The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel by CFW Walther

1. The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel by CFW Walther ~ The Eighteenth ~ Evening Lecture

2. Review: • What doctrinal difference between Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli was uncovered at the Marburg colloquy? • Which teaching of the Lutheran Church is characterized as “papistic” by the Reformed denominations? • How much of absolution’s validity depends on the person pronouncing it?

3. 1. Walther is great when it comes to analogies! For a sinner not to be certain of his salvation is comparable to what situation? (pg )178 bottom. • “The condition of a prisoner who is awaiting execution for his misdeeds and is unable to verify a vague rumor of his pardon is dreadful.” • “He starts at every creaking of the door of his prison because he does not know whether the person coming to see him is bringing him his authentic and definite pardon or is to take him to the place of execution.”

4. 2. Given the fact that God has sacrificed his only Son for us, Walther says that it is impossible to conceive of Him doing what? (pg 179 middle.) • “It is impossible to imagine that, having done all this, He would during our whole life leave us in a dreadful state of ignorance whether He is still our enemy and whether our dying day will be our judgment Day.” • “Christ commanded His disciples: “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel,” that is, the joyous message of the finished redemption, “to every creature,” Mark 16, 15

5. 3. In view of this fact, Walther says, “our bliss beggars description!” Everywhere and anywhere, he says, all things cry to us… What? (pg 180 top of.) • “You are redeemed; your sins are forgiven; heaven is thrown open to you!” • “Oh, believe it, do believe it, and you have this bliss.” • But, alas! this unspeakable Joy is sadly vitiated to our highly favored race by false doctrine.

6. Thesis IX (cont.) • In the fifth place, the Word of God is not rightly divided when sinners who have been struck down and terrified by the Law are directed, not to the Word and the Sacraments, but to their own prayers and wrestlings with God in order that they may win their way into a state of grace; in other words, when they are told to keep on praying and struggling until they feel that God has received them into grace.

7. 4. The “priesthood of all believers” — the Bible teaching that every Christian has the authority to forgive sins — is foundational to Lutheran theology. Which episode in Jesus’ ministry does Walther reference as supporting this teaching? What is his logic in doing so? (pg 180 – 181) • The healing of the paralytic man • The people “glorified God, who had given such power to men.” • And Jesus was true man! • “If this had been a superstitious notion of the people, the Holy Spirit would surely have added a remark to this effect: The poor people imagined, contrary to fact, that such power had been given to men. Not a word of this.”

8. 5. In Walther’s time, Lutheran churches in Germany were still struggling with rationalism. But rationalistic preachers weren’t very popular with the people. Which kind of preachers were? (pg181 middle.) • “The churches of rationalists are empty, but every church whose pulpit is occupied by one who preaches with the manifestation of the Spirit and of power, is filled.” • “The people still have their Bibles, their catechisms, their old hymn-books; they cling to the old Bible-passages which they have learned.” • “…and when they get a live minister, who preaches the Gospel to them, they are overjoyed.”

9. 6. Walther comes back to the subject of preaching at the bottom of page 181. Not only must preachers proclaim the truth, he says, but they must also do what? • “We must also speak a language so simple that a peasant listening outside of the sanctuary can understand it and feel himself drawn into the church.” • “It would not be surprising if God were to hurl His lightning at every preacher who has filled his manuscript with high-flown terms, intending to shine by his oratory. Such language is not understood by the common people.”

10. 7. If people don’t deliver God’s message of forgiveness, it’s hard to imagine who would! According to Walther, if Christians desire the forgiveness of sins, what must we not do? (pg 182 middle.) • “We must not sit down in some nook with the prayer: My God, forgive me my sins, and then wait for an angel to come from heaven with the announcement.”

11. 8. When you go to your pastor — or any other Christian! — and desire to be comforted and absolved from your sins, and he says to you, “I, in God’s place, announce to you through Christ the forgiveness of all your sins,” what are you to believe? (pg 182 bottom.) • “When this happens, you are to be certain that by such external word your sins are truly and surely forgiven”

12. 9. List some of the people who are called by God to deliver consolation and forgiveness to you. (pg 183.) • “To this end God has called and commissioned your pastor, your father and mother, and your closest Christian fellow-men and has put His Word in their mouth, that you are to seek consolation and forgiveness of sin from them.” • “For although men are talking to you, still, what they say is not their own, but God’s Word. Therefore you are to believe it firmly and not to despise it. “

13. 10. The Anabaptists (and their Reformed descendants) reject the idea that a human being can pronounce the forgiveness of sins. What does such a pronouncement sound like to them? (pg 183 bottom.) • “they reject the Word when they hear it from their fellow-man and regard it as nothing better than the bleating of a calf.”

14. 11. Speaking of cows… the Reformed criticize Baptism and say that it is nothing more than water. Walther says that this is like looking at Baptism how? Where does the real power of Baptism come from? (pg 184 top.) • “look upon the Baptismal water with the eyes of a cow and imagine we teach that our help is to be derived from water.” • “Baptismal water is water like other water, but it is connected with this Word of God: ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.’”

15. 12. If you have insulted someone, what is the only way to discover whether that person has forgiven you? (pg 184 bottom.) • “The insulted party must tell you that he has forgiven you.” • “Will you wait until your heart has a feeling of relief, which makes you think that your former friend has forgiven you? If you adopt that plan, everybody will tell you that you are silly.” • “the important point is not how you feel, but how the party feels whom you insulted.”

16. 13. God does not come to us in a vision to tell us he has pardoned our sins. Where does God tell us that he has forgiven us? (pg 185 top.) • “Why, in His Word, in the Gospel, in Baptism, in the Lord’s Supper, at absolution.”

17. 14. This clearly applies to the Word and sacraments. Where else does God come to us with his Word of forgiveness? (pg 185 middle.) • “This applies also to absolution.” • “Here, too, the Word is of paramount importance. That is the reason why we are not to waste much precious time waiting for an angel to come from heaven with the announcement.”

18. 15. John Calvin was dissatisfied with Ulrich Zwingli’s interpretation of the Lord’s Supper, but what was the problem with his own interpretation? (pg 185 bottom.) • “His own interpretation was also wrong.” • “He said that a person desiring to receive the body and blood of Christ could not get it under the bread and wine, but must by his faith mount up to heaven, where the Holy Spirit would negotiate a way for feeding him with the body and blood of Christ.” • “These are mere vagaries.”

19. 16. Jesus said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.” What meaning have the Roman Catholics forced upon these words of Christ? (pg 186 middle.) • “That they [ordained priests] possess the power of which Christ speaks and whatsoever and in whatsoever manner they speak, must come to pass because they have said so.” • “They say, when the Pope utters one word conveying absolution, a person’s sins are gone, even if he is void of both contrition and faith.” • “From this claim it would follow that our salvation is based on human works, power, and authority.”

20. 17. What was God, in effect, doing when he raised Christ from the dead? What does that have to do with one Christian’s authority to pronounce absolution upon another? (pg 187 top) • “He…absolved Christ, and in Him all men, by raising Christ from the dead.” • “We mortals become justified in saying to a fellow-man: ‘Be of good cheer, all thy sins are forgiven.’”

21. 18. What is the removal of sins definitely not based upon? What is it based upon? (pg 187 middle.) • “the removal of sins is not based on a mysterious power of the pastor…” • “…but on the fact that Christ has taken away the sins of the world long ago and that everybody is to tell this fact to his fellow-men.” • “This is the duty, naturally, especially of preachers, not, however, because of a peculiar power inherent in them.”

22. 19. What did the revered Roman Catholic theologian, Robert Bellarmine, say about whether an individual can be assured of going to heaven? (pg 187 bottom.) • “In the present life men cannot attain to an assurance of faith regarding their righteousness, with the exception of a few whom God deems worthy.” • This robs Christians of all comfort; it tells them to their face: “You cannot be certain that you will be saved. You will have to wait until after your death, until you enter eternity, to find this out from your actual experience.” • “There is a terrible, diabolical cruelty in this teaching.”

23. 20. The “Ministry of the Keys” is the Christian’s authority to forgive sins of penitent sinners, and retain the sins of the impenitent. But what does Martin Luther say this power of the keys is not based upon? (pg 188 bottom) • “The keys, or the forgiveness of sins, are not based on our contrition or worthiness.” • Contrition is necessary, but God does not forgive sins on the basis of our contrition but rather on the basis of his mercy.

24. 21. In Walther’s view, which comes first — God’s pronouncing absolution in heaven, or our pronouncing absolution on earth? (pg 189 bottom.) • Neither — in Walther’s view they are simultaneous. • “Your work and Mine shall be one identical operation, not two operations.” • Do your work, and Mine shall already be accomplished. Bind and loose, and I shall have bound and loosed.

25. 22. Again Walther says that contrition is necessary — without contrition, the individual cannot receive the benefits of Christ’s atonement. But does the lack of contrition change the genuineness of God’s absolution? What is Walther’s analogy of a king and a castle? (pg 190 bottom.) • “A king gives you a castle; if you do not accept it, that does not make the king a liar nor his gift spurious.” • “You have cheated yourself; it is entirely your own fault; the king certainly gave you the castle.”

26. 23. The Roman Catholics teach that, if a priest uses the keys to pronounce absolution on a scoundrel (impenitent unbeliever), that person is not forgiven, and the reason is because the key is faulty. What is Walther’s response? (pg 192 top.) • “Our key is never faulty, because we only repeat what God has spoken. It is man that is at fault.” • “If he is impenitent, he is not benefited by the application of the releasing key, but he only increases his damnation twofold.”

27. 24. What did Luther say many people would be surprised by on the Day of Judgment? (pg 192 middle.) • “On the Last Day many will be surprised when God will recount to them all the Sundays on which He stood ready to absolve them, while they would not believe Him and thus made Him a liar.” • “They will see that they have often stood at the gate of heaven and refused to enter.”