(Tim) Under "What is Gospel-centered ministry, really...," there's been a lengthy series of exchanges in the comments concerning whether it's proper to preach evangelistic sermons to established churches. This is an exceedingly important discussion and I want to encourage readers to go down and read those comments in their proper context. But knowing some won't go there, here is my most recent response which can, to some degree, stand on its own. Whatever else you don't read, make sure not to pass over the critically important quote from Luther here recorded.
* * *
Augustine said, "Many sheep without, many wolves within." From the
founding of the Church, this has been the universal experience of
pastors as we care for our flocks. Yes, the Epistles demonstrate a
presumption that letters to believers are letters to believers. It's
hard to imagine how they could have been written otherwise. "To those
purporting to belong to Christ who are a part of that organization
purporting to be a true church in Galatia?" It doesn't work.
But do the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles provide evidence that our
Lord and His Apostles called the faith of those marked by the signs of
the Covenant into question? The answer to that question is an emphatic,
"Yes!" How long shall my list be? Think of those Christ contradicts,
telling them their father is not God, but the Devil (John 8:38
& ff.). And if we want to let ourselves off the hook by dismissing
Christ as our paradigm for pastoral care today under the rubric of His
omniscience, let's move to the Apostolic warning given to Simon Magus in
Acts 8. Or on to the many exhortations to baptized believers recorded
in the Epistles carefully calculated to warn against and expose
presumption--including the Letters to the Seven Churches (eg. Revelation
3:1-6).
So yes, we are to preach to our people normally addressing them as
true believers. But we also must test ourselves to see if we are in the
faith and call our flock to follow us in this discipline...
"Test
yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you
not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in
you--unless indeed you fail the test" 2
Corinthians 13:5)? That one simple command is
all we need to understand this aspect of our work.
And this isn't to mention the situation of most of us, that we
regularly have men and women under our Lord's Day church preaching who make
no claim to Christian faith. They matter, too, don't they?
How we handle this pastoral obligation is
something each of us has to face before the Lord, week by week. And yes, it's
not easy to fulfill this duty without furthering the error of overly-tender
consciences who fail to stand in our Holy Faith, confident in the
imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. Such weakness and fear are constants in ministry and must, also, receive our careful pastoral
ministry. It's a serious error not to know this disease and guard against it within our flocks.
But I'm convinced a larger error among Reformed pastors today is that
we never preach the fear of God, the Law of God, the Last Judgment, and
the necessity of fleeing spiritual presumption by testing the sincerity
of our faith. That's the error most of us need to repent of, and flee.
Here's an excerpt from Luther's
"Instructions for Parish Visitors" I've found extremely helpful:
In regard to doctrine we observe especially this defect that, while some
preach about the faith by which we are to be justified, It is still not
clearly enough explained how one shall attain to this faith, and almost
all omit one aspect of the Christian faith without which no one can
understand what faith is or means. For Christ says in the last chapter
of Luke [24:47] that we are to preach in his name repentance and
forgiveness of sins.
Many now talk only about the forgiveness of sins and say little or
nothing about repentance. There neither is forgiveness of sins without
repentance nor can forgiveness of sins be understood with out
repentance. It follows that If we preach the forgiveness of sins without
repentance that the people Imagine that they have already obtained the
forgiveness of sins, becoming thereby secure and without compunction of
conscience. This would be a greater error and sin than all the errors
hitherto prevailing. Surely we need to be concerned lest, as Christ says
In Matt. 12 [:45] the last state becomes worse than the first.
Therefore we have instructed and admonished pastors that it is their
duty to preach the whole gospel and not one portion without the other.
For God says in Deut. 4 [:2]: “You shall not add to the word. . . nor
take from it? There are preachers who now attack the pope because of
what he has added to the Scriptures, which unfortunately is all too
true. But when these do not preach repentance, they tear out a great
part of Scripture. They have very little good to say about the eating of
meat and the like, though they should not keep silent when they have an
opportunity to defend Christian liberty against tyranny. What else is
this than what Christ says in Matt. 23 [:24]: “Straining out a gnat and
swallowing a camel?"
So we have admonished them to exhort the people diligently and
frequently to repent and grieve over their sins and to fear the judgment
of God. Nor are they to neglect the greatest and most important element
of repentance, for both John and Christ condemned the Pharisees more
severely for their hypocritical holiness than for ordinary sins. The
preachers are to condemn the gross sins of the common man, but more
rigorously demand repentance where there is false holiness....
The preachers are to proclaim and explain the Ten Commandments often
and earnestly, yet not only the commandments but also how God will
punish those who do not keep them and how he often has inflicted
temporal punishment. For such examples are written In order to forewarn
people, for instance, how the angels spoke to Abraham in Gen. 19
[:12f.], and told how God would punish Sodom and destroy it with the
fire of hell. For they knew that he would tell it to his descendants so
that they would learn to fear God.
So too they are to point out and condemn various specific vices. as
adultery, drunkenness, envy, and hate, and how God has punished these,
indicating that without doubt after this life he will punish still more
severely if there is not improvement here.
The people are thus to be urged and exhorted to fear God, to repent
and show contrition, lest their ease and life of false security be
punished. Therefore Paul says In Rom. 3 [:20]: “Through the law comes
(only) knowledge of sin.” True repentance is nothing but an
acknowledgment of sin.
Then it is important that faith be preached. Whoever experiences
grief and contrition over his sins should believe that his sins are
forgiven, not on account of his merits, but on account of Christ.
When the contrite and fearful conscience experiences peace, comfort,
and joy on hearing that his sins are forgiven because of Christ, then
faith Is present—the faith that makes him righteous before God. We are
to teach the people diligently that this faith cannot exist without
earnest and true contrition and fear of God, as It is written in Psalm
110 Prov. 1 [:7], “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
And Isaiah says in the last chapter: "On whom does God look except on
the trembling and contrite heart?"
This shall be proclaimed repeatedly, so that the people do not
entertain false notions and think they have faith when they are far from
having it. It shall be made clear that only If they have faith can they
truly repent and grieve over their sins. Without repentance theirs is
an imagined faith. True faith brings comfort and joy in God, and we do
not feel such comfort and joy where there is no repentance or
fearfulness, as Christ says in Matt. 11 [:5]: “The poor have good news
preached to them.”
These two are the first elements of Christian life: Repentance or
contrition and grief, and faith through which we receive the forgiveness
of sins and are righteous before God. Both should grow and increase in
us.on
-from Luther's Works; Volume 40; Church and Ministry II; Edited by
Conrad Bergendoff; Muhlenberg Press; Philadelphia; 1958; "Instructions
for the Visitors of Parish Pastors"; pp. 274 ff.
So Luther commands the preaching of the Law as a method of awakening
those without compunction of conscience. Where and when would Reformed
pastors today do the same? I grieve to think how many would call it
spiritual abuse.
There are few things more dangerous to a pastor's
tenure than faithfulness in warning our congregation, those who have been marked by Baptism and the Lord's Supper, of their need to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith. Churches today are filled with church members rendered "without
compunction of conscience" by unfaithful shepherds who coddled them through the neglect of God's Law and warnings, never leading them through true fear of God
and repentance, to saving faith in the work of the Cross of Christ. I'm convinced that many, if not most, evangelicals
(including, and maybe especially, those in Reformed churches) are in the
precise situation Luther here describes: they have been given over to
an error "worse than all those hitherto prevailing," an
error worse than the Roman Catholic Church prior to the Reformation.
This is the true
state of the Protestant church today. We have removed the fear of God
and are left with congregations of souls enslaved to greed,
adultery, imaged idolatry, rebellion, and gossip who yet remain
entirely without compunction of conscience, eating at the Lord's
Table with impunity, never obstructed and guarded from presumption by loving and
faithful shepherds.
Yes, there's always a danger of too-tender consciences, and we must
work to assure such godly souls of the certainty of God's call and work
through Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. But such souls are exceptional
in our wicked day when to be American and to be Christian are one and
the same.
