Faith Makes One Worthy

Written by Pastor Nuckols Wednesday, 17 March 2010 13:52

“Faith makes one worthy.” This alone stands the test in the all-revealing, merciful-unmerciful light of death. And this light radiates back into our life. By means of this light the life of the Christian becomes radically different from that of the non-Christian.

The life of the Lutheran Christian does not distinguish itself from that of others. In its content, in the areas it embraces, it is not different; it is just as boundlessly rich and great as the life of all other people. The Christian neither detracts from nor adds to life’s outer confines. However, since his is a life of faith, everything in his innermost nature must become different. For the Christian must live his life fully aware that its every detail is open to the view of God and that his life is designed for eternal perfection and completeness. He recognizes God’s presence in everything and he knows that all guilt is judged and canceled by God’s mercy. His life becomes clear and meaningful solely in the light of its eternal destiny. Because he knows how destructive and unbridled our innermost nature is, he appreciates the miracle of the divine institutions, of state, church, and marriage, which God has established in an evil and devil-infested world. He serves them with a joy which divines perfection beyond them.

To him marriage is a token of the mercy which from the beginning took cognizance of man’s need: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18). In his vocation the Christian hears God’s summons, which exempts him from the manifold other tasks and demands surrounding him. He is not bound to do this or that to which inclination or a sense of duty may try to impel him. His duty is clearly prescribed in his calling, and thus he is excused by God from the thousand and one tasks which life may place at his door. With good conscience he may decline the challenge of urgent service if the latter conflicts with the duties of his vocation. He devotes himself wholeheartedly to service to God and state, assigned to him by God. This will never involve any moral conflicts; for he believes firmly that he is rendering the state his best service even when he finds it necessary, for the Gospel’s sake, to obey God rather than man, and even though that service may involve the role of martyrdom.

In all this the Lutheran Christian is liberated from slavish legalism and is emboldened to courageous action by the instinctive assurance of love. And finally he knows that by faith he has been delivered from the accusations of tasks unfulfilled, accusations which follow him from life into death. Confidently he commits these to Him who can balance the books of his life.

The fact will ever go unchallenged that faith must produce its masterpiece for the hour of death, when our whole life is compressed into one overpowering present, assails us, and turns us out into impenetrable darkness. Luther knew very well how hard it is to die confidently and how difficult fearless and honest premeditation on death is. “We have all been ordered to die, and no one will be able to die for another. But each one will be obliged to contend against death in his own person. We may be able to shout into one another’s ears, but each one will have to be fit for himself at the time of death. I shall not be with you, nor you with me. For this reason everyone will have to know well the chief articles that pertain to a Christian; he must be equipped.”

Luther always classed loneliness among the grave Anfechtungen that will confront us in the hour of death. Therefore Luther and Lutheranism ardently practiced the “shouting in the ears,” the supporting and helpful custom of praying with a dying person and leading him in prayer, quite in contrast to us. A false shyness has made us cruel toward those who are sorely assailed on their dying beds. In their gravest hour we desert them, or, what is often still worse, we deceive them with regard to the gravity of their condition. And at that we never know whether they do not see through our deception. Who of us has the courage to repeat the words of Karl Holl: “I should not like to be cheated out of death” (Ich möchte um den Tod nicht betrogen sein)?

 Therefore Luther, in his Sterbebüchlein, left no stone unturned in his effort to show that man is not deserted in his dying hour. “No Christian should doubt at his end that he is not alone when dying, but he should be confident that very many eyes are looking at him.” The eyes of God and of Christ, the eyes of the angels, the eyes of the deceased and the living Christians. Now, in this moment, everything that the church of all times and all places, or, as Luther liked to put it, the communion of saints, has of love, intercession, and supporting power is present for him, the lonely individual. “A Christian should envisage this and should have no doubt regarding it. This emboldens him to die.”

The fact that the entire burden of our life again threatens to bear down upon us in the hour of death gives loneliness its sting. The dissonance of our life, our imperfections, our unworthiness, the question of election, which has tortured so many — all this again looms huge before us. For this reason it is too late to try to come to terms with death at life’s end. “We should think about death while we are alive, and we should summon him while he is still far away and is not pressing us. But when we are dying, when he is present of himself and with power all too great, this is dangerous and to no avail. Then one must want to erase his picture and not be willing to see it.”

It is the real art of faith, difficult to acquire, and its indescribable privilege to brush lightly aside all the oppressing questions which sharpen the sting of death and to place all our worries into the hands of God alone. All worrisome questions find their answer in Luther’s wonderfully comforting words: “You must let God be God; He knows more about you than you yourself.” 

But all of this would have been feeble words for Luther if every word of faith and about faith were not a reference to, and a testimony of, Him who conquered death, sin, and the devil for us. In Christ alone this faith, which must stand the test of the severest trials, finds its goal and its strength. “It is a high art and a lesson which no saint has been able to master or fathom unless he has been in despair, in the anguish of death, or in extreme danger. For there one sees that faith overcomes sin, death, devil, and hell. These are no ordinary enemies; they make you sweat, crush your bones, and make heaven and earth too confining for you. At such a time there is no one who could help you but this Person alone, who says: It must be I who dare not lose you. This is the Father’s will.” 

The onslaught of these powers that make one sweat and that crush bones has been borne to the utmost by Christ. In contrast to the Catholic Church, Luther described again and again how Christ was not only smitten and tortured physically but that His soul, too, tasted to the dregs all the anguish and loneliness of man. His bloody sweat was a symptom of a real and natural dread of death, a dread which Luther courageously admitted again and again. It was a terrible reality that God had forsaken Him. Nothing of the depths of man’s fear and despair of election was spared Him, nor did He suffer this only partially or apparently. Only in this way did He overcome death on the cross, not by protesting and fighting against it but by silent submission and by calmly surveying the images of death, sin, and hell, the sources of sorrow and anguish for Him and for us. “He paid heed to the cherished wish of His Father so completely that He forgot His death, His sin, His hell that were unleashed against Him and prayed for them, for their death, sin, and hell.”

God has taken Him, the Victor, unto Himself and has promised Him to us for our constant companionship, so that even the loneliest person is never alone in death but has Christ at his side. Long before we could extend our hand to Him, He reached forth, rescued us from the gulf which separated us from God and which Luther called eternal death, and gained for us a home with God.