Full Text for Dogmatics 2- Volume 77 - Preaching the Cross, cont. (Video)

ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 77 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. *** >> Can you give me some examples to illustrate these concepts? >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: Certainly. Let's take the example of Jesus' baptism. Let's say you're going to preach on that. And you want to try out, this way of speaking in which Jesus takes our place. He takes what is ours and gives us what is his. What you might do is to consider the way in which Jesus' baptism relates to our baptism. And that is that he is implicitly instituting baptism by himself undergoing this baptism. Now, in our baptism, what happens is -- or you might homiletically describe what happens as we go into the waters and we leave our sins in the water. And what we receive is this purification from the water so where our sins are forgiven. For Christ the baptism kind of works the other way around. It's almost as if he goes into the water and takes our sins upon himself and leaves his righteousness there for us to have when we're baptized. So that would be kind of an example of Jesus trading places with us. Now, the textual justification for that kind of a homiletical movie -- I mean, admittedly it is a little bit -- I don't know -- pictorial. It's not a literal exposition of what the text is saying. But there is some textual justification for that in that when the voice from heaven says, "This is my beloved Son whom I love," the Father is actually laying upon Jesus the role of suffering servant because this passage is echoing the suffering servant passages in Isaiah. So when you appreciate that fact as, well -- it also echoes the sacrifice of Isaac, the beloved son. "Take your only son whom you love and go to Mt. Moriah and sacrifice him." So because of these Old Testament echoes, we have a textual reason for understanding Jesus' baptism to lay upon him his mission to suffer and die. And so that's why I say homiletically you might describe that as him taking our sins upon him in his baptism. And in that way you can make a connection to our baptism where we leave our sins and get his righteousness. So that would be one example. Another example let's say would be -- you're going to preach on the temptation of Christ. And here I think you would be correct in your exegetical work for your sermon to notice that there's kind of a parallel between the temptation of Jesus and the temptation of Adam in that both are tempted by Satan for one thing. And it's presented as a temptation scene. Only the difference is in Adam's case, Adam succumbs to the temptation. But in Jesus' case, he resists the temptation. Adam's situation describes our plight. This is our problem. This is what sin does to us is it causes us to fall. It causes us to give in to temptation. But what Christ does is he takes that temptation and he conquers it for us. Where Adam failed, Jesus got it right. Jesus -- it's almost as if Jesus is reliving Adam's life and getting it right where Adam got it right. Which is an insight I'm actually drawing from the church father ***Aranais who describes salvation this way. But that would be another example that I think fits in the broad parameters of Luther's blessed exchange, too, in that Christ takes our condition, our temptation. But he's actually giving us his victory over temptation which he achieves in the desert. Christ's ascension is the third example I would like to mention in which he ascends into heaven to prepare a place for us. And I think you have to understand that in the context of his whole earthly ministry, that he came to earth to begin with to take on our nature and to take on our sin and to die for our sin. So that's him taking our place. And the thing that we get in this blessed exchange is his place in heaven, which he goes ahead of us to prepare a place. So when you're preaching on the ascension, you might think of that aspect of he is giving us ascension. He is -- which is another way of saying he's letting us go to heaven. And as an example of that, I would like to refer to Hymn No. 150 in Lutheran worship. Stanza 1 has the line "For where the head is, there as well I know his members are to dwell when Christ will come and call them." So the idea that Christ who is the head is actually in heaven serves as a guarantee for us, as well, that we will go there, too. See, that is a way of preaching the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins, you're going to go to heaven. That isn't the same old same old way of just saying, "Jesus died for you." It's a way of saying his place in heaven -- you know, he took our place in death and punishment for sin and gave us his place in heaven. It's kind of a blessed exchange pattern of thinking applied to the ascension. So I hope that's helpful as just a few concrete examples of how one might do this. No. 77. >> Well, we've done the by grace and for Christ's sake. So now I would guess we are reaching the through faith portion of the article. That seems like a simple word, faith. But when I try to explain it to my parishioners, I find myself stumbling. It's not so easy to describe. So let me ask you: What is faith? >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: Well, Nick, faith is kind of like grace in that it's one of those little words that we use all the time that's not always very easy to define. And I think especially the word faith is important for Lutherans to define because we say that you're justified by faith alone. And yet it can be quite difficult. So let me start by making a basic distinction between two different meanings of the word faith. And here again, I'm going to introduce some Latin terminology that the church has used for a long time. And so the first sense of the word faith is ***fidas qui creditor, which literally means a faith which is believed. And what we mean by that is doctrine. We can use the word faith to describe what it is that we believe. So that -- and when we talk that way, you tend to hear phrases like "This is the faith that was delivered to the saints." That sort of thing. Where faith actually means the doctrine. Now, the other sense of the word faith is captured by a very similar Latin phrase, fidas qui creditor, which means the faith by which it is believed. And what we're referring to here is the faith by which doctrine is believed. So here the fidas qui creditor is the faith in the heart or it's trust in Christ. And this is really what we're getting at when we talk about justification by faith. It's that trust. It's not simply intellectual assent to certain truths. But it's actually a trust in those things. And so this is the Lutheran understanding of what faith means. Now, let me just comment on the fact that in the Roman Catholic Church, there is a tradition of understanding faith to mean intellectual assent. And so you can imagine when a Roman Catholic hears a Lutheran saying that you are justified by faith alone, it's possible if they are not familiar with the way Lutherans define their terms that they might hear us as saying that you're justified by intellectual assent alone. And this is clearly not true. Because James tells us that even the demons believe in the sense of, you know, they know that there's one God but they tremble. So the demons have kind of an intellectual assent to God. They acknowledge God's existence. But they don't trust God. So that's an important distinction. And if you're in a situation where you're talking to Roman Catholics, you may need to make this clear to them. That when we say faith, we don't mean intellectual assent alone. It includes trust. One of the best places I would recommend you look at to get a handle on what Lutherans mean by faith is Luther's explanation of the First Commandment in the large Catechism. In the Small Catechism the explanation of the First Commandment is very short. It's we should fear, love and trust in God above all things. But in the large Catechism, Luther develops this at some length. And his point here, which I think is a very profound point, and that is -- is helpful to us in engaging not only other Christians but even atheists is that Luther says if -- whatever it is that you look to for all good things, that is your God. And Luther is making the point that it's faith that makes a god. Either a true God or a false God. If the faith is right, then we're dealing with a true God. If the faith is wrong, then we're dealing with a false God. But what he simply means is what you have faith in is what you look to for all good things. So where are you going to find happiness or fulfillment in life? Where are you going to find safety? Where are you going to find protection? Where are you going to find comfort in times of need? All of these things are components of faith. Because whatever it is you look to for those things, that's your God. So if you think about that, that means that one way that we can approach atheism is to tell an atheist "Well, you do, in fact, have a god. Because you do look somewhere for your safety. You do look somewhere for comfort." I mean, maybe that's in your checkbook. Or maybe it's your own abilities. Or maybe it's in a relationship. But wherever it is, that's your god. I mean, even if you don't think there's the creator of the universe, you still have a god in this sense. So that allows us I think a point of contact, even with atheists, to talk about what is it that's actually going to deliver the promise of all good things, the safety, comfort and so forth, those other things that I mentioned. And I think this is probably one of the most helpful paraphrases of the word faith is simply looking to God for all good things. Or if you want to say that in a very compact way, you can simply use the word trust. *** 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. ***