Christ Cuucified for Us is Comfort

Written by Pastor Nuckols Monday, 29 March 2010 11:12

            Man is led by the theology of the cross to the realization that he is hopeless in all things apart from the crucified One.  The cross slays man.  The cross is his death and sin’s death leading him to confess his utter “dust-ness and death filled” person.  Man learns through the cross to say, “I am a sinner” and “I sin continually”, and never to stop saying these things until Christ’s return makes it no longer true.  The theology of the cross is the true and ultimate source of human optimism because it always presupposes the resurrection. These powerful attacks against the best of man’s works that put him to death would simply not be possible if the resurrection were not presupposed.  For without the resurrection such spiritual care would always be tempted to tone down the attack against man’s will in order to leave room for at least some optimism, some hope for the survival of the old self.  In the end, such care offered to the hearer is empty and without effect by telling sweet lies, calling the bad good and the good bad.  Without the resurrection, we, as Christians cannot speak the truth about the human condition, for there must be death in order for there to be resurrection, and without these two truths there is no hope for man.

            Man is slaughtered by the cross for it drives him either to despair or to presumption.  He either gives up, or he mistakenly “holds out” thinking that he isn’t really that far gone as was thought, and may be able to overcome his “sin” problem.  However, the cross is man’s intervention by exposing his absolute death, and his absolute hopelessness in his condition.  Before the cross there can only be repentance.  Even when man is able to quit, he may be dancing on the edge of the abyss of pride and its constant companion, despair.  Hope, true hope, springs from the righteousness that is not ours.  It flows from the gift received only by faith, by being called into relationship as an entirely passive receiver.  The holy God insists on being related unto as the sole giver of this gift of righteousness, which is completely outside of us as the sinful creature. 

            God works in man through man’s own death and resurrection, accomplished by being joined to the rejected and despised One who also rose again from His death.  Our lives are hidden in God, Luther says, and he explains that by saying that we live only in ‘naked confidence in the mercy of God’.  So to live is not gloomy or depressing, but rather ‘As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as dying, and behold we live’ (2 Cor. 6:9-10).  It is not possible, as Luther declares, for true hope to be present unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work.  Every hope built on human work will prove untrue.  The hope that arises out of the ashes of the refining fire will not disappoint.  The way, however, is the way of the cross. 

            God’s true comfort is rendered when the hearer is led to be bereft of himself, and to wait upon grace, recognizing that he can only throw himself on the mercy of God in Christ.  In other words, grace is only acquired when it is seen how completely caught in the web of sin are we, and turn to Christ as the only hope.  ‘God gives grace to the humble’ was a watchword of Augustine, and is the watchword of Lutheran theology.  Confession of man’s sinfulness is not a sign of despair but of hope for it sees its beloved balm of cure to be found in the one crucified and risen for him.  To believe means precisely to be claimed by the cross and its word, to cling to that and find one’s assurance there.  For the work of the cross is a divine deed that is timeless, tasted in the here and now by its proclamation through Word and Sacrament.  By faith we become a human being, a person of this world, a truly historical being, because there is nothing to do now but wait, hope, pray, and trust in the promise of Him who nevertheless conquers, the crucified and risen Jesus.  By faith we are simply in Christ waiting to see what will happen to and in us.  As Luther put it, “The cross alone is our theology”.  Therefore, spiritual care is given and received alone in the cross, where God reveals himself through the suffering of the One who saves us.  As with Job, then, it is only through suffering that sinners come to know and speak about such truth since God can be known and had only through suffering the divine deed of the cross.  The cross does not merely inform us of something, it attacks and afflicts us when God ‘does Himself’ to us.