03 March 2009
Old Lutheran Quote of the Day
Christ became for us a curse upon the timber-trunk of the cross so that we would not be eternally cursed by God. Christ was pierced in the side to atone for the sin which was brought into the world by Eve, who was crafted from the side of Adam. Christ died so that we might live forever. From this we see that the suffering of Christ is the clearest reflector of comfort in the face of sin. -- Johann Gerhard, *An Expalanation* p. 26
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Would God really curse us eternally? Ya think?
How does being pierced in the side atone? What has the one to do with the other?
The *suffering* of Christ, a comfort???
It's a Lutheran thing; you wouldn't understand...
:)
The suffering of Christ is our greatest comfort, for His wounds are the cleft into the Rock to which we flee and hide. "Within Thy wounds hide me and suffer me never to be separated from Thee!"
I can understand taking great comfort in the faith and love that made Christ willing to undergo that for us. I can take huge comfort from His having overcome it all I can take enormous comfort in the fact that He has blazed the trail, has gone ahead of us down the darkest path. But His suffering per se, no; to me, it's just horrible.
Can you help me understand why Lutherans find comfort in His sufferint?
We confess not only our Lord's active obedience, but His passive obedience, in which He freely chooses to suffer the consequences of our disobedience and the judgment that was against us fell solidly on Him. Thus, our Lord tremblingly receives the cup *from the hands of His Father* and thus "it was the will of the Lord to crush Him" and "the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all." And our Lord quotes from Zechariah: "I will strike the shepherd." In His holy sufferings we behold both the terror of divine wrath that is our due and we behold the unspeakable comfort that our Blessed Trinity freely chooses to take such wrath into HIMSELF so that it does not destroy us, the creatures whom He loves so much as to give His only Son to be our sin-bearer. As St. Peter Chrysologus was getting at in the other quote: thereby His word of wrath is upheld, but in such a way that His mercy triumphs, and salvation is open to all who will take refuge in the wounds of their Redeemer.
Here's how we sing it:
Whence come these sorrows,
Whence this mortal anguish?
It is my sins for which Thou, Lord, must languish.
Yea, all the wrath, the woe, Thou dost inherit
This I do merit.
What punishment so strange is suffered yonder?
The Shepherd dies for sheep that loved to wander;
The Master pays the debt His servants owe Him, who would not know Him.
The sinless Son of God must die in sadness;
The sinful child of man may live in gladness;
Man forfeited his life and is acquitted;
God is committed.
O wondrous love, whose depth no heart hath sounded,
That brought Thee here, by foes and thieves surrounded!
All worldly pleasures, heedless, I was trying,
While Thou wert dying.
Yet, unrequited, Lord, I would not leave Thee;
I will renounce whate'er doth grieve Thee
And quench with thoughts of Thee and prayers most lowly
All fires unholy.
So do you mean you take comfort in Christ's sufferings because those are sufferings we won't have to bear? But, but but -- but they are! Look at all the sufferings St. Paul bore, culminating in death. And St. Peter and St. Andrew, crucified, and martyrs thrown to lions.
The suffering we won't have to bear is something of a different order, something much worse, and something everlasting. Upon the Cross, we see no more than the merest hint of it.
So I doubt you mean that. Then perhaps you mean that in Christ's sufferings, we see the Father's (and Son's and Holy Spirit's) wrath, by which, according to the "Lutheran thing", He would have cursed us forever, diverted away from us who deserve it and directed at the only One who didn't deserve it, and in this, you find comfort? I dunno... It's a miscarriage of justice, a greater one than some people think just forgiving the debt would be if God were to exercise that divine prerogative, as in, "I will have mercy upon whom I wil have mercy; I will show compassion to whom I will show compassion."
I could sing that hymn, with clarification to one line. If I were to sing, "The Master pays the debt His servants owe Him," I'd mean the debt of obedience. Isn't obedience the best sacrifice? Surely God does not want to be paid in the currency of suffering.
Or do you mean you take comfort in Christ's sufferings because to behold them eases the guilty conscience? ???
Dear Anastasia,
In beholding the sufferings of Christ, we ARE beholding sufferings we will never have to bear. He suffers the pangs of hell in a mystery that is beyond all fathoming to free us from them. He chooses that horrible loneliness so that we will never have to taste or know it.
Does it mean we will not suffer with Him? You know that we do NOT believe that. It means that when we suffer, we will suffer WITH Him and our suffering will not be in any sense a sign of God's displeasure but a gift of His grace. How did Schmemann pray that at the last Eucharist he celebrated? "Thank you for the sufferings You lay upon us, for they cleanse us from selfishness and teach us the one things needful"?
As I said, He indeed paid the debt of obedience we owed to God and paid it fully - the perfect and representative Man for all humanity. But we also believe that He also endured the sufferings that our every sin demanded and did so in our place and did so freely and as the gift of the Father's love.
"Go forth, my Son, the Father said
And free my children from their dread
Of sin and condemnation.
The wrath, the stripes, are hard to bear
But by Your passion they may share
The fruits of Your salvation."
So confusing...
Were there two debts, then, the one to be satisfied by obedience and the other, by suffering? Or was it only one debt and the obedience was insufficient to pay it? So Christ paid our debt twice? Or if the obedience was offered and accepted on behalf of all mankind, didn't that cancel out our sins? So what was left to punish? Isn't obedience, legally, supposed to be rewarded, not punished?
Or is it the theory that on the scale of merit, obedience only brings us back up to the zero mark, but we need something in the plus range in order to be saved?
For we were enemies of God through sin, and God had appointed the sinner to die. There must needs therefore have happened one of two things; either that God, in His truth, should destroy all men, or that in His loving-kindness He should cancel the sentence. But behold the wisdom of God; He preserved both the truth of His sentence, and the exercise of His loving-kindness. Christ took our sins in His body on the tree, that we by His death might die to sin, and live unto righteousness.--St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XIII
“And the Lamb of God not only did this, but was chastised on our behalf, and suffered a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of the multitude of our sins; and so He became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins, because He received death for us, and transferred to Himself the scourging, the insults, and the dishonour, which were due to us, and drew down on Himself the apportioned curse, being made a curse for us. And what is that but the price of our souls? And so the oracle says in our person: “By his stripes we were healed,” and “The Lord delivered him for our sins,” with the result that uniting Himself to us and us to Himself, and appropriating our sufferings, He can say, “I said, Lord, have mercy on me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee.” - Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio Evangelica, X.1
“A sacrifice was needed to reconcile the Father on high with us and to sanctify us, since we had been soiled by fellowship with the evil one. There had to be a sacrifice which both cleansed and was clean, and a purified, sinless priest…. God overturned the devil through suffering and His Flesh which He offered as a sacrifice to God the Father, as a pure and altogether holy victim – how great is His gift! – and reconciled God to the human race…Since He gave His Blood, which was sinless and therefore guiltless, as a ransom for us who were liable to punishment because of our sins, He redeemed us from our guilt. He forgave us our sins, tore up the record of them on the Cross and delivered us from the devil’s tyranny." --St. Gregory Palamas, Homily 16, 21, 24, 31
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