Monday, May 21, 2012

Luther’s Radical God. And Ours. Part 1

“Luther’s view of the cross began to change when he realized that Christ’s cry or scream [My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?] was the result of bearing human sin. Christ himself had not committed sin; he voluntarily took upon himself the entire sin of the world. This was not done only in a conceptual or theoretical way. Christ really and truly took sin upon himself, as if he had committed them in the first place…
Luther’s next step was to take the “logic” of the cross and apply it to his own situation. If Christ has the world’s sin on himself, then Luther’s own sin is on Christ as well. If Luther’s sin is borne by Christ, then he (Luther) is free of sin. If he is free of sin, then he is righteous. The very thing that Luther tried to obtain by all his labors in the monastery was given to him freely in Christ. Luther termed this the “happy exchange,” whereby Christ, out of love, traded his righteousness and purity to sinners and received from them their guilt and shame. It is a terribly “unjust” exchange, since our sin kills Christ while his righteousness yields life and freedom for undeserving sinners. But it is all accomplished by God in Christ by a remarkable and radical act of love.”
Mark D. Tranvik, Martin Luther’s Road to Freedom, pages 14-16.

John Dink

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