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Lutheran Identity: A Proposal

By Marc Kolden

At the end of the school year there was a sign in the fifth grade Sunday School classroom. Neatly lettered, obviously by the teacher, it said: “JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS. THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS SHUT UP.” We shuddered. What do you think that sign told those kids about the Christian faith? The Lutheran church? About following Jesus? As a Lutheran, would you want that teacher to teach next year?

“We confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean.” Before 1978 most North American Lutherans said these words at every worship service. Are they true? In what sense? If most worshipers actually take them to mean that we are just no good at all, should we use such words in confessing our sins? Is the alternative in the Lutheran Book of Worship any better: that “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves?” Why or why not?

When the gambling industry decided to move into Minnesota, they did so (it was said) because most Minnesotans are either Roman Catholic or Lutheran and “the Catholics will welcome gambling and the Lutherans are so politically passive that they won’t object.” Why would someone think this way about Lutherans? Is it true? Does it fit with what Lutherans believe?

An ELCA Task Force met at a Roman Catholic facility which was used in part as a retirement home for elderly nuns, many of them of German background. When the nuns heard that the Lutherans were coming, their first thought was that there would be people with whom to converse in German. In fact, only one member of the Task Force could speak German and he had learned it in college. Most of the Lutherans were surprised at the nuns’ expectation.

Lutheran? What’s That?

What is a Lutheran, anyway? Does “Lutheran” refer to a certain political outlook? Is it identical with particular ethnic groups? Does it entail having a low opinion of human beings? Does it not think that good classroom behavior goes along with believing in Jesus?

If you found those four examples troubling or puzzling, it may be because you already have an idea of what “Lutheran” means--not in terms of culture or piety but theologically--in light of what we believe about God and God’s creation. Unlike many other Christian groups, what Lutherans believe is not best understood as a list or outline of basic teachings. It makes better sense to think of “Lutheran” as referring to a single central insight for understanding the faith that all Christians profess.

Lutheran theology is “hard core” theology. It is characterized by firmness at the center and flexibility at the periphery. Perhaps a better image was suggested many years ago: that Lutheran theology is like a flower, for example, a daisy, with a sturdy center from which grow many petals. The petals are not directly connected to each other; what holds them together is the common center. If we get the center right, our understanding of the petals will fall into place.

The Sunday School teacher, for example, misunderstood (or did not know) the center and turned Jesus into a classroom disciplinarian instead of a savior. Knowing the true center will help us reflect on the meaning of humanness and sin as well as whether or not we should be involved politically. A Lutheran understanding of the center should rule out ethnicity as a dominant trait of Lutheranism.

The Center

The battle that Martin Luther waged against the sixteenth-century papacy was over the center--or, rather, over the loss of the center. The great slogans of the Reformation--grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, scripture alone, the Word alone--were all concerned to establish a single center and to reject a whole set of secondary matters that had been elevated to central status. The Word alone--not the Word and the church hierarchy. Scripture alone--not scripture and tradition. Christ alone--not Christ and the saints. Faith alone--not faith and good works. Grace alone--not grace plus human transformation.

The Lutheran center, drawn from the biblical witness to Christ, is stated repeatedly by Luther and in the Lutheran Confessions; it is the forgiveness of sins. This is identified as the central religious reality that Christians experience. Sin is at the heart of all human problems--we are not right with God and so we are not right with ourselves or God’s other creatures either. Sin needs to be forgiven--removed, blotted out, canceled, pardoned. That’s what Jesus is all about. He became sin for us; he took our sin upon himself. Therefore, our sin is not counted against us.

The most helpful word here is “pardon,” as when President Ford pardoned former President Nixon after the Watergate scandal. Although presumably Nixon was guilty, it was not counted against him; he could live as a free person. That act of pardon made all the difference in the world for Nixon. He didn’t have to go to jail; he could work and vote and participate as if he were not guilty. Forgiveness, in other words, is no small thing; as Martin Luther wrote, “Where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.” Forgiveness is not merely negative, as if God only erases our sins from some book. It is primarily positive in that because of forgiveness we are reconciled to Christ: he abides in us and we in him, as the Gospel of John puts it.

Nailing Down the Insight

When the Lutheran reformers put this into a formula to explain exactly what holding to the single center of the forgiveness of sins meant, they used the phrase that we are saved or “justified” (set right) “by grace through faith on account of Christ.” That is not a different center; it is simply the doctrinal formula for describing the centrality of forgiveness. God graciously forgives us on account of Christ’s death and resurrection. This makes things right between us. We can depend on this, we can trust it (“through faith”).

When Luther sought to help pastors and teachers grasp this approach of looking at the whole of the Bible and the Christian life according to the centrality of forgiveness, he proposed the theological method of “distinguishing between law and gospel.” Again, this is not a different center. Rather, it is a way of making sure that salvation by faith alone is what is proclaimed. Here’s how it works.

“Gospel” means “good news” (that Christ died for our sins); it also includes the aspect of being a promise. The gospel message promises us ahead of time that the last judgment will be: “Your sins are forgiven on account of Jesus Christ.” In contrast to this, words that command or demand or exhort, even if they are words of Jesus, are not gospel (good news, promise). They are “law.” The law has many legitimate uses (protecting us from evil, promoting good in society) but getting us right with God is not one of them.

It is crucial that when he hear God’s word we distinguish between law and gospel for the sake of the gospel--to help us “keep the good news good,” as someone has put it. The fifth grade Sunday School teacher confused law and gospel; in Luther’s terms that teacher turned Jesus into a “new Moses” or a “new lawgiver” and thereby failed to keep the good news good. There was no gospel to create faith in those fifth graders.

The Petals

What “petals” grow out of this center? What does all this have to do with life today? Among other things, it means that the life of a Christian is not to be understood primarily as following a set of rules, even though that’s what many people think. If God’s good news is that we are set free from having to make something of ourselves in God’s eyes by what we do, then all sorts of possibilities open before us.

The usual slogan for a Lutheran way of life is from Galatians: “Faith active in love.” The focus of love is not on keeping rules but on the well being of the beloved. Martin Luther wrote that a truly good work is one that is good for our neighbor in need, not an act that fits some pattern or rule set out in advance. Often love will involve quite ordinary looking actions (such as providing food, shelter, or care) and it may not look very “religious.” But that’s fine. We do not have to justify ourselves; we are already justified through faith in Christ. In the confidence that God forgives our sins on account of Christ, we can direct our actions where they are needed. God doesn’t need them, but God’s creatures do.

This emphasis on Christian freedom joined to the focus on the neighbor in need led Martin Luther to speak of divine callings as Christian service precisely in the roles and places related to neighbors with needs; not only to those closest to us (such as family and friends) but fellow-citizens, co-workers, fellow-students, and people in the movements and groups that we are part of and in the events of life that pour in on us. There is no reason, Luther said, to become a monk or priest or to make a religious pilgrimage--you can serve God wherever you are.

Whether child or parent, employed or not, old or middle-aged or young, we have divine callings simply as faithful creatures in God’s world. We help God to keep the world going by helping people, society, and nature to function in good, true, healthy, and lawful ways through the situations and roles in which we find ourselves or we attain. Being justified by faith apart from works (the center) does not mean that our works are not important but that they are no longer focused on ourselves.

In this sense, the Christian life as a Lutheran understands it may be in considerable conflict with many of the expectations and assumptions of modern American life. Our consumer society thrives on people being good to themselves, above all; it thrives on greed and selfishness. In this context, “faith active in love” may be more exciting and challenging and useful than living by a set of religious rules developed for some other situation. It certainly would not encourage political passivity in the face of threats to the social fabric, such as an over-reliance on gambling to bolster the economy. Seeing our daily lives as divine callings in the midst of a troubled world will drive us to prayer for God’s guidance and mercy in every aspect of life.

Faith active in love is one of the petals that grows from the center of forgiveness. It is not faithful to the Lutheran insight to portray the life of the believer as a new form of living under the law. The danger, however, of so emphasizing Christian freedom is that instead of realizing that Christ has set us free to live in love, we think that we have just been cut loose: “Whoopee! I don’t have to do anything.” And, of course, in one sense that is correct: there is nothing we have to do for God or for our own salvation. But that is a hopeless reaction. When you are pardoned, the point isn’t that you don’t need to do anything but that now you can do all sorts of things! That’s what this petal is all about.

ANOTHER PETAL-- Yes, but . . . that is not the whole story about life as a Christian, is it? What about “sanctification?” Don’t Lutherans believe in that? Yes, of course; it is in the Bible; it has to do with being made holy; we hope for that. But we need to understand sanctification not as the second point on a list but as flowing from the center. Many Christian groups speak of sanctification as a process in which Christians strive to become holy with the help of the Holy Spirit. In this view, personal devotions, Bible reading, and worship may come to be thought of (erroneously) as ways in which we help to make ourselves deserving of God’s mercy. The problem with this way of thinking is that it seems to imply that there will come a time when we no longer need Christ and the forgiveness of sins-- when we will become holy and worthy in ourselves.

That can’t be right. We must think about sanctification in light of the central insight that our being right with God never depends on what we do but always depends solely on God’s gracious forgiveness. So, Lutherans have used the biblical language that sanctification involves the putting to death of the sinful self and the raising to life of a new, faithful self. Who does this? We don’t. Being put to death is not something we do to ourselves; dying is something that happens to us. Likewise, we do not raise ourselves; like Jesus, we are raised by another.

The Holy Spirit is the actor in our sanctification. We are the ones acted upon (that is, something happens to us). The Spirit puts sinners to death by the law, by the demand that crushes, accuses, and kills. This happens not through our spiritual striving at holiness (the law is not concerned with that) but in the midst of our callings, our works of love, our ordinary duties and responsibilities. Loving the neighbor is no picnic in many instances; turning the other cheek doesn’t solve all problems but often gets us another black eye. Living as pardoned sinners who are set free even though we are guilty will involve us in actions that both help our neighbors and discipline our old sinful selves. There will never be a time when we do not need forgiveness. If we remember that, then praying that God would make us holy is a good thing; but if we forget the center, emphasizing sanctification can be a grave danger to our faith because it will move our focus from what God does to how we are doing. Being a Christian is not a self-help project of growing in goodness or worthiness but growing in grace--growing in seeing how totally dependent we are upon God’s graciousness to us.

A THIRD PETAL-- How do we get such faith, anyway? How does faith flow from the center of forgiveness of sins? “By grace...through faith.” If we are to have faith, by grace, what are the “means of grace?” Grace is not some “stuff” or power; it is God’s graciousness, God’s favor toward us in Jesus Christ. How does this get to us? Remember the words from heaven to the disciples after Jesus had been transfigured? “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” Saint Paul echoed this when he wrote that “faith comes by hearing the preaching of Christ.” To put it most simply, God’s Word is the means by which we receive faith by grace.

Remember the center: God’s word comes as law or gospel. The law guides our life on earth and reveals our sin; the gospel tells us of God’s faithfulness in Christ and creates faith. So, the gospel is the means of grace. Okay, but how does that work? The gospel is words with content and in the form of promise. The ancient church spoke here of “audible words” and “visible words,” or what Lutherans usually call “proclamation” and “sacraments.”

Faith doesn’t just well up inside us; it isn’t merely a subjective concoction on our part. It results from a communication of the gospel message to us by another. Sermons? Yes. Witness? Yes. The reading of scripture? The words of a hymn? Declarations and praise in the liturgy? Stories told by a loved one? Yes.

What about sacraments? Do baptism and the Lord’s Supper create faith? By all means! At one level, as shown in Luther’s Small Catechism, because there are words (gospel) joined to the water and bread and wine--and faith comes by hearing. At another level, the sacraments create faith by their very concreteness, their particularity “for you” and “for me.” I know that I was washed in the name of the triune God. It happened on a certain date; there were witnesses; I have a signed certificate saying that it happened. God did something to me that day; I can depend on it. God washed away my sins (forgiveness) and gave me the Holy Spirit and united me with Christ and his body, the church. That is something to believe--not by heroic effort on my part but because it happened to me. Likewise with the Lord’s Supper. The words promise that Christ is coming into us in the bread and wine. Being in bread and wine makes the words exceedingly concrete--to taste, touch, chew, and swallow. Again, it is something to believe because it happens to us. There is even an aftertaste!

God saves us through external means of grace because salvation always comes from outside of ourselves. “Our” righteousness is Christ’s righteousness, counted as ours, promised to us, given ahead of time in the “down-payment” of the Holy Spirit.

MORE PETALS-- We can move more quickly now. In light of what has been said already, we can see what view of the church follows from a Lutheran center. The church is the gathering of believers among whom the gospel is preached and the sacraments are administered. Of course! Salvation comes by the means of grace and it is received through faith. That’s enough to define the essence of the church. Buildings, organization, leaders, activities--all these things may arise, but they are not what is essential--they do not create the church, in a Lutheran understanding. The office of ministry is itself created by God because God chooses to save us by external means of grace, which require that someone do the proclamation and the sacraments.

What about the created world? What does the center of the forgiveness of sins imply about the world, including ourselves? First, it says that God loves the world and all its people. Why? Because God sent the Son to save the world. Why? Because God created the world and each of us; we belong to God. Everything God creates is good and loved by God.

Many implications follow from this. The world is good and it is where we humans are meant to live as faithful creatures. What we so casually call “institutions” (for example, family, government, education, health care, business) are to be understood in faith to be created by God-- divinely instituted (started). Our faithful participation as God’s beloved creatures will mean our active involvement in the institutions and structures of life--including that much-maligned institution of politics.

Not that it is quite that simple, of course. If forgiveness is the center, it is because sin is a very serious problem. If Jesus died for all people, then all must be sinful. If the way God overcomes sin is to pardon it and create faith in us, then the root of sin must be lack of faith--not trusting God or trusting something else as our “god.” Then we misuse the created institutions and structures of God’s world to benefit our misguided needs and desires and we corrupt what God has made and preserved for everyone’s good.

To confess that “we are by nature sinful and unclean” is a profound truth (one we only really know after Christ has brought us to faith), but it is only half the truth about us. That was the problem with the old confession of sin and that is why it back-fired on a generation that hadn’t grasped the Lutheran center.

We are radically sinful, to be sure, but we are also created good in every moment, because life at every moment comes from God and what God creates is good. What defines us as truly human is “good” and sin is a misuse or perversion of our good humanness. The Son of God became human in order to take away our sin and restore our humanness. Sin is something alien to our humanness, which is what the new form of confession (that “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves”) seeks to make clear.

The whole created order is affected by our sin (think of pollution, political corruption, abuse, addiction, etc.), which is why some people think of the world as too evil a place for involvement by Christians. A more adequate view would view the world as God’s good world infected by sin and in need of our good works. Of course, our participation will involve us in ambiguous and sinful actions even as we seek to do good, which is why we need regular confession of sin and use of the means of grace.

A Lutheran understanding of life in the world will neither be optimistic nor pessimistic. Rather, it will be hopeful (because of our trust in God’s promises) and realistic (in light of our belief in sin).

Conclusion

All other aspects of Christian faith and life that we might think of—the Trinity, worship, the Bible, the Lutheran Confessions, ecumenism, eternal life, morality, career choice, marriage and singleness, evangelism, death, whatever--should be able to be understood faithfully if we see them as petals attached to the center of the forgiveness of sin. Distinguishing between law and gospel should help us keep God’s good news good, with no strings attached, and it should help us see the proper role for God’s law in caring for life in this world. As we get the center right, the rest should flow from it.

This is a proposal for understanding our identity as Lutheran Christians. While it has a sharp focus, it is not narrowly Lutheran because we believe that the center--the forgiveness of sins--is in truth the biblical center. One of our roles as Lutherans in the larger Christian community will be to bear witness to our insight concerning the center. As Christians come to a common understanding of a biblical center, the other differences between us will become secondary. The clearer our Lutheran identity, in other words, the clearer our role in ecumenical relationships will become: to keep the center primary and the peripheral secondary and flexible.

Marc Kolden is an ELCA pastor who serves as professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. A shorter version of this essay appeared in the September, 1995 issue of The Lutheran. Copies of this essay may be made for use in congregations and other groups.