It's great to see you here again this evening. And I've really enjoyed my time here. Met a lot of wonderful people. Met some new folks, renewed old friendships. And it's great to see Bud Powell, whom I've known probably since 1980 or so. And I've known a number of his, at least a couple of his kids. It's great to see him. Bud remembers me. Of course, I remember him when he was a lot younger, but Bud remembers me. Probably the first time Bud saw me, I was much skinnier, much hairier, just out of teenage young man, probably 19 or 20 years old. Bud's hairier and I'm less hairier than I was then. Well, tonight I want to talk with you and think with you about the topic. Who's afraid of Martin Luther? And the answer is a lot of folks, beginning with the Pope, who in, who on the 28 June 1519 issued a papal bull, which doesn't mean what you might think it means from a hard-nosed Protestant point of view. A bull is simply a bulla. It's a sealed document, so he issued a declaration about Martin Luther, and in so doing, these papal bulls always take their titles from the first two or three words, and the name of this bull was Exerge Domine, which is in the imperative voice. It means, Rise up, O Lord, and he goes on to lament that there is a wild boar in the vineyard of the Lord. And that wild boar was, of course, that that Saxon monk Martin Luther. And he was he was alluding to the language of Psalm 80. And let me read just a few of those verses to give you a sense of the context. Restore us, O God of hosts. Let your face shine that we may be saved. You brought a vineyard or vine, excuse me, out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out branches to the sea and its shoots to the river. Why then have you broken down its walls so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it. And the picture here, of course, is of the Western Church, the Roman Church, and the boar that is in the vineyard of the Lord, as I say, was Martin Luther. But it's not just 16th century popes. who are afraid of Martin Luther. There are at least three groups of people who are afraid of Martin Luther. And the first group are those whom I mentioned last night. And I won't dwell on that because I did touch on this last night. But the first group are the folks I call the aggressive ecumenists. Martin Luther was a wild boar in the vineyard of the Lord, disrupting the church as it seemed to the Roman communion and and to the pope and the bishops and many others. But he seems that way and he is still a wild boar in the vineyard of the Lord for the ecumenist because if they will achieve their design of eliminating the boundaries not only within Protestant churches and here I'm not now talking about a proper sort of ecumenism between say confessional reform churches whereby we have a proper relations having confessed substantially the same faith and having at least similar practice and similar piety. It's right that we should have good strong ecumenical relations and we should be working together with one another and seeking to build connections and seeking to find ways in which we can work together. Perhaps if the Lord permits even to join with one another in organization or organic unity. But here when I talk about ecumenism I'm talking about that drive. to obliterate distinctions really of any sort within the visible church. And again, I'm reflecting in the first instance then about the main line, the aggressive ecumenists in the main line, who particularly these are the seven sisters, the great liberal mainline denominations, who see the Reformation as a great obstacle and as a great scandal. and the source of that scandal is, of course, and that the root of that scandal is Martin Luther. So, there's been a great deal of scholarship, as I mentioned last night, to try to make that go away. And there is a book, for example, that was published in the late 80s, in the title of which, Do the Reformation Anathemas Still Apply? And you know, of course, that during the Reformation, there were anathemas issued, the ones that I think of particularly, and that most Protestants, of which most Protestants think are those anathemas issued by the Council of Trent, which met over a long period of time, finally finishing in the early 1560s and repeatedly throughout the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent. The Protestants and the Protestant churches in the Protestant confession was repeatedly or were repeatedly condemned with the language coming from Galatians let him be eternally condemned, which is what an anathema means. And so the question is raised by the mainline liberal ecumenist. Do those anathemas still apply? And the answer that's given is no. They were all grounded on a tragic, as I suggested last night, a tragic misunderstanding. Not that I agree with that view, but that's the view being propounded. in the main line. And so if we just realize that we could get over that. And in order to get over that, we've got to do something with Martin Luther. Mainly, we have to ignore him or we have to treat him like the crazy uncle who comes to visit, stays too long. And then we regard him as a relic, as an oddball, but nothing to get in the way of family plans. In the borderline churches that one sees when I say borderline, I mean those churches that are between the main line and what I call the sideline churches. One sees a similar kind of ecumenism, though perhaps not as not as pointed, but there's there is also particularly in the reformed and Presbyterian borderline churches, a certain reluctance to embrace the spirit of Martin Luther, especially as it as it regards certain aspects of the Reformation, chiefly the Reformation doctrine of Scripture, whether it is the reliability, truthfulness, inerrancy, inspiration of Scripture, or whether it is the finality of Scripture and the canonicity of Scripture. In the borderline churches, there is discomfort with Brother Martin on those issues. For Martin, The Bible is the word of God. The Bible is the beginning of the word of God. It is the end of the word of God. It is the inspired word of God. It's the inerrant word of God. And it's the only word of God. And someone comes to you and says, I've got a word from the Lord. You reply by opening up your Bible and you say, well, so do I. What does your God have to say? I know what I know what God says, what what spirit What spirit inspired you. Where did your rebel from where did your revelation come. But even even within the side the so-called sideline denominations. And when I speak of the sideline I'm speaking of the NAPARC denominations than those denominations connected with the National Association of National North American. I always get I start with national and I go along the North American Presbyterian and Reform Council. There is discomfort in the Ney Park churches also not necessarily that they are exactly aggressive ecumenism, the same way as in the in the main line, but there's discomfort in the in the Ney Park churches with with Brother Martin, and those are the things that I want to get to under the next few headings. The first group of people, particularly in the sideline, who are concerned or troubled by or offended It's probably the best way to put it, offended by Martin, are those whom I call the pious moralists. And what's a moralist? A moralist is somebody who wants you to be good. Now, we all want you to be good. The question is, why should you be good and for what purpose? For the glory of God and out of gratitude for his grace? Or in order to earn his approval? That's the question of the Reformation. Prior to the Reformation, the Church said you need to be good in order to win acceptance with God. God has done his part. He has infused you with grace. He's wiped away your sins. He gives you grace continually on a regular basis if you attend to it in the sacramental ministry of the Church, and each time you're You're being infused with grace, and now it's up to you to do your part. And if you do your part sufficiently and if you if you pay for your sins. Sufficiently, God will perhaps, perhaps all things going well. Finally, someday, many, many hundreds of thousands of years from now approve of you. That that was a moralist scheme. We have moralists in our own Vineyard in our own a park vineyard. We have moralists with whom we could call small and moralists who when they see. A lack of sanctification in their congregations. Turn not to the gospel which according to the Reformation is the power for sanctification but because they don't understand the distinction between the law and the gospel. They turn not to the sweet message of Christ's obedience and death. Resurrection for us. These were the words that Martin Luther counseled that we should all learn to say. For me. For us. And he said, learn to say that to yourself, say it over and over again, Christ for me. Christ came into the world to do something for me. That's the good news. Christ came into the world to do something for us, for all of his people. Because the great preposition of the medieval church was not for, but in. The great preposition of the medieval church was not for, wasn't something that Jesus did outside of us. that gets reckoned to us. It's something that Jesus is doing right now within us. And the good news is, according to the medieval church and the Roman church and the pious moralists, that if you do your part to cooperate with what Christ is doing within you, you may eventually be able to stand before God. And so having abandoned The gospel as the source and the power of sanctification. Like putting on, as Dr. Horton sometimes says, putting a sailboat out on the water. And then yelling at it and saying, go. And it doesn't go. Because the law has no power, you can yell at the sailboat till you're blue in the face, but if there's no wind to move the boat, it ain't going to move. What makes the boat move? It's the wind. And you can't make the wind do what it says, do what it does. God sends the wind. The power comes from God and the gospel is like the wind in the sail of that boat. The gospel is the power of sanctification. Trying doesn't sanctify you. Not to say you shouldn't struggle with sin, you absolutely should. But you do so, according to the Reformation, in the power and in the grace of the gospel. The gospel is the power of sanctification. The law is simply the rails. The gospel is the steam or the power in the engine. The law is simply the rails on which the train rolls. The law doesn't move the train. The rails have no power for the train. Not now thinking about an electric train or a magnetic train. I know some of you, there's probably an engineer here thinking, yes, there is. There's power in the rails. You know what I'm talking about. A good old fashioned train. A real train, not a trick train. The law is like those rails. You can't have a train without the rails. Train goes off the rails, it doesn't work. But the rails don't give power to the train. But there are a lot of folks in our circles who think that the thing to do is to beat people with the rails. The way to get people to behave themselves is to preach the law and tell them what they need to do. Now there's a place for preaching of the law. In fact, there are two places for preaching of the law. There's the first place and the third place properly for the preaching of the law. In the first place, we preach the law to Find out the greatness of our sin and misery, because without the law, you don't know the greatness of your sin and misery. The law says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your faculties, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Do that perfectly. Or die. The day you eat thereof, you shall surely die. That's the law. Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything which is written in the book of the law. That's the law. Do this and live, Jesus said. You want to be right with God? Do this and live. You think you're clever. I've done this from my youth. Great, Jesus says. Go sell all you have and give it to the poor. Oh, what do you mean you can't do that? Really? You've done this all from your youth. You've got it all wrapped up. You've got it all figured out. You liar. You haven't done anything. If you've broken one command, you've broken them all. If there is a single fraction of a second of your existence in which you have not loved God with all your faculties and your neighbor as yourself, you've broken the whole law and you are under condemnation and God hates you. God doesn't know anything about a distinction between sin and sinner. He doesn't condemn sinners without or sin without condemning sinners. He doesn't send sins to hell. He sends sinners to hell. That's the first use of the law. That's the mirror function of the law, you look in the mirror and see what you really are. It's what happens in the morning, you get up, you wash your face, you wash the sleep out of your eyes and your eyes begin to focus. And you see for a moment what you really are. Tragically. In some cases, very tragically. and you quickly look away, try to find something else to stare at. That's what the law does. It teaches us what we really are. The law has another very salutary function, and that is for those who recognize what they are, to whom God has given grace to see the greatness of their sin and misery and the jeopardy in which they exist apart from Christ. To those whom he's given the grace of faith, whom he's drawn by his by the sovereign working of his Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Holy Gospel and by by the spirit working through the gospel created faith and through that united them to Christ to those he speaks the law again. He says, now, having been united to Christ, here's how you ought to live out of thankfulness in the power of the Holy Spirit in the grace of the gospel, the unmerited favor of God in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The Apostle Paul says you were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies. That's the guilt, grace and gratitude structure. of the Christian life and it's exactly that simple. So there's a place for the law in the first instance, there's a place for the law in the second instance, and in common life, in the life that we all share as human beings, there's a place for the law in the second instance, the civil use of the law. And I don't frankly care how you number them, but in those three uses, there are different ways of numbering the law and it's a cavil to argue about it. So there is a place for the law, but we have moralists in our circles who think that God creates sanctity, not through the gospel, but through the law. And so every Sunday people go and all they hear is you're not good enough. And it's true, you're not good enough. And all they hear is do this, and it's true, they ought to do this. And all they hear is you haven't done that. And do that and do that and do that. And sometimes it comes in a hard nose, right wing take back America for Christ setting. And sometimes it comes in a in a more in a softer package. It's kind of a soft law. It looks like it's nice. It looks like it's friendly. It looks like it's fuzzy. Looks like it's warm. Like a nice cup of Starbucks. Until you open it up and it's just more law. You know, if you did these five things, you would have a happy marriage. That's the soft law. If you did these ten things, your children would love you. If you'll do these seven steps, you'll have success at work. You know what that is? That's the law. It's peddled like good advice. But it's the law. You know what the law is? Turn on Dr. Laura. She's the law. You'll never hear the gospel from Dr. Laura. Lots of good advice, lots of law. She's brutal. She scares me. I can only take her for a few minutes at a time. I've got to turn it off. I listen to Dr. Loren. I think I'm a failure. My life is a wreck. I've got to. I think if I saw her, I'd run the other way, she'd probably look right through me, she could see. You're not your father, you're not your children's father, are you? It's all packaged like good advice, and it maybe isn't to be. It's not all about taking back America for Jesus, whether he wants it or not. Transforming this, transforming that. Christian soccer, Christian football, Christian baseball. Christian video games. But it's packaged in a friendly way. This law is nice law. This law is here to help you. But it's still long. I'll never forget a very famous, well-known Reformed preacher. I'll never forget this. I was a young seminarian and still with hair. And this minister leaned over the pulpit one time in our home congregation while we were in seminary. And he shook his big finger at us and he said, he was talking about people feeling guilty about not doing their tasks around the house. He said, of course, you feel guilty because you're not doing your work. He said, get off the couch, stop popping chocolates and do the ironing and you won't feel guilty. Well, that's true. But the tracks. Don't give me the power to get off the couch. The tracks don't transform my life. The tracks are not conforming conforming me to the image of Jesus. However, highly, we come to think of the law as Christians in Christ. And this is very, very important. And I want you to listen to me because I'm about to tell you the word of God. And I want you to listen. And I want you to listen, children. No matter how much we come to love and adore and revere the law of God, and we should, it is the holy, righteous law of God, and in it there is no defect. The law of God is not broken. The law of God reflects His holy character. The law of God is good, and it ought to be loved. We ought to be devoted to the law of God. But there's not an ounce of power in that law to change your life, to make you good, and to make God love you. But the moralists, the pious moralists in our circles would have us think that the law is the gospel. And the gospel is the law, and they come to us and they tell us that the law has the power to make you good, and the gospel is that you need to do X or Y. In the emerging and emergent church circles, I see them more and more, and I've talked with some of them about this very business, talking about living the gospel. And I write to them and I say, I don't know what that means. The gospel is God, the Son became incarnate and kept the law for all of his people, was crucified for sinners, was buried, was raised on the third day, is ascended at the right hand of the Father. How do I do that? The minute you tell me I have to live the gospel, I have to do the gospel, you've turned the gospel into something that it isn't. The gospel is an announcement. War is ended. Go do that. No, you don't do war is ended. You rejoice that war is ended. You accept that war is ended. You give thanks that war is ended. You live in the joy and the power of the announcement that war is ended. You didn't end the war. God ended the war. God brought peace. God became incarnate. And God bore the lashes for sinners that they deserved, that you deserved. Children, when they came and arrested Jesus, and Jesus let them take Him, He said, I could call down legions of angels, but My Kingdom is not of this world. And so He let them take Him. And they took Him away, and they took the Lord of glory. And they stripped all his clothes off and they beat him. They beat him on the back until he was bloody. And they spat on him. And they said, you disgust us. You're no king. Caesar is king. You are just some schmuck rabbi. We'll put you in your place. We'll mock you. We'll put a sign over your crucifix. It says, King of the Jews. In three languages so everyone can read it. Some king. Common crucified criminal. That's what you are. And the gospel is that He came and He did all that. He endured all that for you who believe. For you who believe. There's no reason to confuse that with the law. The law is good. The law is holy. The law is just. But the law is powerless to make you what you ought to be. And that is perfectly righteous. But the moralists don't want you to know that. The moralists want me to stop telling you that. The moralists think they can shut me up by calling me a Lutheran. And you know what I say to them? I say, do your worst. Because I am a Lutheran you moron. If you knew the least scintilla of the history of the Reformation you would know and if you knew the least scintilla of the history of Protestant theology. You would know that all of us when it comes to righteousness with God. We're all wild boars in the vineyard of the Lord we are all Lutherans, he's our father. His doctrine of justification, that fat beer drinking monk. By the providence of God set us free. From the bondage of trying to be good so that God would accept us. And that makes us Lutherans. We are Lutherans, I want you to stay with me tonight. I am a Lutheran. Say with me. I am a Lutheran. God bless Martin Luther. We are Lutherans when it comes to justification and anybody who comes and tells you something else is trying to take away your joy. Trying to take away your faith. He's trying to take away your certainty. He's trying to take away your confidence. He's trying to take away your faith. He's trying to take away your history. He's trying to take away your heritage. He's trying to take away your identity. He's a thief. Now, I don't know how you were raised, and I don't know where you were raised, but I know what we do with thieves where I'm from. I've got a 12-gauge shotgun under my bed. It holds eight shells. It's called a Magnum. You break into my house in the middle of the night. I put on my glasses. I put, I put buckshot in that shotgun. And I chamber up that first round. You can hear it all over the house. I've done it. I know what it sounds like. It's a universal language. Everybody knows what that means. My rule is you can have anything downstairs. I stand at the top of the stairs. You come up those stairs. We're going to have a conversation. and can start with the letter B. That's what we do with. I'm from Kansas. You try to steal my grandfather's cattle. He's got a twenty two on the back of his shotgun back of his pickup truck. He didn't see very well, but you don't belong in his pasture. You make sure you leave. Somebody wants to take away your Protestant identity and replace it with a polite kind of moralism, a pious moralism. You chamber up that spiritual shotgun and you say, I am a Lutheran. Get thee behind me, Satan. Get thee behind me, you well-meaning, pious moralist. You'll not take the good news from me that we learn from that fat, undisciplined, They're trying to do it as we were talking about this morning during breakfast. One way they try to do it is through a two-stage doctrine of justification, in which they say that in this life, they say, you're justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And so far we say, Amen. But then they say, we have, you see, this insight that Luther didn't have. into union with Christ, whereby there is this aspect of union, which they call existential union, which I think is perfectly good language. There's two other aspects that they've identified, which are quite proper. Eternal union, right? Decretal union from all eternity. That's Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 2. That's quite proper. And then federal union, which is in Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, first Adam, second Adam. Amen. And then there's this at existential aspect of union. And I think that's all a very good and very helpful distinction. All of those things are true. We were in Christ in the electing decree of God from all eternity without any without any respect to our what we have done or not done. In other words, without any foreseen faith or any of that simply out of the mercy of grace of God. We were elected in Christ. And then we were identified with Christ in the sense that he was our representative before we ever existed before we ever believed he came into history and did things for us as our representative. And so it is as if we did those things that he did. But then there is a third aspect, which is very important aspect, and that is this existential aspect of union. And with this, I say amen. It certainly is that the question comes, when do we come into possession of this existential aspect of union with Christ? What most people talk about when they say union with Christ, what they mean most of the time is this existential aspect. And some of these clever fellows have decided that we have a union with Christ before this existential aspect of union with Christ, before we ever believe. so that justification and sanctification, they say, flow out of that. And that in effect, what happens is this third aspect is existential aspect of union with Christ. Comes to replace faith. When you listen to them talking about justification. They don't talk about Sola Fide. They talk about it as if it were purely the product really of union. That's highly problematic, because if you read our old writers and you read our confessions and our catechisms, they consistently connect communion with God or union with Christ with faith. What is, and if I were in a Dutch or German reform congregation, I would say, what is Heidelberg 65 say? And the question is from where, since we are justified to faith alone, from where does this faith come and come? And the answer says the Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts. to the preaching of the Holy Gospel and confirmed it to the use of the Holy Sacraments. Where do we come into union with Christ? By faith alone. By grace alone, through faith alone. And that grants us all the benefits of Christ, the chief of which are justification, righteousness with God, and sanctification, the beginning of conformity to the image of God in Christ Jesus. It's that simple. But I've had these smart fellows tell me, and I'm not very smart, I'm just a minister. I'm a Nebraska boy born in Kansas, ordinary, plain spoken. Honestly, not very good, slow on the uptake. It's absolutely the case. The only reason I'm teaching in the seminary is I'm just stubborn. I just didn't give up. I kept, I'm like a mule. I was too stupid to quit. They said, go to that point. And I kept going. If I'd had any brains, I probably would have quit. But at any rate, I don't want you to think that I'm particularly clever because my students will tell you he's not really. We've heard him lecture a great length. He's not really that clever. But I do know this. That justification is through faith alone, union with Christ in this third aspect is through faith alone, it's through faith alone, which is the gift of God, Paul says, by which we receive Christ and his benefits. And from that flows sanctification. And to put sanctification ahead in the order of salvation, to put sanctification as they do. Even though they will mouth the words justified by grace alone through faith alone, to put that ahead changes the whole doctrine of salvation, and they think this is very clever and they will tell you this is the reformed doctrine of justification. And there is an initial plausibility to all of this, because. You know, we have this reformed world and life view. We say there's the reformed view of worship, and there is. There's a reformed doctrine of Christ, and there is. There are real differences between the reformed and the Lutheran on salvation, and there is. In terms of, for example, can we lose our election? Confessional Lutherans say yes, and we say that's crazy. We disagree with him about the decree. Confessional Lutherans denied the doctrine of reprobation, and we say it's clearly taught in the Word of God in Romans 9, if no other place. But we agree with him on a number of things. Nevertheless, because we have this language in our circles about a distinctively reformed doctrine of whatever, people have come to believe that there must therefore be necessarily a distinct reformed doctrine of justification. the same fellows who also have trouble with the distinction between law and gospel. And so, as a consequence, they've out of all of this, they've set up this two-stage doctrine of justification. You thought I'd forgotten. They set up this two-stage doctrine of justification, whereby you're justified initially in this life by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But wait, there's more. At the judgment, it's a little more complicated. Yes, you have the imputed righteousness of Christ, but in order to be accepted and justified, which word they use in exactly the same sense to describe initial justification with final justification. They say you also have to have spirit rock. Remember if you were here last night, I talked about a sort of spiritual thermometer measuring the level of your sanctity. Basically, if it doesn't go all the way to the top, you're in a lot of trouble. Whatever was said of you in this life, if it doesn't go all the way to the top when you're at the judgment, then you're in trouble. And so you had better get busy with your sanctification. And now, where are we? We're right back to the law. The law is you better produce the right amount of sanctification or you won't make it for the final judgment. So, in effect, you have this provisional initial justification, which is kind of a of a cut to the head of the line pass. But you still have to show up and do your work. And what does all this do? It puts us right back on the medieval donkey track. It puts us right back on the mill. It puts a carrot in front of us and we're on the treadmill grinding out sanctification, because we don't have enough sanctification. God won't approve of us at the last day. Well, you know what? Again, as I say, I'm not very clever, but but I do know how to read the Westminster Confession. And I do know how to read the older reformed theologians, and they had a way of solving this problem. In fact, they didn't even know this was a problem because they were Roman Catholics. They were Protestants. If you put this two stage document justification in front of them and say we're justified and use the word justified in to describe initial and final. They would say, well, that's what we left. Well, not the initial part, but the final part, that's what we left. We have a way of talking about these things, and here's what we say, and it's this simple. And again, I want you to pay attention in this life. You are justified. By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, once for all, for eternity. And no one can change that. No one can take that away from you. If you believe you are right, there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And he doesn't say it's just for this life. Having therefore been justified. That's the word of God. Well, what about the judgment? Do you know what our confessions teach us and what the Word of God teaches? That we look forward to the return of Jesus, not with fear, but with joy. We look forward to the return of Jesus because He's not coming as judge for us, because the judgment has been executed. When our Lord Jesus, God the Son in the flesh, was on the cross and He cried out, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. And when He said, Just tell us that it is finished. He didn't say it's finished for now. He said it's finished. The wrath of God was poured out on him for all of his people for all times. And don't let anyone tell you differently. And anyone who tells you differently is a liar. I know that's hard language, but I'm dead serious. When they laid hands on me and made me a minister, I was given a sacred obligation. I swore before God and man to uphold and defend the gospel, the faith that we confess. Your minister walked forward and he signed, I signed at classes. I wrote my name on a document underneath and I said, this is what I believe. And this is right at the heart of what we believe. So, you know how we answer this problem? We say, at the judgment, all of God's people will be vindicated. It will be demonstrated that what was declared of them in this life was really true. That's the difference. You're already justified and at the judgment, you will be vindicated. You don't have to be re-justified. God bless that wild boar in the vineyard of the Lord Martin Luther. Some of our pious moralist friends want to change the story about Luther and Calvin, they would have us think that, well, Luther was a good start, but Calvin came along and he really, he really changed things. He really had a different doctrine of justification yet a different way of reading Scripture. One leading Presbyterian writers are very prominent Presbyterian writer in the Ney Park world. And I could be very prominent seminary says that Luther had a long gospel hermeneutic where he saw a distinction between two different ways of speaking in the Scripture that the law says do this and the gospel says Christ has done. He says that's a Lutheran way of speaking and you know a lot of people agree with him. And then he goes on to say, but Calvin had a letter spirit hermeneutic, and he argues from Calvin's commentary on Second Corinthians three, where, of course, Paul is distinguishing between the letter and the spirit and following a long train of commentary going all the way back, at least to Augustine on Second Corinthians three, and he says Calvin has a letter spirit hermeneutic. And, of course, you read Calvin's commentary. It's in English. You don't have to read Latin to read that commentary. And you read along, and he does talk about letter and spirit. As I always tell my students, and I'm sure John's probably hearing those words in his head just now, keep going. Keep going. Keep going. And when you get to the end, what does Calvin say? He says, and by this all I mean is the distinction between law and gospel. The good news tonight is that John Calvin was also. And John Calvin thought of himself as a Lutheran. I've searched John Calvin's works pretty carefully and the only ways that Calvin ever criticized Luther were for what he regarded as intemperate language on the Lord's Supper. And for not being as self-controlled as he might have been. Not once did Calvin ever implicitly or explicitly criticize Luther's doctrine of justification. Why? Because he learned the doctrine of justification from Martin Luther. He learned it from reading his works. If you read the first edition of Calvin's Institute, it reads practically like a Lutheran treatise. And all he did was expand it. He didn't change his doctrine of justification. He thought of himself as a Lutheran, even in some respects, on the Lord's Supper. Do you know he signed the Augsburg Confession? According to Lutheran scholars, he signed the unrevised version of the Augsburg Confession. It doesn't matter, really, because the changes that were made in 1540 or 1541 to make the variata, the revised version, weren't so substantial as to fundamentally change what's at stake, especially in Article IV on justification. Do you know, by the way, that when the Reformed came to make their own collection, their first collection of confessions, Lutherans used to say, we have the Augsburg, we have the Book of Concord, and you Reformed people You got this confession of that confession and so forth. And so we responded. We said, Well, we all are saying the same thing. We found them all together. It's called the Harmony of Reformed Confessions. Do you know what the first confession is in that Harmony of Reformed Confessions? Do you know what the first confession is? Is it Zwingli's 23 Articles? Is it the Tetrapolitan Confession? Is it the Belgic? Is it the Scots? Is it the Heidelberg? No. It's the Augsburg Confession. In the harmony of Reformed confessions in 1580, when the differences between the Lutheran and the Reformed were very well known. In fact, we so identified with the Lutherans that the Lutherans had to set us apart from them among their own people by saying, I know they keep saying that they agree with us, but they don't really. They're sneaky. and they called us hot and crafty sacramentary. In other words, what they mean by that is they want us to think that they're with us on justification, but they don't agree with us on the supper, and that means they don't really agree with us on justification. So don't you believe it? Now, whatever the Lutherans think of us and say of us, you need to understand that the original intent of the reformed churches was to say that when it comes to the article of the standing or falling of the church, We are one people. We are Lutherans. It was a reformed theologian, J.H. Allstead, who in the early 17th century said, the doctrine of justification is the article of the standing or falling of the church. You can find similar language in Luther. You can find similar language in Calvin. Calvin says it's the main hinge of the Christian religion. It's not adoption. It's not union with Christ. It's not sanctification, as important as it is. It is the main hinge of the Christian religion. That's John Calvin, that Lutheran, who loved that wild boar in the vineyard of the Lord so much that he called him an apostle. If John Calvin heard the way some Reformed people talk about Luther today, I think he might be inspired to hit someone. Don Calvin was not a man given to violence, at least not physical violence, verbal violence. Yes. You know, I know I'm pretty clear, I'm pretty sure I know what Calvin would have said. He would not have been sympathetic. He wasn't sympathetic to the morals of his day, however, well-intentioned they were. These moralists want not only to change our history, to change our family, our family tree by going back and taking white out to our family tree. But they want to change our doctrine of salvation, they want to tell us that the law is the gospel and the gospel is the law. They want to confuse sanctification with justification. And now, having preached, I want to go to meddling. In the third point, who's doing this? This is where I go to meddling, so if you were wondering when you would be offended now. I'm telling you now is the time to be offended, so you can get ready to be offended, because I'm going to be pointed. It's nervous Presbyterians that I'm most concerned about, and I've noticed this for about fifteen years reading Presbyterian, particularly now I'm not speaking specifically about Presbyterians. And I'm not talking about Scottish Presbyterians in the 1560s or 1570s or 1580s or even in the 17th century. I'm talking about Scottish Presbyterians since the 18th century and in the 19th century, particularly in the 20th century. And I don't really fully understand why this is, but you need to know that this is a reality and you need to be aware of it. Martin Luther makes Presbyterians nervous. I don't know why that is exactly, but he does. I have a theory and I'm going to spin out some theories for you. I don't know for a fact why that is, but I have theories. First, it's because Luther did have character flaws. Luther believed in sin, and he practiced it. And he made some pretty serious mistakes. He participated in the solemnization, officiated at a bigamous wedding. He did. It was a serious mistake. He shouldn't have done it. I'm not sure what I would have done in his circumstances, I can't say I've never been in those circumstances, but it was probably a mistake. And there were other things that he said and did that would make polite, middle class, self-controlled, not to say stuffy, Presbyterians a little uncomfortable. And I say this, I teach at a Presbyterian seminary. I live with this every day. But those character flaws, I think, make Presbyterians a little a little uncomfortable. Luther doesn't fit. It doesn't fit so neatly in our middle class Anglo-Saxon middle to upper class box. He makes us nervous. Luther was a sinner and he wasn't very shy about his sins. And part of it is we know a lot about Luther's interior life. We know way more than we need to know. Luther wrote down a lot of things and a lot of things were written down by people when they were with him after he'd had a few beers. One of the reasons why Luther scholars don't take the table talk that he's played very seriously is because Luther was often, let's say, full of joy. Having had dinner and having enjoyed the local Hittenberg beer. With his friends, Benham, Storff, Melanchthon, and others, and as a consequence of all that, we know quite a lot about Luther's interior life, and it's not always very pretty. We know what he thought, we know what he felt, and he often said exactly what was on his mind. It was not really a secret when you're reading Luther what he thought. Luther makes us nervous because he wrote some pretty nasty anti-Semitic things. And in the 20th century, he's been pegged as one of the causes of the Holocaust. That story is pretty complicated and I don't think it works very well, but that's a story that's been told by a lot of people that I think also contributes to sort of general dis-ease. with Luther. We're that we're uncomfortable with aspects of what we think Luther taught about baptism. What we think Luther taught about baptism, I tell you that if you go and read Luther's shorter catechism and you read Luther's larger catechism, if you understand Reformed theology and if you read it carefully, it isn't really all that problematic because just when you think Luther is teaching baptismal regeneration, he comes back and he says, but the water doesn't do this. the gospel. It's at least ambiguous. It's not a closed case that Luther himself taught baptismal regeneration. The Lutherans, the confessional Lutherans, came to teach baptismal regeneration, but it's not so clear to me that Luther did, and sometimes we just take it that whatever is in the Book of Concord must be what it is that Luther taught. That isn't necessarily the case. There are serious departures from Luther in the Book of Concord. Luther taught not only a doctrine of election, which confessional Lutherans hold unconditional election, but he also taught a doctrine of unconditional reprobation or not necessarily. Well, in some cases, it might have been in the bondage of the will in 1525. You can't find very many confessional Lutherans who actually read the bondage of the will. If you want a confessional Lutheran, to get nervous and turn away and possibly run. Just break out your copy of Bondage of the Will. They don't like that book. It makes them uncomfortable. We have a lot in common. In fact, in 1580, when Theodore Basile was arguing with Lutherans at a conference, Confessional Lutherans, when it came to the doctrine of predestination, he stood up and he held his Latin copy of De Serro Arbitrio and he said, We stand with Luther. And he sat down and the Lutherans stood up and said, Next topic. So we're with Luther on a lot of things in a way that in some ways Orthodox Lutheranism isn't. Yes, we should be uncomfortable with Luther's doctrine of the supper in some respects, but if you ask Calvin if he has to choose between Luther's doctrine of Christ feeding us on his body through the elements or Zwingli's doctrine of a funeral, which is all it ever became. and I've read I'm very well read in Zwingli. I know what he said and the myth of Luther Zwingli maturing to a spiritual presence view is just that it's a myth is not a shred of evidence in Zwingli. The most you ever get is a really intense emotional experience of a funeral. If you ask Calvin. Funeral or food. He says food. When it comes to the supper, Calvin's a lot closer to Luther than he is with Zwingli. But a lot of American Presbyterians since the 19th century have been a lot closer to Zwingli than they are to Luther and to Calvin. That's a problem. You Presbyterians need to face that. Our confessions and our theology is not Zwinglian. And in fact, I'm going to pick on Zwingli a little bit later in the next session. In the nineteenth century, a lot of Presbyterians said, you know, Zwingli is our father, not Luther. I actually think that's in some ways true, and that's part of the problem. Zwingli is not your friend, necessarily. A lot of people haven't read Zwingli. He's not necessarily a bad guy, but he's not your friend. And we have real differences with Luther and Lutherans on the doctrine of Christ, real serious differences. difference and they're severe enough to warrant distinct communion. You want to accuse me of being a Lutheran. You better know what you're talking about. Because I know what I'm talking about. I know what the Lutherans teach. I know what Luther taught on the two natures of Christ. It's problematic. Highly problematic bordering. I don't say that it is uticchian, but it borders on uticchianism. You know what that means. And it's problematic relative to the definition of Calvary. Calvin knew that our reformed fathers knew that I know that. But that doesn't keep me from claiming that wild boar as our spiritual father. And there's one last reason why Presbyterians are nervous about Luther. It's because we have been making this appeal to Zwingli. And we've identified him rhetorically as our spiritual father. Well, listen, I defy you. Read Zwingli. and tell me where he is unequivocal about the doctrine of justification. Where he makes it absolutely unequivocally plain that you're justified by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Christ, which is alien relative to you. Extrinsic to you. And it's received through faith, which is nothing more than resting and receiving in Jesus Christ and in his finished work. You won't find that kind of precision and specificity in Zwingli on justification. Am I saying that he was a moralist? No. Am I saying that he wasn't nearly as precise and clear about justification as Luther and Calvin? Absolutely. I think some Presbyterians like that vagueness. Because they deep in their hearts, they think the law has the power to make us think about now is it just Presbyterians. No, it's in the continental reform, the modern continental reform world as well. We're all one big family. There's Scottish branches of the family, English branches of the family, Welsh branches of the family, Dutch, German, French. It's all one big reform family. But I'm just saying that I've noticed this among American Presbyterians. And then finally, we've reacted to confessional Lutheranism by identifying, and I won't beat that horse again, identifying confessional Lutheranism with Martin Luther. What you need to take away from this session this afternoon is that if it wasn't for that monk. If it wasn't for Martin Luther. I wouldn't be dressed here in a suit tonight. I'd be wearing a priest's robe, and I wouldn't be facing you. And this railing would be a fence, and I'd have my back to you, and I'd still be offering sacrifices on your behalf, trying to turn away the wrath of God for you, through the abomination that is the Roman mass. Whatever our discomfort, and I think 99% of it is unjustified, We are the children of that wild boar. Whatever his faults, he's family. Whatever our disagreements, when it comes to the cardinal doctrine of the Reformation, his faith is our faith. And all those polite, nervous, moralist folks in our Napark circles, who want to create a wedge between us and Luther, they're creating a wedge between us and the Gospel. I trust that, at least after tonight, when you hear that stuff, you'll be suspicious. I hope. Thank you. We'll see you again after dinner.