Alan Hardy’s Blog

The 28 theses of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation (1518) are worth studying. I am including the following extract, comprising 4 of the more explicit theses which particularly struck me this evening:

THESIS 18. It is certain that man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ.

THESIS 24. [The law] is not of itself evil, nor is the law to be evaded; but without the theology of the cross man misuses the best in the worst manner.

THESIS 26. The law says, ‘do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.

THESIS 28. The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.

My initial exposure to this material was through one of New Creation’s Pastors’ Studies. Download this and check out the June study, titled The Theologies by Which Salvation Is Proclaimed.

“The kingdom of God is within you”, Jesus says in Luke 17:20. The comment was in response to a question on when the kingdom would come, but Christ quickly turns the discussion to more stinging issues.

He was talking to the Pharisees who thought that observance of the Law qualified them as God’s subjects. The kingdom to them was an outward thing, based on legal compliance, visible as an earthly empire. It was a doing thing.

Christ knew the weakness of men and this example of the Pharisees is there to cast the spotlight on all of us. The Pharisees displayed the characteristic flaw that they had been given something precious, then allowed its goodness to be eaten away as they tried to possess something with it that could only be reached by faith. The Law is not to be evaded, says Luther, “but without the theology of the cross man misuses the best in the worst manner”.

In this framework we become weary of grace and look outwardly for the kingdom, in works and culture, saying ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is’ (v21). We even allow our twisted theology to suggest that these works can stand in the place of Christ Himself, saying ‘there He is’ or ‘here He is’.

The nub of the matter is reached at verse 33: “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it”. Any kingdom requires a king. Whereas earthly kings might be admired from a distance, and their favour enjoyed while keeping a little control for ourselves, Christ is no such king. The king within you requires ownership of you.

People are creatures of culture. When a group’s actions make them distinctive from others we can refer to them as having a separate culture. Among Christians we could identify a number of religious cultures, and these can be seen in the way we go about things differently.

One of the weapons we have stumbled across as believers is how the Scriptures can be used to justify what we do, particularly in comparison to others. We enter a place where God becomes a tribal God, favouring us because of our doctrine, our way of doing things and how we’re not like ‘those people out there’.

Let me give you an example. We spent 15 years in a Christian movement (oh no, you’ll guess it) and found that this attitude was alive and well. There are a number of distinctive aspects of this movement which are described by its members with Biblical terminology. Terms like worship, headship, the presence of God, singing in the Spirit, baptism in the Spirit, speaking in tongues, prophecy, faith and, not to mention (cringe), teaching were all drawn from Scripture and applied either wrongly or with insufficient evidence that the practice so-labeled was in fact what the Bible is talking about.

The effect was that these elements of the culture were given divine sanction, and it was all too present in the thinking of people in the movement that those who did not have or do these things were a notch or two below the bar.

These people aren’t alone. We all need to examine ourselves for this attitude, which could be described as self-justification. Jesus told the Pharisees, “You are those who justify yourselves” (Luke 16:15). We should be looking to nothing other than the justification that Christ gives and to have our confidence among men stand on this alone. We all want to be authentic but let’s remember that the root of the word is author – our assurance is in the author of life.

Postscript: We had similar experiences in another movement which are detailed here: Moving On: The New Teaching on Family.

Man by the fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over nature. Both of these losses, however, can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences.
- Francis Bacon, 1620

This quote indicates two aspects of the fall of man as a fall from our innocence and from our dominion over nature. I would like to explore how the remedy for each points us to grace.

Our fall from innocence is repaired through faith in Christ and His righteousness becomes our own. This is the Gospel we are familiar with.

God’s standard of righteousness is expressed in the Law. Rather than just being a written code, according to Romans 7:14 “the Law is spiritual”. The Law is a small window view into God’s holiness, an account in our language of His moral qualities and conduct. It is intrinsic to God Himself. This makes it easier to understand why “the Law is our tutor to lead us to Christ” (Gal 3:24) and how Christ came to fulfill the Law (Matt 5:17). The giving of the Law was to lead us to something greater, to a living Word with power to save.

When the man and the woman ate from the fruit of the tree in the Garden it is arguable that they tried to seize control of this Word illegitimately. As God said, “the man has become like one of Us (Gen 3:22). This outcome was circumvented by a dreadful curse, angels and a flaming sword guarding the way to the tree of life and, later, the confusion of languages.

The written Law alone is thus impotent as a source of salvation and men seeking autonomy have a futile quest. Obtaining its fulfillment requires a settling of allegiance, the fundamental challenge to man.

In that men are made in the image of God it is not surprising that the ability to contemplate law is a part of our nature. It is the quality that made it possible for God to communicate his requirements to the people of the Old Covenant. It is also what the serpent appealed to in the Garden when He deceived the woman. When the man and the woman accepted the serpent’s advice they were set on a path in which they would be lured to consider all things given by God in a framework of independence from the giver.

As far as the Law is concerned, a key effect of the fall is that men reject who the Law points to, adopting it as a specification of works to be done for justification. Man seeks to be self-sufficient, detaching the law from Christ and rejecting God’s essential role in salvation.

When we consider the second aspect of the fall, relating to our dominion, we find that man deals with the laws of nature, the subject matter of the sciences, in the same way. Men dislocate these laws from God. C S Lewis highlighted how we are accustomed to speaking about the laws of nature as though they cause events to happen. However law possesses no determinism of its own, as all it can do is to describe what is happening. What we fail to see is that the cause of events is not law but the activity of God and that the laws of nature are describing the regularity of that activity.

In modern times, understanding the laws of nature is seen as essential to achieving control of our world. In the same way that man seeks to use divine law to take control of his salvation, he seeks to utilise the laws of nature to take control of his environment.

We could say that the laws of nature define how we can interact with nature, but this is not going far enough. Rather, if we are observing God at work, then any proper study or application of these laws must be treated as an act of service, as an act of partnership with proper reverence.

It is allegiance which is required by the Lawgiver and the same curse, angels, flaming sword and confusion of languages bar the way to independent man achieving dominion over nature. There is something built in to the reality of things that forbids us to truly flourish holding only law in our hands, something alive at its source that frustrates it.

Francis Schaeffer provides the quote at the top of this post to indicate a confidence in the seventeenth century that the arts and sciences would help us to recover our dominion over nature. If it was devoted men that held this conviction then perhaps God crowned their efforts, as he promised to the psalmist:

“It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.” Ps 18:32

It is a matter of grace, after all.