Full Text for Dogmatics 2- Volume 83 - "Do This and You Will Live"? (Video)

ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 83 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. *** >> Okay. I understand that. But there is one Bible passage that doesn't seem to fit very well with what we've been talking about. I'm thinking of the case where an expert in the law summarizes the law as love for God and love for one's neighbor and Jesus' response is do this and you will live. How does that fit with justification by faith alone? Jesus seems to be saying that he can be saved by keeping the law. >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: The passage that you're referring to, David, I think is from Luke Chapter 10. And let me just read this passage so we're all on the same page as to what the text actually is. "On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. 'Teacher,' he asked, 'what must I do to inherit eternal life?' 'What is written in the law,' he replied. 'How do you read it?' He answered, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.' You have answered correctly,' Jesus replied. 'Do this and you will live.'" So I agree with you. It really does sound like Jesus is here telling this guy "You can have eternal life if you keep the commandments." But I think we need to probe this text a little bit further and ask the question which we've talked about that you need to ask in a parish setting, too: Why do you ask? Why does the man ask Jesus this question? And the text tells us a couple of things about that. One is that he's trying to test Jesus; that is he's trying to trap him. So this is not a question that's coming from say just a desire to know. But there's an ulterior motive there. And furthermore, we might note that the question is framed in a legalistic way. The question is not simply: How does one inherit eternal life? But it's: What must I do to inherit eternal life? So the presupposition of this question is that you have to do something. Now, as Lutherans, we can kind of step back and look at this and say, "All right. The presupposition of that question is wrong." Just as we can say that the presupposition of the objections against Paul in Romans 6 are wrong. That let's just go on sinning so that grace may abound. The presupposition being there that sin is something that's desirable. Well, here the presupposition of the question is wrong, as well. Because he just simply assumes that you have to do something. And so what Jesus does is he kind of goes along with it. He says, "All right. If you're going to want to know what to do it, I'm going to" -- "I'm going to tell you what to do: Keep the law." And it's almost like Jesus is pressing down on the accelerator and taking this guy faster than he wants to go. Jesus is giving him a more severe answer than this guy is prepared for. And that comes clear immediately when the guy -- when the guy says -- wants to justify himself and says, "Well who is my neighbor?" Because when Jesus gives him the full force law, the guy realizes that he hasn't done this. And he's trying -- he feels condemned by it. And he's going to try to justify himself and try to get out of this by some maneuvering, "Well, who is my neighbor?" And in response to this Jesus, tells the parable of the good Samaritan. So essentially what I think Jesus is doing here is not -- Jesus is not telling us how to go to heaven in this passage. What Jesus is doing is he's diagnosing the questioner as someone who on the one hand thinks he can earn his way into heaven. But on the other hand, Jesus knows that he can't. And so what Jesus is doing is applying what Lutherans call the second use of the law. But unmasking this guy's sin. But giving him the full law answer to the question. And the man's response to this is he obviously feels condemned by it because he feels he needs to justify himself. Now, in Lutheran theology, as we said before, there are two answers to every question. So if we imagine a different situation like different motives for asking this question, it may well be that Jesus would give the man a different answer. And let me give you an example of that. This is from the book of Acts. Paul and Silas are in prison at Philippi. And there's a violent earthquake that throws the prison doors open. And the chains fall off the prisoners. And the prison guard thinks that his prisoners have escaped from prison. He's about to kill himself. So this is a very different kind of situation where the questioner in Jesus' case is trying to trap him. The jailer at Philippi is just in total despair, about to commit suicide. And Paul comes to the prisoner and he tells him "Don't harm yourself. We're all here." And now let me read this next section, Acts Chapter 16. This is starting in Verse 29. "The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' They replied, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.'" Now that's a very different answer than Jesus gave. Because it's a very different situation. In the case of Jesus, the man asking him the question, wanting to trap him. And he had a legalistic mindset. And so Jesus kind of said, "All right. We're going to run with your assumptions and see where that leads." And he demonstrated to the man that he's not going to get to heaven that way. Whereas in the case of the jailer at Philippi, the jailer is in -- practically in despair. Ready to commit suicide. And even though he phrases the question in what looks like a legalistic way, "What must I do to be saved?" just like the other guy phrased it the same way, the motives are very different. The jailer is not trying to earn salvation. He's simply trying to -- I mean, he has nothing. He's about to kill himself. It's not that the jailer is ready to depend on his own resources. So that's clear from his mindset. Paul's answer is very different. Here is an answer of faith rather than an answer of works because it's a law-Gospel distinction. The jailer in Philippi is in need of Gospel. The man questioning Jesus needs to hear the law. *** 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. ***