Taken from the great Reformer’s sermon on John 3, WA 47:27:
“There are laws enough in the world, more than people can keep. The state, fathers and mothers, schoolmasters, and law enforcement persons all exist to rule according to laws. But the Lord Christ says, ‘I have not come to judge, to bite, to grumble, and to condemn people. The world is too much condemned. Therefore I will not rule people with laws. I have come that through my ministry and my death I may give help to all who are lost and may release and set free those who are overburdened with laws, with judgments, and with condemnation.‘”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiDq4Q62tz4&w=600]
Sign up for the Mockingbird Newsletter
COMMENTS
9 responses to “The World Is Too Much Condemned: Martin Luther on the Purpose of Ministry”
Leave a Reply
There is an oath administered to and taken by a large group of people. The Oath is:
"I will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do."
Any opinions out there about such an oath?
Interesting question. This is an oath taken by cadets at West Point and other places, right? It's a common part of honor codes.
I've never been to WP, but I'm guessing that the oath has good practical functions which make sense, what Luther would call the Law's "first use." The cadet is signing on to a certain code of conduct, so he can be properly disciplined or expelled if he violates it (e.g. if he cheats on a test, lies about who wrote his paper, etc.).
To the extent that the school has a reasonable interest in creating a reputation of academic integrity, the oath sounds like a practical part of that.
Taken out of the context of practical regulation of limited kinds of behavior at a school — taken instead as an abstract oath that the oath taker believes he is able to really measure up to, well that's a different story.
At once, it seems to me, you start having to resort to casuistry to believe you are really keeping the oath. To lie ends up becoming not what God sees — which is constant shading or distorting of truth, sometimes consciously, sometimes not — but carefully parsed language like "It all depends on what the meaning of Is is."
The truth is almost nobody can go ten minutes without lying.
And the clause about not Tolerating lawbreakers… well that was what Jesus was accused of doing all the time. Eating and drinking and just generally hanging out with notorious lawbreakers.
So the oath taken in its limited first use sense is good. If it becomes a badge of pride that the person really believes he can keep, however, it seems to me like it leads to a kind of cruel and merciless self-righteousness.
Unless you draw all kinds of non-Christian distinctions between "motive" and "action" (a distinction that Jesus destroys at the front end of the sermon on the mount), the only way to take this oath in good conscience involves off-ing yourself five seconds after you've committed to it, unless it allows in some way for a modicum of toleration. That's my rather bleak interpretation. Looks like a fine example of law to me.
What if the oath taker has a dream about stealing?
StampDawg has captured precisely what I think is Luther's intent in the quoted passage in his address of Fisherman's question. It is a very mature and, in the very best sense of the word, nuanced treatment of the issue. After all, Luther had absolutely no problem with the civil lawyers, it was the canon lawyers he detested because they attempted to use the law for purposes for which it is woefully unfit, as StampDawg has explained concerning this oath. But I am just an old lawyer, so there you go…
My comment above is just silly and flippant. John and MC Hammer's are the good stuff though. 🙂
An interesting read for lawyers, be they canon, civil, or lay practitioners can be found at:
http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/2010/09/title-iv-revisions-unmasked/
Fisherman, I scanned the article and although it is obviously well-done and well-intentioned work from a legal standpoint, I just don't think this approach, which is essentially a canon law effort to "control" things, from either a liberal or traditionalist point of view, gets the church anywhere from a gospel perspective. The law can do a fairly decent job, occasionally, of keeping us from killing each other, but it always does a lousy job of getting us to love each other. Love always requires one side being willing to die unjustly, and the concern of this article is an understandable effort to prevent that happening to good clergy. But love lets it happen, and then and only then comes the fruit that no canon law, or any law, can bear.
"The law can do a fairly decent job, occasionally, of keeping us from killing each other, but it always does a lousy job of getting us to love each other." Perfectly said, Michael Cooper. Just perfect. In a sentence, the whole problem with the law, the whole need for the Gospel, and the whole reason for Mockingbird's existence.
AMEN.
"The law can do a fairly decent job, occasionally, of keeping us from killing each other, but it always does a lousy job of getting us to love each other."
Worth framing.