Diet of Worms (?): Luther, “Here
I stand!” - Would you stand with him?
Likely Luther would not stand with you!
Double predestination
Infant baptism
Confessional Xian government
State reforming the church
Consubstantiation
Do you think of yourself as an heir of Luther?
The supreme authority of Scripture
J b f a
But his distinctives were fellowship breaking for Luther - not EA
basis etc.
He would exclude us; he could not be a member in many of our
churches
Trueman - desert island with Calvin or Luther?! Would you have 2
camp fires?
Antisemitism in later writings
His character
LUTHER's THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS
Theologians of the cross - us as people - how we live and think -
how we know God through the cross of J - our own crosses
A theology of revelation and our whole experience of life
God hides himself in unexpected places
God reveals himself in thoroughly ungodlike ways
Dt 32 - I kill and I make alive. I will make my arrows drunk with
blood
1 Sam 2:6-7
Is 28:21
God's strange and alien work
JX - unattractive - no form or majesty or beauty
A theology of opposites - God reveals himself under the opposites
Life is found in death
Mercy is found in the expression of God's wrath
Looking for heaven? Go look at hell
The cross - opposites - the worst death, awful wrath, hell itself
True theology and God are to be found in the cross of Christ
1 Cor 1 - wisdom in foolishness
Jesus only here, God only here
Sermon on meditation on Christ's sufferings - pass beyond the
sufferings to his friendly heart which so loved you that it bears your pain etc
God's eternal and kind heart is found in the awful cross of death,
wrath and hell
Suffering
Our Christian life like Jesus'
The real and true work of Christ's passion is to make man
conformable to Christ
X's suffering overflows into our life
Calvin: if we are joined with X, we must share his suffering
We must live Chistomorphic lives, cross shaped life
When we suffer, God is not being unfatherly to us - God is being
most father-like to us
Luther often in fear of death, but everyone faces this suffering -
Anfechtung - temptation, devil; trial, God's work in it to test you;
affliction, tribulation
Temptations, trials, afflictions, inward sadness, timidity, fear,
poverty, contempt, weakness
Spiritual depression, all black and horrible wherever you turn
your eyes
1510s, Luther's torment by sin, agony of conscience, conviction of
sin crucial, as much as we accuse ourselves, God pardons us
Opposition, persecution
Hiding in Wartburg castle - isolation, attacked by devil
Wittenberg - Reformation too fast / radical - battles in church
life
Years of great ministry disappointment, struggles, Luther thought
he was failing
1529 - we are preaching but it seems fruitless
I am sorry I ever freed you from the tyrants and papists you
ungrateful beasts. You are not worthy of the Gospel. If you do not improve I
will stop preaching
I would rather preach to mad dogs!
For most of 1530, Luther stopped preaching
Xian life is largely a matter of death, spiritual daily death
Luther almost dismissive of physical death
Sermon at the elector of Saxony's funeral - his real death was
when he stood up at the diet of Augsburg and owned the gospel
Literal death is animal, childlike
cf. the fear of death - opposition, sin, humiliation
You must be humiliated. The one thing you can never be is proud esp.
in your ministry
Do not think you have made it or flatter yourself that you have
made it and your little books please you. Take yourself by the ears if you love
praise.
You will find donkey ears. Decorate them! People will then see and
hear you, O great preacher and writer of such marvellous books.
Let us be proud and seek honour where we can, but God opposes the
proud and gives grace to the humble.
What Luther feared most was the lack of temptation. That would be
total temptation and pride.
Commentary on Patriarchs, Joseph and Jacob.
What was it like for Joseph to be snatched from his family, thrown
into prison and expecting death? You must see in this the good will of God,
though it seems the opposite. God hides himself under the form of the worst
devil.
God cannot be God unless he first becomes a devil. All that God
speaks and does the devil has to speak and do first.
God uses the devil all the time. The devil is God's constant
instrument.
The devil is always and only the instrument of God, always under
his control, never let off his leash, utterly subordinate under the totally
sovereign God.
God is always working his good purposes.
Luther's contemporaries seem to have believed in leprechauns /
pixie like things! A highly spiritualised world.
cf. Manicheism - the devil a power at war with God - might he even
win?
Luther says endure, wait for the Lord, hold fast, trust his word,
courage, be undismayed
If you cannot do this, hold fast! Just cling on if you cannot do
it triumphantly.
Jacob and his fight with God - weak and battered - faith struggling
- they were not senseless rocks and logs, not always firm and strong in faith
We suffer from infirmities like the Patriarchs did
See God in your sufferings - he is the God of the cross - he uses
the worst work of Satan
God is in your circumstances - the signs of his wrath are signs of
his love and good will
God is accustomed to wrestle with us in the form of a destroyer
but he reaches us up from hell and kisses and embraces us as his beloved sins
Ah, how I would like God to love others not me, said one peasant,
if God loves like this!
But we can look back on God's good work in us.
Luther said the Papists had done God's work in him and made him a
fair theologian through anfechtung
Embrace Luther's wide view of suffering / temptation / trial /
anfechtung
The battle is raging here. We are in danger and must be on our
guard.
The suffering of a troubled conscience, battle with the flesh.
Crucify the sinful nature. All affliction. All fear of death. Death itself.
Have a big category of affliction!
What are you teaching yourself and your people about suffering?
Are you merely a bible teacher or do you teach for the sake of godly
Christian living in the face of suffering?
Bible teaching is not an end in itself but a means to living the
Xian life to the glory of God.
You are not just a Bible teacher you are a life-coach!
The Bible is oriented to experience, to the cross shaped life.
Are we preparing people for Monday? For the next stage of life?
For the temptations of mid-life, retirement, old age?
Prepare them for anfechtung! Prepare them for suffering and death
broadly conceived.
Take up your cross and follow J. Crucifixion is the shape of the
Xian life.
Prepare the people for daily and ultimate death.
Xian life and Xian gatherings are a sober business. We are not
light & fluffy / glossy magazine / not prosperity gospel.
Preach a message for the storms of life. A theology for the
wilderness which is the true character of all Christian life.
If the Xian message is unattractive, so is Jesus.
Do we have the beautiful people on our website?
Come and learn how to suffer and die daily!
Only this message is real about life and faithful to the crucified
Christ.
Only the cross of Jesus can suffer.
Luther would have you apply to Satan's seminary of suffering. It
is the school of God at work. Submit to daily suffering, crucifixion, death.
God will teach you to die that you might live.
Preach Job and more Job!
This is the shape of the whole Bible.
Abraham - not receiving the land he looks for, near sacrifice of
sin
Isaac
Jacob's labours for a wife
Joseph rotting in jail
Moses years in wilderness, people grumbling, dying outside land
David - Saul, Absalom
Stephen stoned to death
Paul whipped, shipwrecked
Jesus
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