GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 3:9
9 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
What happens when someone refuses God’s grace? What happens when someone rejects Christ? Jesus said, “Whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16). The simple fact is that refusing to repent means turning against Christ; turning away from God.
The image of the ax is used by the prophets as an image of God’s judgment: “The LORD Almighty will lop off the boughs with great power… He will cut down the forest thickets with an ax” (Isaiah 10:33-34). “They will come against [Egypt] with axes, like men who cut down trees” (Jeremiah 46:22). So the ax, in this case, is the threat of God’s judgment. God looks for the evidence of our repentance—good fruit—in our lives. God wants us to be forgiven, but anyone who rejects forgiveness itself distances himself from it and can’t receive it. “Repent,” Peter said, “and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out” (Acts 3:19). Repentance bears the broken heart of the sinner so that the keys of Christ may unlock his sins and set him free. Jesus said, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). We call this act of unlocking sins the Ministry of the Keys. Luther explained the keys this way:
(First) “The use of the keys is that special power and right which Christ gave to his church on earth: to forgive the sins of penitent sinners but refuse forgiveness to the impenitent as long as they do not repent.”
(Second) “A Christian congregation with its called servant of Christ uses the keys in accordance with Christ’s command by forgiving those who repent of their sin and are willing to amend, and by excluding from the congregation those who are plainly impenitent that they may repent. I believe that when this is done, it is as valid and certain in heaven also, as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with us himself.”
When sinners have been struck down by the law and are terrified for their very souls, it is a terrible misuse of the gospel, in fact it is a terrible sin, not to direct them to the word of God and the sacraments for their comfort and forgiveness, but instead to continue to hold the hammer of the law over their heads. Yet this outrage is so commonplace among Protestant churches that many of these Christians will hardly bat an eyelash when they are directed to their own prayers and wrestlings with God in order that they might win their own way into a state of grace. The point is almost always that they are forced into thinking that they must somehow “feel” God’s grace rather than trust in his recorded word. There are three important doctrinal errors that Christians make when this happens.
1 . These are too often people or denominations that don’t believe or teach that God has really reconciled us through Christ on the cross. They think of God as being “hard to deal with” (Walther), whose heart needs to be touched and softened by our tears and prayers. This denies the factual labor of Christ on the cross, the central moment of Christianity, and flatly rejects passages like 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.”
2 . This is a wrong understanding of the gospel. They take the gospel as instruction for man instead of medicine for man. The New Testament is taken to be an IKEA and not an E.R. It ignores passages like Colossians 1:21, “He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”
3 . This is a wrong understanding—a false teaching, in fact—about faith. Too many Protestants are being taught that faith is nothing more than a quality in man, something by which he is improved. Walther expresses the problem: “It is true, indeed, that genuine faith changes a person completely. It brings love into a person’s heart. Faith cannot be without love, just as little as fire can be without heat. But this quality of faith is not the reason why it justifies us, giving us what Christ has acquired for us… The Scriptural answer to the question: ‘What must I do to be saved?’ is: ‘You must believe; therefore you are not to do anything at all yourself.’” (Law and Gospel p. 136-137).
If you have been misled or misguided into any of these errors, or if you are terrified by the ax at the root of your tree, then hear the gospel of Jesus as if for the first time in your life. It is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). And Jesus said, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16). Not might be. Will be. You and I have been rescued by the blood of Jesus. Not by some future feeling, but by blood shed in payment in the past for all of your guilt, guilt which has been wiped away forever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota