Something from .... Luther's "The Bondage of the Will" (entry #5)

INTRODUCTORY NOTES:  During the life of Martin Luther, Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus, was urged by Roman Catholic Church leaders to challenge Luther’s teachings and to condemn him.  Although Erasmus would rather have kept the peace in the Church, Erasmus was finally goaded into attacking Luther.  Erasmus intended to defend the official Roman Catholic teaching that God’s grace was needed to do the works by which man could then merit additional grace.  Luther’s response to Erasmus is known as The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio).  Although Luther had published a myriad of writings in his career, he did not consider them worth preserving.  Luther regarded The Bondage of the Will as a rare exception to that rule.  In it, Luther writes at length that “free will” in spiritual matters is a lie, and that, if man actually has free will, then God loses such attributes as grace, omnipotence, and even his right to be God.

            The quotations from Luther in this blog post come from The Bondage of the Will translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, MI. © 1957.

            The following are thoughts concerning Luther’s arguments, urging us to LET GOD BE GOD.  Something from Luther’s The Bondage of the Will.

LET GOD BE GOD: Let God be the Savior.


            Is it helpful to tell people not to let themselves be bothered about how much we contribute to salvation?  I suppose that anytime someone tells us not to be bothered, we regard that as a good thing.  I like not being bothered by stuff.

            But I am not free to not be bothered by tax forms, driver safety, warning labels, or severe weather.  To ignore such things for the sake of “not being bothered” means risking my life.  If that is true in earthly matters, it is all the more true in spiritual matters.

            Erasmus had claimed that “it is irreligious, idle, and superfluous to want to know whether our will effects anything in matters pertaining to eternal salvation, or whether it is wholly passive under the work of grace” (Luther referenced this on page 76).  But how disastrous if we remain ignorant of what we must do and what God does in regard to our salvation!  If we do not know how much we have to do to receive eternal life, we will never have the confidence that we will have eternal life.  To risk going to hell based on my assumption that all is more foolish than running a red light because I assume other traffic will stop when they see me.   

            Something from Luther on our need to know how much God needs to do to be our Savior:

            “But when you tell Christian people to let this folly guide them in their labours, and charge them that in their pursuit of eternal salvation they should not concern themselves to know what is in their power and what is not—why, this is plainly the sin that is really unpardonable.  For as long as they do not know the limits of their ability, they will not know what they should do; and as long as they do not know what they should do, they cannot repent when they err; and impenitence is the unpardonable sin.  This is where your moderate, sceptical (sic) theology leads us!

            … “For if I am ignorant of the nature, extent and limits of what I can and must do with reference to God, I shall be equally ignorant and uncertain of the nature, extent and limits of what God can and will do in me—though God, in fact, works all in all (cf. 1 Cor. 12.6). … We need, therefore, to have in mind a clear-cut distinction between God's power and ours, and God's work and ours, if we would live a godly life.” (pages 77-78)

            But God has made it clear.  We are powerless.  We are dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1).  We are hostile to God (Romans 8:7).  We can do nothing to enter God’s kingdom or even to prepare ourselves for his salvation.  The work is purely God’s to make us alive in Christ, to save us, and to keep us in his kingdom.  Therefore, we repent of all efforts on our part (after all, who can be sure that they are good enough?) and rely completely on our Lord to be our Savior.  And since it is all in God’s hands, our confidence for salvation is firm.  We have God’s own word on it.