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from the district pastor ...

Rev. Mark Jamison

The second section of "Our Declaration" is entitled The Cross: Where we Begin. For Lutherans there is no Gospel apart from the cross. We would not know God's self-giving, self-emptying love in Christ without the cross. That is why Luther insisted that the cross alone is our theology. By defining the Gospel this way, a couple of things are made clear. 

First, the Gospel is God's doing and a gift to sinners. If it took the sinless Son of God to take the sins of the world on himself, that shows God's remedy for sin and death was pretty severe. God in the flesh had to take on the problem himself and overcome it. God did not ask the human race for assistance on good Friday in overcoming sin, death, and the devil. The human race had neither the power nor the willingness to overcome these powers that oppose God and wreak havoc in our lives. That is why the New Testament uses imagery from the slavery market of the Roman Empire in describing Christ's saving work - words like redemption and ransom. 

The cross as God's doing means it is inappropriate to ever use demand language in talking about the Gospel. But that is exactly what passes for Gospel talk in many quarters of the church. I have specifically heard pastors use the "ethical demands of the Gospel" language. There is also a great tendency to distort the Gospel into some kind of therapy or pop psychology. "Love yourself more" or "Have stronger self esteem" are often confused with Gospel proclamation of the cross. Much talk of political liberation is often confused with the word of the cross as well. 

Since the Gospel is proclamation of the word of the cross as God's doing and gift, it comes to sinners in the form of unconditional promise. Examples of this Gospel speaking would be "Christ's death has made you a child of God. Your sins for Jesus sake are forgiven." Or "Jesus died for your sins. I declare to you then you have been put right with God. You are God's precious loved ones." Our Gospel speaking should reflect the reality of the cross as God's doing and gift. If the language is conditional, then Christ's work on the cross is not finished and sufficient for salvation. Conditional language implies something other than the cross as God's doing and gift. The language of unconditional promise also drives one to trust in someone outside the self. True faith is not trusting in our religious qualities, but in the trustworthiness and character of God. When my father promised to fly my family and me to the 1982 ALC convention, my trust was in his generosity and character. It wasn't in how good a son I had been up to that point. 

Gospel speaking then is Christ the living Word of God coming through human lips. That speaking can be of a public, corporate manner in preaching and worship or it can be in private where two or three are gathered in Christ's name. It is normed or determined and governed by the scriptural witness. Christians then are not free to say just anything about God, life, and the world and call it Gospel. The Gospel's content is defined by its scriptural formulations. It is tempting to disbelieve that this word of the cross on human lips is good for much of anything. How can anything so ordinary and humdrum as preaching be a useful tool for God? But as the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. God uses the Gospel to bring people to faith through the power of the Holy Spirit, and sets captives free from the power of sin. God has invested the Gospel with creative power. That is why St. Paul did not flinch that the word of the cross was an offense to human reason and experience. He knew that if God's gospel created offense, the solution wouldn't be to water down the proclamation or try to get rid of the offense of the cross. For St. Paul and Luther, if God causes the offense, God himself will overcome it by creating faith.

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