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OK. A lot of law there. Was it a proper usage of the law?
What could he have done differently to make this a better message?
Or, was it great just the way he said it?
Filed under: Law and Gospel |
The Old Adam Lives! 
There was NO Gospel in it. Preaching/teaching the law without the the good news of rescue is the ultimate cruelty… it leaves people dead/lost in their sin. The message here was all about self determination… a futile exercise.
Pat,
He might as well have said, “Thank you Lord, that I’m not like other men.”
This is what happens (I believe) when one preaches the law for holiness.
It creates, despair, phoniness, or self-righteousness.
I wonder if such preachers and teachers ever really unpack the message of the prodigal (wait for it) SON – doesn’t Isaiah describe ALL of us that way, and doesn’t Jesus come to rescue exactly those people?
“Holiness” can so easily become a guise which essentially amounts
to a stance of ‘I don’t need such grace”, when we so need it every day.
The manner of teaching on the video is pretty commonplace.
The real solution of the Gospel is virtually unheard.
I’ve not seen this before and watched it a couple times to make sure I understood where he was coming from.
Maybe it was the way he was talking…
He was a little angry, and, mabye, rightly so concerning those who profess to be Christians and yet ‘want’ to still be in the world and try to please God at the same time.
I’m reminded by Jesus’ words that say if anyone puts his hands to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. He said this to a man who said he would follow Christ but wanted to go back to his house first.
Should there have been gospel in the video clip? Well, he was making a point between true discipleship and pretenders who still want the sins of the world along with the blessings of the Father.
Not talking about stumbling into sin here……no, he’s talking about intentially reaching for the mire while trying to follow Christ….Jesus said this person is not fit for the kingdom.
Thanks Steve
seems like his paradigm is all skewed. he assumes morality and godliness are the same thing.
There probably should have been more of a Gospel focus, I agree. Why should we not be looking to test the edges of morality? Because we are baptized into Christ. We were baptized into His death. He died so that we could live, not that we should use His grace as a license to sin. To live in sin (or to seek to live in sin) is to not live according to who we are in Christ.
The problem with the video is that this was not touched on at all. It was just like, “if you want to play around the edges of Christianity, then just go back to the world.” It didn’t explain why we shouldn’t play around the edges except with some sort of appeal to commitment and the idea that real Christians should love Jesus and hate sin. But if your focus is continually the law, then you should not be surprised that people act in a law-focused way by “testing the edges.” If you want people to hate sin and love Christ more, preach Law and Gospel on a regular basis! Don’t just say, “well, you should be more committed and you should love Christ and hate sin, and if you don’t, then just hit the road.”
[…] permits lies at the very heart of the problem. One of my good Lutheran friends recently posted a youtube clip that touches on this attitude at his site. I am not saying I agree with the man in the clip, because his message is indeed incomplete, but […]
Steve,
I wanted to thank you for posting this video. It gave me an interesting way to look at the current issues in the ELCA ironically enough.
Jeff,
The ELCA has thrown out God’s law.
We use the law to convict of sin, not to make us better Christians.
The man in the video was after “better Christians”. That is impossible.
The ELCA is after asserting the prideful self and having NO conviction of sin…because there is no sin.
In either case, it is a complete distortion of the law/gospel paradigm and the gospel just goes away.
Thanks, my friend.