ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 82 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Wait a minute. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. Don't we have to be sorry for our sins? Isn't that part of being forgiven? >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: Well, that is certainly a question that comes up I think in Lutheran circles because we have a pattern of confession and absolution. And certainly part of confession is contrition. And contrition is a word that roughly you can define as sorrow for sins. However, I think it's important to recognize that contrition is something that the law brings about in us. The reason that we are contrite is because of the work of the law, which convicts us of sin. Now, we've talked at length about how we want to exclude the law from the doctrine of justification. And why do we want to do that? Well, because St. Paul does that. That's those exclusive particles that we talked about. That the righteousness of God is apart from the law. So that means that if you think about a sequence of events that happens -- and this is not to say that this has to be a temporal sequence where one happens and then the next thing happens. Because a lot of these things can happen at the same time. But it makes sense to put these in a kind of a logical order. That what people experience is is that you have sorrow for sins. And then you have forgiveness. And then you have good works. So that when somebody receives the forgiveness of sins, then that's going to bring about these new impulses. They are going to have a new will. And that new will is going to exercise itself in love towards the neighbor. Now, in doctrine of justification we talked about how the doctrine of justification is this absolution part and it does not include the works that follow. The works that follow are, indeed, results of justification. Those are things that follow justification. But they are not themselves part of justification. Well, in the same way, contrition in a sense precedes justification. At least if you're thinking kind of a logical sequence here and not necessarily a temporal one. But the contrition is also excluded. So we want to keep justification very narrowly focused on forgiveness of sins. Not including the works that follow. Not including the contrition that proceeds. So I think that's part of the answer is to keep that distinction clear. But I think the other part is what I've said at the beginning of this -- my answer to your question. And that is that contrition is, in fact, work by the law. And so you can see -- and I think Lutheran theology has this pattern of seeing the whole Christian life in terms of kind of a confession and absolution pattern. A law and a Gospel pattern. That the law works contrition. And that means you're not responsible for coming up with your own. When you are contrite, it's not that you have dug within the depths of your soul and you have achieved this level of contrition and that somehow the forgiveness of sins is a reward for that level of contrition or is contingent upon that level of contrition. It doesn't work like that. The law works contrition. This is what God does to you with his law. He crushes you. And then God works absolution through the Gospel. So both contrition and faith are works of God that he brings about. And I think it's easy for us to slip into the pattern of trying to emphasize contrition as a prerequisite for the forgiveness of sins as if it sort of causes you to earn it. Kind of like we were talking about when faith talk goes wrong, if you remember that discussion just a few minutes ago. Faith talk can go wrong when faith gets directed in on itself when things -- with questions like "Do you believe enough?" or "Do you sincerely believe?" that sort of thing. Well, contrition talk can go wrong in the same way. Contrition talk can go wrong when you start asking "Am I contrite enough? Am I sincerely contrite? Do I" -- "am I really sorry? Or maybe there's part of me that's sorry and part of me that's not sorry. So does that mean I'm forgiven or does that mean I'm not forgiven?" "What if I think I might sin again with the same sin? Not that I'm planning to. But it could happen." These kind of ambiguous questions are going to be haunting us as long as we're in this life because as we said before, we are ***simul usteis epa cator. So it is not realistic for us to expect that we are going to be able to identify pure motives in ourselves. And so if we're going to treat contrition in a way that it has to meet a certain level before it qualifies us for the forgiveness of sins, then that's going to take away the comfort that Christ has for us in the Gospel. So it's very important in Lutheran theology to keep in mind that it's the promise of Christ that forgives sins. It's not how good our contrition is or how good our works are that follow. It's the promise of Christ. Now, how does this play out practically speaking? And I'm thinking here in terms of hearing confessions. And this is something I think Lutherans are not used to doing is going to private confession and absolution. But in my time at Trinity Lutheran Church in Elkhart, Indiana, I had the opportunity to hear a number of confessions because we would go on a retreat with the confirmands. And all of the confirmands and their parents would go to private confession and absolution in these retreats. And so the pastors of this congregation, we would talk with each other about "Well, how do you do this?" You know, "What exactly are you supposed to do in hearing a confession?" And one of the things that you do is that -- someone who is coming to confession is not going to try to hold on to their sin. And what I mean is this: If someone -- if someone says, "Well, I stole something," and you're hearing confession, I mean you can ask them "Do you still have it?" "Are you going to give it back?" Because if someone is coming and they are saying that "I stole something and I'm going to keep it but I want to be forgiven," that person doesn't actually -- isn't actually looking for deliverance from sin. That person doesn't really want what Christ has to offer in the absolution. Because they are trying to hold on to this sin. And absolution is about being delivered from sin. So that's not to say that their contrition or their giving the thing back is going to somehow earn forgiveness of sins. Because that only comes by the promise of Christ. However, if they -- the question there is: Do they really want what Christ has for them? Do they really want deliverance from sin? And so in the case of somebody who wants to hold on to their sin in that way, like keep what they stole or that sort of thing, then I would say that such a person is sort of excluding themselves from the absolution because they are not wanting to be delivered. Now, that -- having said that -- you have to sort of cover this from a number of different angles. Because on the one hand, we don't want to say that contrition merits forgiveness. But on the other hand, if somebody isn't contrite, that means they are not really wanting forgiveness. They aren't really wanting deliverance from sin. But what about the case of somebody is really struggling with sin? And by struggling I mean they are -- there's a particular sin in which they are finding it very difficult to overcome. So they keep falling back into it over and over again. I mean, something like homosexuality I think would be an example of this where -- and so I'm not talking about a person who is saying, "I'm homosexual and therefore" -- "and that's just the way I am and so I'm going to adopt that lifestyle." That person does not want to be delivered from their sin. But I'm talking about someone who admits it's a sin and is struggling with it and maybe is falling in repeated occasions. That kind of a person is, in fact, contrite. Because if someone is struggling with a sin, even if they are failing, that shows that the law is doing its work. That they are saying Amen to God when he says that this is sinful. And so such a person needs to hear the Gospel. So one of the challenges in pastoral ministry is to sort out all of these different things. Luther says the distinction between law and Gospel is one of the highest arts in Christianity. And it takes a lifetime to learn it. And what you will have to do is discern when people are -- are you dealing with someone who desires forgiveness, who -- or are you dealing with someone who is secure in their sin and doesn't really want to be delivered from their sin? And it's not always a cut and dried thing. It's going to take some experience and learning on your part to be able to negotiate these issues. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***