The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel by CFW Walther

1. The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel by CFW Walther ~ The Nineteenth ~ Evening Lecture

2. Review: • Which important Reformation era teaching did Walther touch on in the 18th evening lecture? • What common Lutheran practice does this especially apply to (a practice particularly criticized by the Reformed)?

3. 1. The “Pietists” insisted that you couldn’t claim to be a real Christian unless you could do what? (pg 193 top.) • “… state the exact day and hour when you were converted and entered into grace.” • Some can (Saul, the Jailer, the five thousand on Pentecost), but not all. • “many others have no such record.”

4. 2. Walther grants that many of the Pietists were well-intentioned people. Then why did the Pietists insist that anyone ought to be able to remember the very moment of his conversion? (pg 194 bottom.) • “They imagined a person must suddenly experience a heavenly joy and hear an inner voice telling him that he had been received into grace.” • They taught that conversion and grace was always accompanied by strong inner conviction and emotion.

5. Thesis IX (cont.) • In the fifth place, the Word of God is not rightly divided when sinners who have been struck down and terrified by the Law are directed, not to the Word and the Sacraments, but to their own prayers and wrestlings with God in order that they may win their way into a state of grace; in other words, when they are told to keep on praying and struggling until they feel that God has received them into grace.

6. 3. Up till now, Walther has been discussing those who base their faith on their feelings. Now he turns to those who say the opposite -- that you can be a Christian and not have any feelings at all! How does Walther describe the second class of people? (pg 195 middle). • “spiritually dead.” • “they have never felt anguish on account of their sins.” • “People in that condition have nothing but the dead faith of the intellect, a specious faith, or, to express it still more drastically, a lip faith.”

7. 4. Will every Christian have some kind of feeling about his faith? What does the Bible say in Romans 8:16, Romans 5:1 and Romans 14:7? (pg 196.) • Rom. 8, 16, “The Spirit indeed beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” • Rom. 5, 1 “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” • Rom. 14, 17 “The kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.”

8. 5. Lutherans do not teach that one should base his salvation and his state of grace on his feeling. But what do we also not teach? (pg 196 bottom.) • “… that he can be a good Christian without having experienced any feeling in regard to religious matters.” • “Melanchthon based his joy on his feeling; but no matter what Luther’s feelings were, he clung to the Word.”

9. 6. Luther constantly urged people to have a bold and courageous faith. But how can we do that if we know that we are sinners? (pg 198 top.) • “We know, indeed, that we are poor sinners; but in this business we are not to consider what we are and what we do, but what Christ is, has done, and is still doing for us.” • That is the reason why it produces great joy and courage and intrepid spirits, who are not afraid of anything and able to do all things.

10. 7. Walther lamented that, in his miserable times, such courageous faith was rare. What two kinds of people did he observe instead? (pg 199 middle.) • “Either men are spiritually dead and therefore are unconcerned about their soul’s welfare, imagining that they will get to heaven anyway…” • “… or they are filled with anguish and uncertainty.”

11. 8. In fact, Walther says, every Christian will always have two kinds of feelings simultaneously within his heart. What are they? (pg 200 top.) • “There must be confidence in Christians and at the same time fear and trembling.” • “I can cross an awful abyss, trembling at the thought that I may be hurled into it; but seeing a barrier erected on both sides of my path, I gather confidence and cross over, confident of safety.” • “That is the strange paradox in the heart of a Christian: he fears and trembles and still is assured.”

12. 9. At this point Walther returns to his discussion of Thesis Nine. When it comes to feeling and believing, which of the two comes before the other? (pg 201 top.) • “First a person must believe; after that he may feel. Feeling proceeds from faith, not faith from feeling.”

13. 10. The apostle John said, “if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.” Our heart is indeed a judge, but what’s the good news about that? (pg 201 bottom.) • “Our heart is indeed a judge, yet only a subordinate one. A higher judge, namely, God, is above our heart.” • “I can say to my troubled heart: “Be still, my heart! Keep silence, my conscience! I have appealed to a higher court.” •  Though all the devils in hell roar at him, “You are lost!” he can answer them: “It is not so; I am not lost, but redeemed forever. Here I have the written evidence in God’s Word.”

14. 11. A person who experiences “darkness, great anguish, grievous doubts, and divers afflictions” may be spiritually dead, or he might be an afflicted believer — how can you tell the difference? (pg 202 middle.) • “If I am worried about my lack of the feeling of grace for which I am earnestly longing, that is proof that I am a true Christian.” • “One who desires to believe is already a believer. For how could a person possibly desire to believe something which he regards untrue?

15. 12. Many people — in our day, too — associate Christian faith with having pleasant feelings. But when do these often vanish? (pg 203 middle.) • “…in the hour of death, when the final agony drives them away.” • “Happy the man who in that hour can say: —I cling to what my Savior taught And trust it whether felt or not.”

16. 13. We come to Jesus to find comfort when our sins torment us. But the “fanatics” teach that the comfort of Christ is only conveyed by what? (pg 203 middle.) • “All fanatics hold that the privilege of coming to Jesus and taking comfort in Him is not conveyed to them except by their feeling of divine grace.”

17. 14. According to Luther, when does true faith “give credence”? (204 top.) • “ it declines to know and to be assured before it will give credence, but it gives credence the moment God’s Word is spoken.”

18. 15. Walther compares a Christian’s experiences to bread. What kind of bread does a new Christian get? A more experienced Christian? (pg 204 middle.) • “God gives to Christians in their initial stage the sugar-bread of pleasant feelings.” • “But when they have passed through a number of spiritual experiences which exercised their faith, the sugar-bread stops, and they are given black rye-bread, which sometimes is quite hard and tastes stale.”

19. 16. “What a kind father, then, is God to his Christians!” Says Walther. Why? (pg 205top.) • “He does not lay heavy burdens on them at the start. He gets them accustomed to His dealings gradually.” • “Then He withdraws comforts from them in order that they may learn to lay hold of Him also in the dark.”

20. 17. What must happen before men can experience God’s goodness, test it and prove it to be true? (pg 205.) • “For the goodness of God must be proclaimed through His Word.”

21. 18. Some Christians rely on their own feelings or experiences. What did Luther say about this? (pg 205 bottom.) • “God will not permit us to rely on anything or to cling with our hearts to anything that is not Christ as revealed in His Word, no matter how holy and full of the Spirit it may seem. ” • “Faith has no other ground on which to take its stand.”

22. 19. Where did Mary and Joseph finally find the 12-year-old Jesus? Where must we find him? (pg 206 middle.) • “ They had to abandon everything: their friends, acquaintances, the entire city of Jerusalem, every ingenious device, all that they themselves and other men could do. All these things did not provide them with the proper assurance, until they sought Him in the Temple, where He was about His Father’s business.” • “We must seek Christ in His Father’s house and business: we must simply cling to the Word of the Gospel alone.”

23. 20. On page 207, Walther sums up the problem with the Reformed (“fanatical”) sects. What is it? • “They do not rely solely on Christ and His Word, but chiefly on something that takes place in themselves. ” • “They imagine that all is well with them because they have turned from their former ways. As if that were a guarantee of reaching heaven!”