ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 66 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. *** >> Thank you. I appreciate your answer. But I would like to push a little harder, if I may so that I am better prepared to answer this question myself. I've had people suggest that inviting Jesus into your heart isn't very much. It sounds like that is something we could do, especially if the Holy Spirit is helping us. What would you say to someone who says that? >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: Well, Nick, it's good to push harder because that is the way that you learn how to answer the question yourself. And I think we ought to reflect a moment and distinguish between someone's experience and then the theological explanation of that experience. We are not in a position to deny someone's experience. So many people have -- this is the way they have experienced conversion is by saying a prayer. And then they have a feeling of peace or some kind of experience like that. And we're not attempting to tell them "No, that didn't really happen to you." But what we need to help them do, though, is to understand what happened to them in a way that is consistent with the scriptures and what the scriptures teach us about the work of Christ. Because just -- just because someone has the experience of this kind of a prayer and a feeling of peace or something along those lines doesn't necessarily mean that that experience defines everything that's going on there. And so our role then is to help them understand their experiences theologically and scripturally. And so this is where Lutherans do take exception to the idea that you can become a Christian by inviting Jesus in your heart. And just recall what we said at the beginning of this section of the course about the seriousness with which Lutheran theology takes sin. That we are, in fact, dead in trespasses and sin just as Lazarus was dead in his tomb. Lazarus did not invite Jesus into the tomb. Jesus came there and gave Lazarus life. And in the same way, we are not in a position to invite Jesus into our hearts. He creates that faith in us by his word. Now, I would also like to reflect theologically on the assumptions behind the response that you mentioned. And that is that inviting Jesus into your heart isn't very much. Now, if you recall in the discussion of the law, one of the ways that we can recognize something as a law statement is if it employs measurement and quantification. And I notice that in the response that you report from your friends telling you this, that they are doing just that. It's not very much. Okay? It's a small amount. But it's still a measured amount. We're talking quantitative measurement. Now, from a Lutheran perspective, that means there's a standard that needs to be measured up to. And that's law. And Lutherans want to exclude law from the doctrine of justification. Now, I suppose a response to this may be "Well, what's the problem as long as the standard is low enough?" Okay. Because afterall, many Christians are able to operate on a day-to-day basis with the feeling that they, in fact, do something to cooperate towards their salvation; that perhaps they became a Christian by their own initiative by inviting Jesus in their heart. And this doesn't seem to bother them. And on good days, you know, perhaps it doesn't bother them. But the Lutheran concern here is that if we're going to take sin seriously and if we're going to understand that we're dead in trespasses and sin, then we cannot assume any amount of human initiative or even cooperation and conversion. And if we do so, there -- maybe that will work for a while. Maybe that will work on good days. But it does not give you a sure reference point outside of yourself. So that when you begin to be more and more aware of your sin, which is, in fact, what happens in sanification -- sanification isn't just that you feel holier and holier. You actually might feel worse because you become more and more aware of your sin. But when that happens and you are aware of your sin, you are aware of your mixed motives, you can actually come to question your sincerity at any point in your life. When I invited Jesus in my heart, was that real? Was it sincere? Was it sincere enough? There's that quantification again. So that's the concern here. Lutheran theology, because we do recognize the seriousness of sin, we need a reference point outside of us so that we can get clear of the necessity to do introspection at every point of our lives to see if we can measure up. Because we're not going to measure up. We can try to say we'll reduce the standards down, down, down until we can meet that one. But it isn't going to work in the final analysis. The only thing that's going to work in the final analysis is Jesus Christ. So that's why Lutheran theology would never speak of conversion as an invitation to Jesus. It's Jesus who comes into our hearts. But it's not at an invitation. It's a creation of faith. And as we'll talk about later, it's not even the fact that he's in our hearts that's key. The key is what's done on the cross. Now, I suppose a related question to the question that you asked, Nick, might be "Well, what about free will?" Do Lutherans believe in free will? Because afterall, if you believe in free will, then it sounds like you ought to be able to make a decision for yourself as to whether or not you want to be a Christian. And the short answer to this question is actually Lutherans do not believe in free will. That we believe that our will is bound to sin. And we're talking about our will now before conversion. So the issue here is conversion. Lutheran theology doesn't really directly address other questions like after conversion. I mean, there are things that we can say. But the important point that we want to focus on now is the human will before conversion and after the fall. And we are simply bound to sin. We are not able to make a decision to choose to believe in God. Now, sometimes -- and as Dr. Scaer mentioned, we can say, "Yeah, our will is free. It's free to sin." And so there is a sense in which even Lutherans will sometimes use the term free will. I think it's a little bit confusing. Because it makes it sound like we're able to choose God. And we're not. But here is what it means: It means that there's no external coercion. Let me give you an example of this. If you believe that your will is free -- the way most people think of free will -- that means you have two choices, A or B. And each choice is equally possible. So I might choose A. I might choose B. I can really do either one. But there's another way of discussing free will. And this is the way Lutherans mean it whenever we use the term free will. And that is that our will is free as long as there's no external coercion. Now, as an example of this, let's just imagine by some stroke of God's unexplained providence you find yourself on a reality television program. And you have a choice. You can eat say a chocolate bar or you can eat 20 kissing Madagascar cockroaches. Now, I'm now making this up. I think most of us would choose the chocolate bar. And that is because -- and when we do so, no one is forcing us to choose the chocolate bar. There's no external coercion there. But could we actually choose to eat the cockroaches or to -- I should -- I suppose you could choose to eat them if there was some other reason. Like maybe if you were offered $100,000 or something. But let's just put that aside. You can choose one or the other. Who in the world is going to choose the cockroaches over the chocolate bar? The point is, you can't change what you'll want when you're eating the chocolate bar. You're doing it willingly and freely. No one is coercing you. But here's the catch: You cannot control what you want. So whenever Lutherans use the term free will, that's what we mean. That when we sin, we're doing it willingly. God is not forcing us to sin. The Devil is not forcing us to sin. When we sin, we're doing exactly what we want to do. So we're free in that sense. But there's no possibility of choosing to believe in God. We don't have that capability to change our will. Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ can change our will. *** 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. ***