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from the district pastor ...

Rev. Mark Jamison

The next section of "Our Declaration" is entitled The Word of the Cross: God's Answer. This section affirms the classical "solas" of Lutheran tradition. The word of the cross is that the cause of our salvation is in Christ dying and rising for our sins and not in ourselves. We do not trust in our acceptance of the Christian message (the heresy of fideism) nor in how devoted or committed we are to doing God's will. It is the word of God's saving love in Christ that puts to death our sinful state of unbelief and brings forth trust in something outside of ourselves, namely God's goodness to us. True faith looks to God's action on the cross rather than how religious one is feeling towards God at the moment. Faith is not focused on the self but on God.

You can see an illustration of this in the life of infants. As far as we know, infants, for example, are not preoccupied with how well they are responding to the person they are crying to when they cry for food--or to have their diaper changed--or to simply be held.  Their focus is on just the opposite. Parents who will respond to his or her cry have created faith in the infant by their previous responses. Little children don't acquire faith in their parents in a vacuum. They get it from the trustworthiness of loving parents who give of themselves to their children.

The word of the cross that creates this faith through the power of the Holy Spirit is a word that comes from outside the self. It is a word spoken to the self by God that comes on the lips of preachers and witnesses, the sacraments, and confession and absolution. These means of grace have to be external to the self because coming to faith is resurrection from the death of unbelief. To go from nothing to something takes an act of God in both the created and spiritual realms. Infants don't choose or will themselves into being. Since God uses human and natural means (the elements in the sacraments) to get through to us it doesn't violate theo-logic for God to do in faith what he does in creating life from the earth that sustains us.

The word of the cross comes to us always as both law and Gospel. When the preacher declares that "for Jesus’ sake your sins are forgiven," the "your sins" phrase reminds us why it is that Christ had to die. And "are forgiven" gives assurance that Christ's death is sufficient for our salvation. Since this word of the cross will be spoken to us all of our lives, it is clear we do not become sinless in this life. Going to our graves as the wages of sin also clears away any illusions we might have that we are not totally dependent on the mercy of God.

The Gospel and God's grace can never be apart from the event of the cross. When they are severed you get bad theology if not outright heresy (perhaps "The Prayer of Jabez") or some popularized form of psychology like the book "I'm OK. You're OK" or something added to faith as being necessary to get God's grace, which is what CCM has given us. Whatever form God's graciousness takes in our lives, for Christians it is always for the sake of Christ crucified.

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