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Rev. Mark Jamison

Article 5 of the Augsburg Confession

In the last newsletter we completed our discussion of Article IV of the Augsburg Confession on justification. Article V is concerned with how Christians obtain justifying faith. The Article is very clear on this. God has created the ministry of the Church as the means God uses to have the Holy Spirit give faith to those who hear the Gospel. The first part of the Article V leaves no doubt that God is in charge of giving faith at God's discretion. Otherwise, the Reformers would not have used the phrase "where and when it pleases God" (see Leif Grane's commentary of the Augsburg Confession from Augsburg/Fortress Books). The Holy Spirit creates faith when God wills it as a free gift for the sake of Christ's worthiness, not human goodness or religiosity. This work of the Holy Spirit comes through the Word and Sacraments. Gospel for the Reformers simply meant the doctrine of justification as explained in the preceding Article.

The second paragraph in Article V condemns the false teaching of such groups as the Anabaptists and other spiritual enthusiasts( Schwärmer), the kind of people among the Corinthian Christians who riled up St. Paul. In opposition to the Reformers, these spiritual enthusiasts insisted the Holy Spirit came to them apart from the external means of grace, Word and Sacraments. Instead they relied on their own spiritual exercises and "preparations." In other words, one could summon up the Holy Spirit by one's own spiritual efforts.

Article V also though was disagreeing with the Roman Catholic position on grace and faith. Its leaders did not see that "Word" in Article V had a special meaning. The Word, meaning the proclamation of the Gospel, for the reformers was itself a means of grace together with the sacraments. Proclamation then stops being just the giving out of information about God or the earnest pleadings of a preacher to his/her congregation to live the Christian life. Grace for the Reformers was having a gracious God instead of the Roman Catholic notion that grace was some supernatural "wonder drug" injected into the hearers of the Gospel. A gracious God gives himself to sinners in proclamation and the Sacraments and in faith. It is justifying faith because it is trust in Christ, not in one's own works or preparations whether they be of the Roman Catholic or the Anabaptist type.

Much more could be made of the historical context of Article V. But the same issues are present with us today in contemporary American religious life. Pentecostalism still teaches that the Spirit is given after a person does the right religious things whether that be praying for the right specific things or the more extraordinary gifts such as speaking in tongues. It separates faith from the Word. American Evangelicalism is not that far removed from the Pentecostals. A person can easily get the impression from reading the popular best seller, "The Prayer of Jabez" that God is only as good to you as you pray him to be. Where is the grace in that kind of thinking? When the inner subjective religious experiences and activities control or mediate the grace of God rather than Word and Sacraments, the incarnation is rejected. If Christ and his grace can't come in human things like preaching words, bread, wine, and water, then how can we believe that the Son of God became flesh in Jesus Christ? To teach that one's own piety and efforts brings on the Spirit is a form of self-salvation. If you are in control of the Holy Spirit then Christ's words to Nicodemus to John 3 can't be right, when Christ likens the Spirit to the wind.

Preaching in most of American Christianity is still not seen as God's means of giving grace and the Holy Spirit. Even the trendy narrative story preaching of recent times, where the whole sermon is one big story, demands that hearers make connections to religious truths and symbols. It is just more religious information being dispensed where the hearer has to do more of the work. At least with the old school expository or didactic preaching the hearers were told what to think about God and how to live.

Most sermons today in America are more about us and what we are to be and do than what God in Christ is promising and doing in our lives.

Article V then will always go against the grain of conventional religious wisdom. For it says that salvation, grace, faith, forgiveness, and the presence of the Triune God are in God's control. God is free to pick the means whereby he gives himself and his gifts to sinners. In freedom God has chosen external means of proclamation and Sacraments as the way to give us what he wants to give us. If God doesn't want to separate faith from the Holy Spirit and the Word, God has the right to decide that. The sinful self in all of us will balk at God's freedom and being in control of salvation. Those are the things Article V are really highlighting.

Discussion questions:

1. When you have inner doubts that God is present or working in you, what comfort is there in knowing the Triune God comes to you through Word and Sacraments?

2. Why are our own inner subjective experiences of God not always a reliable indication of how God feels towards us? What about the external circumstances of life, the events or things that happen to us we can't control?

3. Which is easier for us to handle and is more comfortable - God being in control of our salvation or us?

4. What words from the pulpit help you to trust God?

5. For most of your life has the preaching you've heard communicated God's gracious love in Christ for you? If not, what could have done that for you?

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