Join Our Mailing List 

Matthew 7:15-27

 

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it." (ESV)

Give What's Yours 

Thursday in Pentecost 3 

7 July 2011

One can easily excoriate the papacy for its profligacy and moral laxity, especially of the Renaissance popes. Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503), kept his mistress and family in Rome during his notorious papacy. While collecting Peter's pence through the indulgence sellers in Germany, Pope Leo X (1513-1521) was bankrupting the papal treasury by keeping a pet elephant in the Vatican and hosting lavish dinners parties at the end of one of which the golden table settings were ostentatiously flung into the Tiber proving him "as rich as Croesus." But none of this immoral and wasteful living was what ignited the Lutheran Reformation. There had been efforts to reform the morals of the papacy long before Luther; at least as far back as Bernard of Clairveaux (1090-1153). The conciliar movement of the 14th and 15th centuries attempted to clean up the papacy's moral bankruptcy, but to very little effect. Luther simply would not be drawn into a squabble about papal immorality. Having a strong sense of the Fall, he was entirely unsurprised that humans were immoral. He knew he was just as depraved as any pope; indeed as any man born of woman.

The Lutheran Reformation was a reformation of doctrine not of morals. Oh, yes, reformation of life should and did follow the reformation of doctrine. But the Lutheran reformation succeeded where previous reformations failed because the Lutherans refused to indulge in moral "bootstrapping;" pulling themselves up by the bootstraps to lives of exemplary holiness and love, and all the while insisting that the rest of the wicked world do the same. Luther knew that life together could be a matter of infinite tugging and pulling, better and worse, more and less. Moral failings could be overlooked for mercy's sake, "love covers a multitude of sins" (1Pt 4:8). Love could permit and overlook offenses against it; giving itself away with wasteful profligacy for the neighbor's benefit. Love refuses to stand on the letter of the law. This love we can give away, because it is ours to give. We may not give up even a jot of the divine teaching (Mt 5:18), because it is God's. It is not ours to trifle with.

The Christian faith is a unity and may not be subdivided into favored and disapproved doctrines. Luther calls the Christian teaching the punctum mathematicum, "the mathematical point." This means that it is incapable of subdivision. Doctrine may not be subjected to more and less, better and worse, or tugging and pulling. That is love's business, our business. We have no right to take the chain saw of our wisdom to the inviolate whole of God's Word and chop out what we dislike. It would cause the death of the patient. God's teaching is not ours to control. God controls it (Jn 3:8). We only teach it. It is the teaching of the message of reconciliation between God and man through the crucifixion of God's Son on the cross of Calvary that makes all the difference. We do not want to be contentious about matters of love, but we will stand our ground to be faithful to what the Lord Jesus has taught us about our righteousness in God's sight being a gift of grace. You can give away what's yours. You must not give up what is God's.

 

Martin Luther

 

"Doctrine and life should be distinguished as sharply as possible. Doctrine is not our own, it belongs to God. We are called only as its ministers. Therefore we cannot give up or change even one tiny dot of it (Mt 5:18). Life belongs to us; therefore when it comes to this, there is nothing that the Sacramentarians can demand of us that we are not willing and obliged to undertake, condone, and bear, with the exception of doctrine and faith, about which we always say what Paul says: 'A little leaven leavens the whole lump' (Gal 5:9). In this matter we cannot yield even a hairbreadth. For doctrine is like a mathematical point. Therefore it cannot be divided; that is, it cannot stand either subtraction or addition. On the other hand, life is like a physical point. Therefore it can always be divided and can always concede something."   

 

Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, 5.9 

 

Prayer 

Lord Jesus, in Your love for me You gave Yourself up to death, even the death of the cross. Help me to see that I must suffer all for love's sake. Send me Your Spirit that I would never surrender Your life-giving truth. Keep me steadfast in Your Word. Amen.

For Edward Pennington, that the Lord would grant him healing and a recovery of strength following surgery

For immigrants, that they would find a new land and become productive citizens in a new community

For longsuffering laypeople who are seeking faithful churches, that they would be upheld by Christ, confess the truth faithfully, and live in love 

 

 

Art: D�RER, Albrecht  The Adoration of the Holy Trinity (1511)

Find me on Facebook                                                                                     � Scott R. Murray, 2011