In the beginning, when all was formless and void, God created all things giving it substance and form, establishing order out of chaos. He did so through the Law. By the Law is meant the eternal, unchangeable Law of God, which is the revelation of His will, the standard of perfection, and the mold and fashion out of which all creatures were formed and conformed, so as they would be happy. God is holy, and His Law is holy. His Law is the image of Himself; it is the word of Life and Truth declaring that of which He is the perfect pattern. ‘Be ye holy,’ He says, ‘for I am holy.’ ‘Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’
And so it is, that in creation God gave of himself for the benefit of his creatures. He invested in the creation, in his creatures that which is the pattern of his nature: perfection, holiness, righteousness. For his Law, in this sense, is not alien to him, but is the word, the declaration, the picture of who he is, and it is thereby that declaration by which all creatures resemble Him. And when He created them, He provided that it should be to them what it ought to be. And as is becoming a good and kind Father, He created all His children perfect, holy, and righteous. He created them to be His children, not His enemies; beings in whom He might take pleasure; who might be near Him, not far off from Him; whom He might love and who might love him in return. He formed them upon the pattern of the Law; he molded them into symmetry by means of it. He created man ‘in His own image, and after His likeness;’ that is, upon the type of this Law. He put His Spirit within him, and set up the Law in his heart; so that, what He is in His infinite nature, such was man, such was Adam in a finite nature-perfect after his kind.
It was far otherwise with Adam after he had fallen. He then forfeited the presence of the Holy Spirit; he no longer fulfilled the Law; he lost his righteousness, and he knew he had lost it. He knew it before God told him; he condemned himself, he pronounced himself unrighteous before God formally rejected him and expelled him from his abode, the place of his gracious and loving presence, the Garden of Eden. And in this unrighteous state he has remained, viewed in himself, ever since, knowing the Law, but not doing it; admiring, not loving; assenting, not following, not utterly without the Law, yet not with it either; with the Law not entirely within and for him, but before him-not any longer in his heart, as the pillar of a cloud, which was a gracious token and a guide to the Israelites, but departing from him, and moving away, and taking up its place, as it were over against him, and confronting him as an enemy, accuser, and avenger. It was a cloud of thick darkness, instead of a pillar of light; and from it the Lord looked out upon him, and troubled him. For ‘the commandment, which was ordained to life, he found to be unto death.’ What had been a law of innocence, became a law of conscience; what was peace, became dread and misery; what was freedom, became bondage, became slavery.
But what of the law after our Lord Jesus Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection? What is the law to us now post-Fall, post Baptism? We live in the uncomfortable juxtaposition of loving, delighting, and doing; while at the same time despising, abhorring, and rebelling against the law of God. We live as simultaneously sinners and saints.
Here is the rub, however, we live as saints in no less authentic way than we do as sinners. That is to say, we are not saints abstractly. We are not saints in a fictitious, disembodied way. We are in fact saints in our flesh, in our members, because God’s word does what it says; it accomplishes the purpose for which it was spoken and does not return to him void and empty. And he is no liar. No, we are embodied sinner/saints. We are saints in the flesh even as we are sinners in the flesh. And this on account of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection, which redeems us from sin, death, and hell. And this redemption renews and reestablishes in Christ Jesus our status before God the Father; and therefore, it also redefines our status with his Law. And so God’s law defines and reveals who we are as those who are in Christ Jesus. It describes who we are, that is, our character by the grace of God given on account of Jesus Christ’s cross. It defines us as sinner, insofar as the Old Adam still clings to our flesh, and it defines us as saints insofar as we are in Christ. They are both very real, very earthy, and every bit of you. For if the one is ever in peril of not being you so also does the other; when one becomes disembodied so also the other. For they are realities not concepts, and these realities are lived.
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Pastor Braaten, thanks for letting us delight in the Law again! Just a quick question for clarification — would it say the same thing if you replaced Law throughout this article with Gospel? Thanks and see you next month!
Hi, Geoff–
I’m not sure that one could simply replace the words, but in some places the word “law” certainly entails what we mean by the word “gospel.” I suppose the test would be to copy and paste it into Word, run a Find/Replace to see if it holds.
The difficulty is that a forensic/legal understanding of the cross entails the understanding that God’s law, or Torah I suppose, is a standard. Before the Fall, we had within us that standard as a part of us. We were a perfect reflection of who God is and what he does in our very bodies. We were the image of God. This was marred and lost with the Fall, and the cross of our Lord redeems and restores this image. But we remain simultaneously the image and not the image as the Baptized.
The flow of the post was to point us to the fact that we often consider ourselves as those who have lost the image, that we are sinners and we embody this. Lutherans get this, though perhaps we are coming into a time when even this notion is beginning to be disembodied, but this is a post for another time.
Likewise, we oftentimes say that we are also saints, but when we speak of it, it seems to be detached from our bodies, from who we are in this life. So our understanding of the Gospel, i.e., what Christ has done for us on the cross, comes across as the legal fiction that Rome accuses us of. But, in point of fact, we embody this righteousness because the original intention of the law, God’s Torah, has been redeemed along with us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We reflect the image of God, which is the righteousness of the law, that was lost in the Fall as those baptized into Christ. So the law isn’t the enemy, nor is it bad or to be avoided. It is who we are in Jesus because of what he has accomplished for us on the cross, the gospel.
I hope this clarifies what I was trying to convey. And I relish your questions and challenges because it helps to flesh out our thinking on these things. What’s more, I eagerly anticipate your return to Fort Wayne so we might enjoy this conversation in person and over some Scotch and cigars, or white tea and biscuits.
Jason
Thanks Jason, I certainly didn’t want to question the need to fight our modern day gnosticism — a Gospel without flesh and blood is no Gospel at all! Thanks also for clarifying the intent of the post — I had other things in mind while reading it and simply wanted to see where this was coming from.
On a more theological note, can you mix Scotch and biscuits? Or does that lead to another civil war?
See you soon,
Geoff
That rub is something I never think about and you’ve made it real for me today.Thank you.
Geoff, I’m not sure if it will lead to another civil war, but I’m pretty sure I’d never want to mix the two. Of course, my good friend Jesse and I were making Italian Baci cookies once that called for a small amount of spiced rum. We didn’t have any, so we used the only thing I had at the time–Lagavulin. Now Lagavulin, you may remember, is probably one of the smokiest and peatiest, albeit smooth on the palate, of the Scotches known to man (it after all my favorite, or is it favourite?). The outcome was, let me say, interesting.
Gail, you’re welcome. I didn’t think about it until I was having a conversation with a friend. I was struck by the language that she used to describe our life in Christ. It wasn’t wrong, but it seemed completely abstracted from our earthly, skin, cartilage, and bone bodies. I just noticed that another LCMS pastor has posted about the same topic a little while ago. Here is that post: http://esgetology.com/2008/07/10/enabled-by-god-to-live/
Heh guys,
It’s been a while. Actually I came across this dialogue quite by chance and by another concern from a pastor friend of mine.
Now, you know I know you both very well; you know I know you know how to distinguish rightly between law and gospel. I was wondering, if you didn’t mind, clarifying just a little more even, the nature of how we live as saints and more precisely whether it is in the Gospel in which we live really as saints? Therefore whether or not it is by the law that we can at all live as saints or whether trying to live by the law can only draw us to the conclusion and remembrence that we are sinners?
Thank you.
Gordon
Gordon Naumanns last blog post..Sermon for 6 July 2008 (Pentecost
at Christlutheranchurch.org.uk.
By the way… you haven’t lived until you’ve had a good Glen Morangie Whiskey
Gordon Naumanns last blog post..Sermon for 6 July 2008 (Pentecost
at http://Christlutheranchurch.org.uk.
Gordon,
It’s good to hear from you. I’ve enjoyed Glen Morangie, but my taste is more suited toward Lagavulin. Glen Morangie is sweater, and I particularly enjoy the smokier, peatier whiskies.
On to your question: I fully realize that we live as Christians in the gospel because we live in Jesus Christ as his body. My question, though, is what does that mean? It definitely means that we live in freedom from the works of the law unto salvation and even the threats and punishment of the law (FC VI).
But here’s the difficulty: The gospel is that Jesus fulfilled the law for us for our salvation. Not only that but he let the threats and punishments of the law do to him what it should have done to us. Since we live as Christians, as saints, in Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment of the law, we are in reality doers of the law, not out of fear or to work for our salvation but because that is who we are in Jesus Christ. So in a sense, we are still defined by the law, but only as having fulfilled it because of our life in Jesus Christ.
The goal of my post was to draw attention to the fact that we are truly saints in this life in our bodies even as we are truly sinners in this life in our bodies. Neither of them are abstract concepts but earthly realities that are lived in time, bodily.
I hope that clarifies things for you, and sorry for the delay in my post.
Jason
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