Today’s reading from Romans is the shibboleth of all who claim the Reformation. Martin Luther is said to have re-discovered the gospel through his careful reading of Scripture. In his preface to the NT, the final version of which he wrote in the last year of his life, Luther said: “The gospel…is nothing but the preaching about Christ…who by his death and resurrection has overcome for us the sin, death, and hell of all men who believe in him….See to it, therefore, that you do not make a Moses out of Christ, or a book of laws and doctrines out of the gospel, as has been done heretofore….For the gospel does not expressly demand works of our own by which we become righteous and are saved; indeed it condemns such works. Rather, the gospel demands faith in Christ: that he has overcome for us sin, death, and hell, and thus gives us righteousness, life, and salvation not through our works, but through his own works, death, and suffering, in order that we may avail ourselves of his death and victory as though we had done it ourselves” [LW 35.360].

For Luther the gospel is the foundation and essence of Christian freedom, a freedom rooted not in a particular doctrine about the relationship between faith and works, but a freedom that is a consequence of our faith in the effectiveness and power of Jesus’ victory over sin, death, and the devil.

“Justification by faith” for Luther means that we are saved by Christ alone, and that our faith and hope must be in him and only in him, and not in ourselves or in our works, or in any other God, philosophy, way of life or law that promises but ultimately can neither deliver our salvation, nor properly show forth God’s glory. As Peter declared in Jerusalem before the high priest, the rulers, the elders, and the scribes: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). When Luther added the word “alone” after the word “faith” in his translation of our passage from Romans, resulting in a text reads that “a person is justified by faith alone apart from works prescribed by the law,” Luther was widely criticised for his addition, but he claimed that adding the word “alone” simply gave more weight to what was Paul’s clear intention. For Luther, it must be faith alone, because our salvation is in Christ alone, precisely what Paul was declaring.

That we are saved by God’s grace apart from works of law, however, while revolutionary at the time of the Reformation, has become such a commonplace for us that we are in danger of forgetting that the gospel’s gift of freedom frees us precisely to receive, take seriously, and live into what God commands. Freedom from the law that is essentially our sharing in Christ’s life and righteousness, means that we are now set free to be little Christs to our neighbor, that is to say, to love and serve our neighbor as Christ taught us, so that, as those who have been redeemed in Christ, we may live according to the will and command of God. Freedom from the law means that, while we do not rely on the law for our salvation but rather on Christ alone, we may freely conform ourselves to what the law demands—it is, after all, God’s law--and thus demonstrate our faith in his marvelous work and gift of salvation.

We developed amnesia regarding those important post-Reformation controversies that were the results of various misunderstandings of Reformation teaching. For example, there were some Lutherans after Luther’s death who argued that good works actually are harmful for salvation, and that the law should not be preached at all among Christians. Against these distortions, the church affirmed the Bible’s and Luther’s teaching that good works always follow true faith, and that “all people, particularly those who have been reborn and renewed through the Holy Spirit, are obligated to do good works….not…as a complusion…but only as the required obedience, which they perform out of a spontaneous spirit” [FC, Epitome, IV.6, 8, 10]. Freedom from the law means that we are now obligated to perform good works, not by compulsion but because we are set free by the gospel for obedience to what God commands.

Let’s go back to Romans. Our reading ends at v. 28. However, permit me to read on, and let’s see how the section concludes. Following on immediately after v. 28, “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law,” Paul adds, “Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.”

We who claim the Reformation are in danger of turning our freedom from the law as something that can save us and our acceptance of the freedom given to us by the gospel of God’s unmerited grace so that we can live responsibly as God’s faithful people, into a flat rejection of the ongoing validity of God’s clear and specific commands for those who have been redeemed by Christ. That we are free in Christ does not mean that can disassociate ourselves from Jesus’ command that our righteousness exceed that of the scribes and pharisees. Luther would be horrified to see how many of us have come to interpret and apply his Reformation discovery, for there is a tendency among us to turn grace into license and gospel freedom into self-indulgence and self-justification.

What is to be done? That was Lenin’s question to those chafing under the oppressive injustices of industrialised society. His answer was violent and bloody revolution, and his legacy was destruction, terror and death. Luther never saw himself as a reformer. Only Christ qualifies as The Reformer, who alone has the power to renew everything by overturning all our efforts to go it alone and do it ourselves, the striving we all do to accomplish our own salvation in deep piety, devoutly and religiously without God. Christ and Christ alone, however, will initiate and carry out a revolution of sorts that will be far more sweeping than any revolution we could ever imagine or concoct; a revolution forged in a divine love so complete and so radical that it will create new and abunant life out of sheer nothingness and death. It is a revolution of the faithful God of Israel, who brings about nothing less in the resurrection of Israel’s crucified Messiah than a new heaven and a new earth.

Gospel freedom and a faithful adherence to God’s word and command are not mutually exclusive. It is precisely those whose faith is in the faithful God of Israel, the God who in Christ is our only justification and our true Redeemer—those who have faith in him are set free to uphold God’s law, who as the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed, will be so renewed by God’s work and gift of salvation, that the law will be written on their hearts so that the law will be so much a part of them that they no longer will have to think or worry about it, but joyfully will live into it as God’s justified, redeemed and renewed people, the true legacy of the Reformation.

-Amen-