What does Luther mean by Christian Freedom?

           In Luther’s On Christian Freedom, he elucidates the meaning of Christian freedom. His definition and explanation come as a reaction to the church’s teaching on penance and the sale of indulgences. Luther first publicly reacts to what he considered an abomination in October of 1517 when he nailed[1] his 95 Theses to the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. In 1520, Luther writes On Christian Freedom to make clear his understanding of Christian duty, justification, good works, and each concept’s relationship to the other.

            Luther begins by making it clear that faith in God comes through hearing. Luther writes, “One thing and one thing alone is necessary for the Christian life, righteousness and freedom, and that is the most holy word of God, the Gospel of Christ.”[2] Several paragraphs later Luther writes, “For faith alone is the saving and efficacious use of the word of God.”[3] For Luther, this faith comes through the hearing of the Gospel of Christ proclaimed and through the inward work of the Holy Spirit. One cannot come to faith in Christ on one’s own account because humans are bound by sin. One is dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit for one to become a faithful witness of the Gospel of Christ.

            Second, Luther takes on the question of how one is justified before God. This is a continuous battle for Luther in his writing and preaching because of the Roman Church’s teaching on penance and sale of indulgences. The masses believed that one must do good works or purchase indulgences in order to allow one to be justified before God. Luther was appalled at this notion and said that faith alone justifies. He writes, “It is clear that the soul needs the word alone for life and righteousness, because if the soul could be justified by anything else, it would not need the word and consequently, would not need faith.”[4] Luther emphasizes that no external works justify a human being. A human is justified by the grace of God through faith in Christ Jesus alone!

            Justification by grace through faith, faith through hearing/proclamation, and the work of the Holy Spirit led Luther to identify the true meaning of Christian freedom. He writes, “…Anyone can clearly see how the Christian is free from all things and is over all things, so that such a person requires no works at all to be righteous or saved.”[5] This is not to say that an individual will do nothing once one is given faith through the work of the Holy Spirit. Luther holds that works automatically follow when one receives faith as gift. He writes, “These works, however, ought not to be done under the supposition that through them a person is justified before God.”[6] Instead Luther writes, “The person does them in compliance to God out of spontaneous love, considering nothing else than the divine favor to which the person wishes to comply most dutifully in all things.”[7] Luther’s understanding of Christian freedom is that Christians are freed from the tangles of sin through the resurrection of Christ to love and serve their neighbors. Luther asserts Christian freedom in concisely in two sentences saying, “The Christian individual is a completely free lord of all, subject to none. The Christian individual is a completely dutiful slave of all, subject to all.”[8]

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[1] Maybe nailed, maybe posted at the university, maybe did not post. Regardless, this work was circulated and led to the Protestant Reformation.

[2] P. 3

[3] P. 4

[4] P. 5

[5] P. 16

[6] P. 19

[7] P. 19

[8] P. 2 – Unfortunately Luther does not mean that Christ has freed me to do whatever the hell I want. This is not to say that I could not do whatever I want because I can. will not go to hell because my salvation is secured by my baptism and thus faith. But the reality is that I cannot do whatever I want because my faith and conscience will not allow me! (End of footnote rant/randomness).

"Election Day Prayer" - Thy Will Be Done

Today is Election Day.

Folks across the country will be going to polls to cast votes about the future of our nation, states, and communities. In Virginia and New Jersey, people are voting for their governor. In Colorado, citizens are addressing the issue of forming a new state. In many states, judicial elections are happening. There are exciting things happening. Election days are always exciting times—even on “off year” election cycles. They’re exciting, and they’re important as well.


For Christians, elections might seem like tricky matters. Some Christians believe faithful folks have no place casting votes or being involved in civic matters. Others see it as their civic duty to establish a “Christian” faithview as a framework for governance. Whatever the case, Christians have a voice at election time.

Wherever you come down on the issue, Christians who do participate in the civic processes of our government do well to engage in heartfelt, faithful a prayer throughout. A prayer that God’s will be done, be it through elections or other means. In praying this prayer, it’s paramount for us to remember that although we often mean well and act as faithfully as we can, our prayer that God’s will be done ultimately is directed at the Divine and might produce fruit we might not first expect.

The wise words of the Prophet Isaiah speak to the unexpected ways of God:

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. -Isaiah 58:6-9, NRSV

Several months ago, I had the privilege to preach on the Lord’s prayer for a congregation in my home synod. The Spirit called me to preach about praying for God’s will at all times when we offer up our prayers:

Why do we pray? To plead for God’s will to be realized? Or is our prayer tinged with a blue or red hue, hoping God will swing the election the way I want or have the courts rule as I desire? Are we like Abraham, with our own sense of justice, when we come before God with our prayer? “Thy will be done” rises daily off the lips of countless Christian in prayer. If we believe God answers our prayers, why the discouragement when things don’t go as we’d hope? Is it possible, deep down, we’re not really praying “thy will be done,” but rather “thy will as I know it should be done?”

It’s easy for us to make our prayers about us—what we think is best for this country, for this world, for the Kingdom of God. It’s easy for us to think we’re guided by the Holy Spirit in our praying for particularities, whatever they may be. It’s easy for us put our faithful trust on an inwardly focused place, instead of in the outwardly focused place of God. But when we pray “thy will be done on earth as in heaven” we put our trust in Christ and not in our own holiness, and we seal it by faith, declaring the Kingdom, with all its glory and power, belong to God alone. That’s the kind of prayer Christians should be about before heading to the polls—and any other time they offer up pleas and thanksgiving to God.

In closing, I offer this prayer that I wrote for Election Day, for as St. James writes, “The prayer of the righteous one is strong and effective." ….

Almighty Father, ruler of highest heaven, we come before you today as our nation casts votes to decide a course of action for our future. Inspire the people of our nation by the power and wisdom of your Spirit, that we might act justly toward all people in concord with your divine will; through your Christ Jesus, Your holy Son and our Lord of lords and King of kings, who reigns together with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

-DS

For All the Saints: The Faith Lives On

One of my favorite hymns of the church is generally only sung once a year—“For All the Saints,” set to the Ralph Vaughan Williams tune Sine Nomine. The hymn is epically dramatic with it’s grand intervals, vaulted Alleluia chorus, and extensive seven verses. It’s a hymn fit for a celebration! Today we mark that celebration in the solemn Feast of All Saints.


The hymn begins “For all the saints, who from their labors rest.” The Feast of All Saints is the time in the church year that Christians remember the triumphant faithful who’ve died in the past year—and in some places, even longer before than that. All Saints provides a chance to celebrate the rich history, deep roots, and intimate connectedness with the whole cloud of witnesses that surrounds the church—past, present, and even future.

The author of Hebrews writes:

And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, -Hebrews 11:32-12:1, NRSV

Ours is a faith rooted deeply in the past. In many ways, we are hugely indebted to those who’ve gone before us for persevering in the race set before them—the race that Paul speaks of when he tells his faithful disciple Timothy to “fight the good fight of the faith.”

Before us today have gone countless saints of the church who’ve witnessed by their lives of the Spirit’s wondrously mighty and mercifully gracious power in their lives. The fact they called themselves Christian alone is testament to the mighty deed of God’s conversion in their lives. “For,” as St. Paul writes to the church at Corinth, “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

We who, although we will die in this body, find hope and receive faith by God’s grace poured out to us in the sacrificed life of Christ on the cross so that we, strengthened by God’s promise of life abundant and eternal, might fulfill our Godly commission to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that Christ has commanded us. Only rooted in the promise of Christ, revealed and glorified in the cross, are we empowered by the Spirit to make that witness to “all nations.”

It’s in vogue in the church today to have a scorn for tradition.

It’s in vogue in the church today to be critical of too much reflection on our roots. There is even in some corners a scorn for the past, for tradition—as if it were a set of shackles keeping the church from moving forward into new, brighter, and more exciting “nations” where disciples hunger to hear the Word of God’s good news.

This criticism is at times fair—the church cannot remain beholden to the past. At the same time, a church that forgets its roots, forgets where it’s been, forgets the lives of the countless saints who’ve run the race set before them—that church does itself a huge injustice and robs itself of the richness and abundance Christ promises us when we were baptized into him and all the faithful—past, present, and future.

The one-time Lutheran, later Orthodox theologian Jaroslav Pelikan remarked concerning tradition—“Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” That is to say, the traditions of the church nourish us and give us examples to set before us for our lives. When we make tradition into the object of our faith, it becomes traditionalism and becomes an idol. We preserve tradition at the expense of the gospel.

But tradition, the devoted contributions and lives of the faithful who’ve gone before us since the time of Abraham and Sarah, Phoebe and James, Luther and Mother Teresa,

Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. -Jaroslav Pelikan, 1983 "Jefferson Lecturer"

and countless others through the ages—that kind of tradition speaks to the transforming power of the gospel in the lives of people like you and me. Tradition is one thing we can point to and say, “God does break into our lives and act.” Without the tradition of the past generations, our lives of faith would lack a kind of richness that we are truly blessed we have with it.

Today as we commemorate the great saints of the church we name and all those other great saints who go down without a jot or tittle in the annals of history, let’s keep in mind their great contributions to our faith lives. Let’s keep their faith alive as a testament to the living power of God’s word to transform lives. And let’s, as the striving faithful of this age, take heart in the words of the hymnist, who writes—“The golden evening brightens in the west; soon, soon to the faithful servants cometh rest; sweet is the calm of paradise the blest.”

Finally, let's find hope in these words that the race set before us ends in “paradise the blest”—a paradise marked by eternal communion with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and all those saints triumphant who rise in bright array as the King of glory passes on his way. The faith of our forefathers, the faith of our foremothers, our faith, and the faith of later generations is centered on this—on Christ the Lord of Lords, the King of kings by whose death we live. Thanks be to God for all those faithful who laid a foundation for our faith and by whose lives we see displayed the truth of Christ’s transformative life sacrificed for us.

-DS