The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther

I was reading something by H. J. Iwand, a German contemporary of Barth, entitled "The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther" and I came across something really profound. I want to try and share it with you, so I'm going to do my best in this post. All quotes are from Iwand, unless otherwise stated. Scripture quotations are from the ESV. So let's begin:

Sins that are interpreted as emanating from a person are really sins of action and constitute a knowledge of sin in terms of "thoughts, words, and deeds." Ultimately when people conceive of sin in this way, they are considering the "fruits" of sin which are mere symptoms of the true sin that is concealed behind them. With such a concept of sin, one is misled to consider all manner of sins without recognizing the true nature of the sickness. Furthermore, if one succeeds in repressing the symptoms, the sickness will attack from the inside. Any righteousness shown in this manner is really hypocrisy. In his natural despair--which, in the last analysis is a false one because the person is despairing only of the "appearance" of what he is--the person will not look at himself, but will always try to break free of the mistakes and weaknesses that tarnish the picture of the perfect human being to which that person aspires. He will try to cast off his sins and faults, but will remain the same even in the attempt.

Sin is not merely the bad things we do (or the good things we don't) but it is a state of being, a condition in which we are completely and hopelessly stuck. What we often call "sins" are just the results of this condition. Even if we are able to suppress these sins, we are still a sinner. In fact, if the symptoms are suppressed, the disease becomes even more dangerous, for we are likely to forget that we have this fatal disease at all and we stop relying on the healer. In fact, we never truly suppress the symptoms, we just put them in a form where they are difficult to recognize. Isaiah 64:6 says "all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment." The works that we call good are actually sinful, for we do them not for God's sake, but for our own. They are almost always (and perhaps actually always) an attempt to justify ourselves, either before others or before God, rather than to receive justification from God.

Also, notice in the second-to-last sentence, that it is not God's standard of perfection that is being aspired to, but our own. Our standard is much different from God's standard, although we generally think that our standard is God's standard.

However, casting off one's sin is quite impossible. A person must first be destroyed because he is the person who holds out his own ideal of what is good, true, just, and godly. Such a person believes he needs to be directed to God only because of his incomplete, weak nature (as if the goal of perfection is not to need God!) he thinks that grace is only a stage; some kind of beneficent, helping gesture on God's part to help people to reach their own goal of perfection by means of his holy power, because they are simply not strong enough or perfect enough to do it on their own. If that is the case, then God would be merely a means to one's achieving one's own self-perfection. It is exactly this kind of person who uses God, but does not believe in him.

Our standard of the perfect human being is clearly stated in the fifth verse of Genesis 3: "when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." We view human perfection as perfect divine knowledge, which brings with it perfect divine independence and perfect divine power. We really want to be "like God." The fact is we really aren't that interested in being human at all, we have always wanted to be more heavenly and less earthly. We want to ascend above our station, to become "more" than we were created to be. This is the essence of our rebellion. The fall is really an upward fall, not a downward one. It is not that we became too entrenched in earthly things, but rather that we abandoned our charge (see Genesis 1:28, 2:15) in order to storm heaven and position ourselves as gods. The life of faith, of relying on God for everything including our righteousness, is not a stopgap made necessary by the fall--rather it is the way things were always meant to be. We were designed to rely on God; the ideal of a perfect human who does it all himself is our own sinful machination.

This type of person would be happiest if he could do it alone--without God--since even his own mistakes irritate him because they show him that he is not God and that he is actually God's enemy and opponent. God's judgment stands firmly over against this person. He must be destroyed. His mistakes and weaknesses, however, must not be lightened too soon just so that they are easier for him to carry. In other words, our sins prompt us to seek mercy anew and in so doing they make clear to us that everything works for good for those who love God. For the reminder of God's mercy and the admonition that we always live in his mercy and are never in a position of not needing it--that is the best thing that the new person in us can encounter.

We need to know our place, to be content with being human and not aspire to be gods. The only way to do this is through the cross. The old person, the person above condemned by God, must be killed so that the new person can be raised in his place. (See Romans 6:6) As Luther puts it: "[God] makes us conform to himself and crucifies us, thus making real, that is, wretched and sinful men, out of unhappy and proud gods."

So, if the perfect human is not the god we want it to be, what, or perhaps who, is it? The answer is simple, if not easy: Jesus Christ (surprise, huh?) To free us from our attempt to be gods, God became human to show us what we were created to be. We were created to be earthly creatures, relying on God for everything, perfectly trusting that he is God for us, working everything for our good.

So what do you think?