hesed is the “covenant love” of God, the love that lies behind the whole of God’s work in creation, redemption and salvation. It is the love by which he not only forgives people, but establishes them as his people (“They will be my people, and I will be their God”) and blesses them.
• Even if we take “mercy” as being principally a matter of forgiveness, then this still brings all the other blessings of the gospel in its train. As Martin Luther points out in the Small Catechism, Jesus’ promise of forgiveness in the Lord’s Supper is not only a promise of forgiveness, but of “life and salvation” also: “For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation”. “Forgiveness, life and salvation” summarise all the blessings of the gospel, and all can in turn be summarised in the single word “mercy”.

Indeed, it will be noted that in the passage from 1 Peter referred to above, it is precisely the positive blessings of the gospel – “new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” – that Peter says we have received “by [God's] great mercy“.

Hence – to return to the example under discussion – when we pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me, a sinner,

we are not only praying for relief from punishment – indeed, we can only even begin to pray such a prayer where that fear has already been taken away – but appropriating by faith all the blessings of the gospel: forgiveness, life and salvation; a living hope; an imperishable inheritance.

• Prayer , Theology
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John H August 4th, 2008

In the comments to my previous post, the question arose as to whether laypeople were permitted to share the gospel “neighbour to neighbour”, given Luther’s insistence that the ministry of the Word should be reserved to those who are duly called.

The answer must be an emphatic “yes”. There is a crucial difference between the public ministry of the Word, and the sharing of the gospel by individual Christians in a personal/social setting. Dan has a great post in which he illustrates this with the analogy of a school physics teacher:

Could I teach high school physics? Probably, but I am not in the “office” of the physics teacher. It would be reasonable for me to look at someone’s homework and offer suggestions, but you would have no business asking me to teach you an entire high school physics course. No accredited school would take your credit from my course.

In the Babylonian Captivity (see previous posts 1 | 2), Luther goes even further, by arguing that lay Christians are able to absolve one another. He attacks the practice of reserving certain “secret” sins as ones which only a bishop or the pope can absolve, arguing that:

In the first place, Christ speaks in Matthew 18:15-17 of public sins and says that if our brother hears us, when we tell him his fault, we have saved the soul of our brother … How much more will it be true of secret sins, that they are forgiven if one brother freely makes confession to another? (pp.213f.)

Luther bases this partly on Christ’s word that “if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven” (Matthew 18:19), arguing that:

…the brother who lays his secret sins before his brother and craves pardon, certainly agrees with his brother on earth, in the truth which is Christ. (p.214)

So he continues:

Hence, I have no doubt but that every one is absolved from his secret sins when he has made confession, privately before any brother, either of his own accord or after being rebuked, and has sought pardon and amended his ways … For Christ has given to every one of his believers the power to absolve even open sins. (p.214)

Luther calls on the church authorities of his time (this is before his excommunication by the pope) to:

…permit all brothers and sisters most freely to hear the confession of secret sins, so that the sinner may make his sins known to whomever he will and seek pardon and comfort, that is, the word of Christ, by the mouth of his neighbour.

That said, Luther clearly regarded it as the norm that a Christian would seek absolution from their pastor (see, for example, the Small Catechism). I assume this is partly for the sake of good order – in particular to avoid laypeople setting themselves up as “freelance confessors” – and partly for the increased assurance we enjoy from hearing the word of God’s forgiveness pronounced to us by one who is not only our fellow believer, but a “called and ordained servant of Christ”, bearing the specific promise that “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven” (John 20:22-23).

But if any of us is speaking to someone who is troubled in their conscience and needs to hear afresh the promise of God’s forgiveness, then we should not be afraid to declare that promise to them in the most direct terms; and those of us who hear that promise from the lips of our brother or sister should not be afraid to receive it as “the word of comfort spoken by God himself” (p.212).

• Gospel and Sacrament , Luther
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John H June 20th, 2007

I was reading the account of Peter and Cornelius this morning, in particular Peter’s sermon to Cornelius’ household, which ends with the following:

“He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Acts 10:42,43)

A couple of thoughts coming out of this:

• Yet another insight for which I’m indebted to Dick Lucas, who pointed out how common it is for people to say that “the Old Testament God is a wrathful God, and the New Testament God is a merciful and loving God”.
   
  And yet when we look at what Peter says here, it is Jesus who commanded the apostles to teach that Jesus is “the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead”, and it is the Old Testament prophets who taught that Jesus is the one in whom we receive forgiveness of sins. So the teaching of the apostles is that the Old Testament God is a God of mercy and forgiveness, and the New Testament God is a God of judgment and wrath.
   
  OK, a slightly tongue-in-cheek point, but also a serious reminder to us of how the themes of judgment and mercy, law and gospel, are found throughout the Bible from beginning to end, and we cannot simply say that the New Testament sets judgment, law and wrath aside.
• I also found it heartening to be reminded of how central it was to the apostolic proclamation that “everyone who believes in [Jesus] receives forgiveness of sins through his name”.
   
  Much as I hate to contradict either NT Wright or Alastair Roberts, the gospel in the New Testament is not simply that “Jesus is Lord and God raised Him from the dead”, but it is also that everyone who believes in that risen Lord Jesus receives forgiveness of sins.
   
  There will be many, sadly, for whom the lordship of Jesus ends up as bad news, because “he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead”. This morning’s reading was a fresh and cheering reminder for me that the reason why the announcement that “Jesus is Lord” is, nevertheless, good news is that “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name”.

• Biblical Interpretation
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John H January 25th, 2007

In my previous post, I suggested that Bonhoeffer’s treatment of the Lord’s Prayer provides additional evidence against any charge of legalism – whether that is legalism in the sense of outright works-righteousness, or in the sense of mixing law elements into the gospel.

What I had in mind was his treatment of the petition, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors”. Bonhoeffer writes:

Every day, Christ’s followers must acknowledge and bewail their guilt. Living as they do in fellowship with him, they ought to be sinless, but in practice their life is marred daily with all manner of unbelief, sloth in prayer, lack of bodily discipline, self-indulgence of every kind, envy, hatred and ambition. No wonder that they must pray daily for God’s forgiveness.

Note that this puts paid to any notion that Bonhoeffer is presenting sinless perfection, or even a certain level of legal obedience, as a condition for fellowship with Christ. We ought to be sinless, but in reality two things are true about us: we do live in fellowship with Christ, but at the same time we commit real sins that need real forgiveness. Simil iustus et peccator.

But here we hit a snag, namely the condition the prayer imposes on our forgiveness, and which Jesus reiterates in Matthew 6:14,15, immediately after the text of his prayer:

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Here, surely, is an opportunity for Bonhoeffer the legalist to bring the hammer down upon us again. The condition is quite simple and straightforward; Jesus means what he says; there is no escape. And indeed this is what Bonhoeffer appears to start to say. However, he then takes this thought in a radically different direction from that which one might expect:

But God will only forgive them if they forgive one another with readiness and brotherly affection. Thus they bring all their guilt before God and pray as a body for forgiveness. God forgive not merely me my debts, but us ours.

Note in particular the word “thus”: it is because we are required to forgive others that we make this prayer corporately. In other words, the corporate nature of the Lord’s prayer, its nature as a prayer of the church, means that it is its own fulfilment of the condition in this petition. As we pray this petition together, at that point we are actually forgiving those who have sinned against us by drawing them into the same prayer. The fact that the old self may spring back to life immediately after our prayer and resume its hatred and unforgiveness is neither here nor there.

Bonhoeffer makes the same point in his exposition of verses 14 and 15:

As a summing up Jesus emphasizes once more that everything depends on forgiveness of sin of which the disciples may only partake within the fellowship of sinners.

Again, this is as far from legalism as it is possible to get. This condition is not aimed at driving us to attempt its fulfilment by our own interior efforts to attain a “forgiving” state of mind; it is pointing us towards the place in which that forgiveness of the sins of others is made concrete and actual, the place in which we acknowledge that those around us are sinners and yet continue to live in fellowship with them: the church.

• Discipleship
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