LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

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90 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XV We may find it silly that fish, or even people, remain confined when barriers are removed. But more serious is confining our faith and our hopes for life with God on what we can do ourselves. Before our text we are reminded: “All who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law’” (10). (And it does mean all the things) There is an alternative: an inexpensive, 100% reliable alternative. Instead of thinking “everything depends on me”, believe “everything depends on God”, because it does. Faith is a gift. Gifts do not depend on the recipient but on the giver. The law was our guard, our disciplinarian, until Christ came so that we might be justified by faith. By God’s grace, through the power of His Word and the promises He attaches to His Sacraments, we become and remain “sons of God”, children of God, “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” This means two things. First, faith is the great leveller. When the word says, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female”, it is not wiping out all the obvious physical or social differences. We may be one in Christ but we are still each individuals, with varying backgrounds, interests, skills, etc. Just as you may say of your children, “no two are alike”, so God may say the same of His. What it does mean, however, is that regardless of our state or status, we each may be sure of the “redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He lavished on us” (Eph. 1:7). Or in simpler terms, no one gets forgiveness and eternal life except by the grace of God. Anyone who believes differently is deluding himself. “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I Jn 1:9-10). Secondly, it means we are free to do as we please. But what pleases us, Luther would ask Surely it brings us no pleasure as forgiven children of God to indulge in every kind of sin or vice imaginable. Surely it does not please us as recipients of divine mercy to ignore invitations to worship and to serve. Surely it does not please us who have been relieved of the burden, fear, and guilt of trying to save ourselves, to refuse to serve and love God and our neighbour using the same commandments that condemned us as a guide to what pleases Him. To do as we please means we are free to do what pleases God. Nothing less than our best will do. We still seek, strive, deprive ourselves, behave ourselves—not because we think we are somehow earning our forgiveness that way, but because we are so enormously grateful for what God has promised and delivered in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and because the Christ whom we have put on through our Baptism “constrains” compels, directs, and drives us to do so.
MUNDT: CHOOSE FREEDOM (GAL. 3:23-29) 91 As God’s children we are “heirs according to promise”. That means eternal life in heaven is already ours. It is just a matter of time until we inherit it. That is why the Bible calls faith “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). It is difficult to imagine how anyone who has sensed the total freedom and relief that comes from knowing “God does it all” would choose to live like “it is all up to me!” We are continually tempted to think that way—and will be until we die. Sin remains part of our life, and the reason for our daily doubts and struggles until the day we die. But thanks to God’s mercy, revealed and sealed in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we may set aside any natural scepticism, and be sure that, even though it sounds too good to be true, it really is! IJN. Amen. Rev. William Mundt, dr.theol., is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary, St. Catharines.
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