Counseling Under the Cross: How Martin Luther Applied the Gospel to Daily Life

1. Counseling Under the Cross: How Martin Luther Applied the Gospel to Daily Life

2. Martin Luther Reformed Pastoral Counseling • Martin Luther not only reformed theology; Martin Luther reformed pastoral counseling. • We will learn from Martin Luther how to speak gospel truth in love to one another so that we all grow up in Christ. We’ll learn what it looks like to apply Christ’s gospel of grace to besetting sins so that Christians can find grace to help and grace to grow in Christlikeness from Christ alone.

3. Applying the Gospel to Sin and Sanctification Martin Luther the Soul Physician

4. The Daily Gospel Guard • The Daily Gospel Guard: “Your dear brother, Jerome Weller, has informed me that you are deeply distressed about eternal election. I am truly sorry to hear this. I know all about this sickness. I was myself brought to the brink of eternal death by it. I will tell you how God helped me out of this trouble, and by what means I even yet daily guard myself against it.”

5. The Gospel Mirror of Grace • The Gospel Mirror of Grace: “The highest of all God’s commands is this, that we ever hold up before our eyes the image of his dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He must daily be to our hearts the perfect mirror, in which we behold how much God loves us and how well, in his infinite goodness, as a faithful God, he has grandly cared for us in that he gave his dear Son for us. Do not let this mirror and throne of grace be torn away from before your eyes.”

6. The Voice of Gospel Grace • Our Level 1 Sin Struggle: The Sins We Commit: Load the Conscience with Guilt—“It’s Horrible to Sin” • Our Level 2 Sin Struggle: The Shame We Experience: Lighten the Conscience with Grace—“It’s Wonderful to Be Forgiven!” • “So it comes about that those who are truly sinners don’t want to be considered sinners, and those who are saints don’t want to be called saints either. The latter don’t believe the gospel which comforts them and the former don’t believe the law which accuses them.”

7. The Voice of Gospel Grace • “Those who are in the ministry of the Word should not forget the fatherly and motherly affection which Paul requires of them. Of this precept he has set forth an example (2 Cor. 2:6), where he said that it was sufficient that he who was excommunicated was rebuked by many, and that they ought now to forgive him and comfort him, lest he should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you (says he) use charity towards him. Therefore, pastors and ministers must indeed sharply rebuke those which are fallen, but when they see that they are sorrowful for their offenses, then let them begin to raise them up again, comfort them, and diminish and qualify their faults as much as they can, lest they that be fallen be swallowed up with overmuch heaviness.”

8. Anfechtung: Spiritual Separation Anxiety • The Temptation of Faith: “The temptation of faith is the very greatest and most severe, for it is the province of faith to overcome all other temptations. By the temptation of faith is meant that the evil conscience drives out of a person his confidence in the pardoning grace of God.” • “And let not him that suffers from this temptation be dismayed, in that the devil can so aggravate sin, that during the conflict he thinks himself to be utterly overthrown, and feels nothing else but the wrath of God and desperation.”

9. Anfechtung: Spiritual Separation Anxiety • “The poets fancied that souls were terrified by the bark of Cerberus; but real terror arises when the voice of the wrathful God is heard, that is, when it is felt by the conscience. Then God, who previously was nowhere, is everywhere. Then He who earlier appeared to be asleep hears and sees everything; and His wrath burns, rages, and kills like fire.”

10. Startled by the Gospel • “But the Christian says: ‘I believe and cling to him who is in heaven as a Savior.’ Thus the Christian faith differs from other religions in this, that the Christian hopes even in the midst of evils and sins. Without the Holy Spirit natural man can’t do this. He can only seek refuge in works. To say, ‘I am a child of God,’ is accordingly not to doubt even when good works are lacking, as they always are in all of us. This is so great a thing that one is startled by it.”

11. Prescribing the Gospel Remedy Grace is Christ’s preventative medicine for our disgrace: Forgiving medicine for sin, Cleansing medicine for victory over Satan’s shame, and Preventative medicine for victory over sin.

12. Prescribing the Gospel Remedy • Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee. Let the water and the blood, from Thy wounded side which flowed, be of sin the double cure; save from wrath and make me pure. • The Quadruple Cure…

13. Prescribing the Gospel Remedy • Justification: “Forgiven!” • Reconciliation: “Welcome Home!” • Regeneration: “Saint!” • Redemption: “Victor!”

14. Justification: “Forgiven!” • Forgiving Father: “For who is able to express what a thing it is, when a man is assured in his heart that God neither is nor will be angry with him, but will be forever a merciful and loving Father to him for Christ’s sake? This is indeed a marvelous and incomprehensible liberty, to have the most high and sovereign Majesty so favorable to us. Wherefore, this is an inestimable liberty, that we are made free from the wrath of God forever.”

15. Justification: “Forgiven!” • Devil Craft: “It’s the supreme art of the devil that he can make the law out of the gospel. If I can hold on to the distinction between law and gospel, I can say to him any and every time that he should kiss my backside. Even if I sinned, I would say, “Should I deny the gospel on this account?”

16. Reconciliation: “Welcome Home!” • The Father’s Forever Family: “You say that the sins which we commit every day offend God, and therefore we are not saints. To this I reply: Mother love is stronger than the filth and scabbiness on a child, and so the love of God toward us is stronger than the dirt that clings to us. Accordingly, although we are sinners, we do not lose our filial relation on account of our filthiness, nor do we fall from grace on account of our sin.”

17. Reconciliation: “Welcome Home!” • Forever the Father’s Friend: “God must be much friendlier to me and speak to me in friendlier fashion than my Katy to little Martin. Neither Katy nor I could intentionally gouge out the eye or tear off the head of our child. Nor could God. God must have patience with us. He has given evidence of it, and therefore he sent his Son into our flesh in order that we may look to him for the best. When I reflect on the magnitude of God’s mercy and majesty, I am myself horrified at how far God has humbled himself.”

18. Justification and Reconciliation • “The conscience, spurred by the devil, the flesh, and the fallen world; says, ‘God is your enemy. Give up in despair.’ God, in His own Fatherly love and through His Son’s grace, and His Word, and the witness of His people; says, ‘I have no wrath. You are accepted in the beloved. I am not angry with you. We are reconciled!’”

19. Regeneration: “Saint!” • Gospel Memory Aids for Gospel Amnesia: “The Holy Scriptures call Christians saints and the people of God. It’s a pity that it’s forgotten that we are saints, for to forget this is to forget Christ.”

20. Regeneration: “Saint!” • “But now in the light of the gospel we plainly see who they are whom Christ and His Apostles call saints: not they who live a single life, or observe days, meats, apparel, and such other things, or in outward appearance do other great works, but they which believe that they are sanctified and cleansed by the death and blood of Christ. So Paul everywhere calls them holy, the children and heirs of God. Whoever then believes in Christ, whether he or she is man or woman, bond or free, is a saint; not by his own works, but by the works of God.”

21. Redemption: “Victor!” • Our Victory in Christ: “We are unable to accomplish anything against sin, death, and the devil by our own works. Therefore, another appears for us and in our stead who definitely can do better; he gives us his victory, and commands us to accept it and not doubt it. He says: ‘Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world;’ and again: ‘I live, and you will live also, and no one will take your joy from you.’”

22. Preaching the Gospel to One Another • “The word of a fellow-Christian has wonderful power. The voice of brethren and fellow Christians are to be heard and believed as the word and voice of God himself, as though God was speaking to them.” • “When we have laid bare our conscience to our brother and privately make known to him the evil that lurked within, we receive from our brother’s lips the word of comfort spoken by God himself. And if we accept this in faith, we find peace in the mercy of God speaking to us through our brother.”

23. Preaching the Gospel to One Another • “Be contented, therefore, and of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you. Depend boldly upon this; turn not to your own thoughts, but listen only to that which your pastors and preachers repeat to you out of God’s Word. Do not despise their word and comfort; for it is Christ himself who speaks to you through them.”

24. Your Gracious Father Says to You… Daily Behold in Christ’s Gospel Mirror Your Gracious Father Saying to You: “Forgiven!” “Welcome Home!” “Saint!” “Victor!”

25. Luther’s Guiding Goal • Faith Active in Love: “Paul therefore in this verse sets forth the whole life of a Christian, namely, that inwardly it consists in faith towards God, and outwardly in charity and good works towards our neighbor. In this verse Paul is not declaring what faith is nor what justification is, but what the Christian life is.” • Faith Activates Love: The conscious awareness of being loved by the Father through Christ is the only power capable of changing us.

26. Mind Renewal About Relationship Renewal • Grace and Peace: “These two words, grace and peace, comprehend in them whatever belongs to Christianity. Grace releases sin, and peace makes the conscience quiet. The two fiends that torment us are sin and conscience. But Christ has vanquished these two monsters, and trodden them underfoot, both in this world, and in that which is to come. Moreover, these two words, grace and peace, contain in them the whole sum of Christianity. Grace contains the remission of sins; peace a quiet and joyful conscience.”

27. Mind Renewal About Relationship Renewal • “Our”: “But weigh diligently every word of Paul, and specially mark well this pronoun, ‘our.’ You may easily believe that Christ the Son of God was given for the sins of Peter, of Paul, and of other saints, whom we account to have been worthy of this grace; but it is a very hard thing that you who judge yourself unworthy of this grace should from your heart say and believe that Christ was given for your own invincible, infinite, and horrible sins.”

28. Mind Renewal About Relationship Renewal • The Result:“When I have Christian righteousness reigning in my heart, I descend from heaven as the rain makes fruitful the earth; that is to say, I do good works, how and wheresoever the occasion arises. If I am a minister of the Word, I preach, comfort the brokenhearted, and administer the sacraments. If I am a householder, I govern my house and family well, and in the fear of God. If I am a servant, I do my master’s business faithfully. Whoever is assuredly persuaded that Christ alone is his righteousness, cheerfully and gladly in love works well in his vocation.”

29. Both/And: Gospel Indicatives and Gospel Imperatives • Gospel Indicatives Only:Sanctification is the art of getting used to our justification. • BothGospel Indicatives and Gospel Imperatives:Sanctifications is the art of applying our justification, reconciliation, regeneration, and redemption. • Comprehensive Progressive Sanctification: Living out our justification, reconciliation, regeneration, and redemption (gospel indicatives) through faith active in love (gospel imperatives).

30. Faith Never Takes a Holiday • The Heresy of Inactive Faith… • Do not use gospel liberty for gospel license but for gospel love. • “The gospel ministry is necessary in the Church, not only for the instruction of the ignorant, but also for the purpose of awakening those who know very well what they are to believe and how they are to live, and admonishing them to be on their guard daily and not to become indolent, disheartened or tired in the war they must wage on this earth with the devil, their own flesh, and all manner of evil.”

31. Daring Faith that Boldly Loves! • “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times. This confidence in God’s grace and knowledge of it makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all His creatures; and that is the work of the Holy Ghost in faith. Hence a man is ready and glad, without compulsion, to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, in love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace; and thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light fires.”

32. Sainthood and Victory! • The Freedom of the Christian: “Faith, however, is a divine work in us. It changes us and makes us to be born anew of God (John 1); it kills the old Adam and makes altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers, and it brings with it the Holy Ghost. Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith; and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises; it has already done them, and is always at the doing of them.”

33. So What? What Now? • From Martin Luther’s reconciling pastoral care, what could you apply to your life and ministry? • From Martin Luther’s guiding pastoral care, what could you apply to your life and ministry?

34. Counseling Under the Cross: How Martin Luther Applied the Gospel to Daily Life