Theology of the CrossThe Two Natures of God

© 2011 Rev. Michael L Mueller

Bio• Undergraduate Psychology• Graduate Business, Divinity• Experience

ARCO Major ProjectsNBC Contracting for West CoastGE Corporate Business DevelopmentUS Bancorp Marketing, Technology, IntegrationWells Fargo Business ManagementYavapai College Business, Economics, Law, StatsRisen Lord Senior Pastor

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The Two Natures of God

Holy• Law• Justice• Standards of BehaviorTheology of Glory• Earned Righteousness• Decision for Faith• ‘Me’ at Center of Faith• Bounty Now• Glory Later

Merciful• Gospel• Mercy• Forgiveness for BehaviorTheology of the Cross• Granted Righteousness• Given Faith• Christ at Center of Faith• Comfort Now• Eternal Rest Later

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Christendom

• Bible: Divided into two main approaches to God

• I must do for God– I choose God– I am God’s hands & feet– I give my heart to God

• God does for me– God chooses me– God serves me– Holy Spirit converts

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God for Us: Who Said This?• Salvation is the work of God. It is He alone who quickens the soul

"dead in trespasses and sins," and it is He also who maintains the soul in its spiritual life.

• If I am prayerful, God makes me prayerful; if I have graces, they are God's gifts to me; if I hold on in a consistent life, it is because He upholds me with His hand. I do nothing whatever towards my own preservation

• Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Wherein I sin, that is my own; but wherein I act rightly, that is of God, wholly and completely.

• Do I live before men a consecrated life? It is not I, but Christ who liveth in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God's Holy Spirit sanctifies me.

• Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul, and helped me to feed upon it.

• Do I live on the manna which comes down from heaven? What is that manna but Jesus Christ himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink?

Charles Spurgeon – A Baptist! 5

Change? What’s Change?

• Lutherans are frozen in understanding of Scripture

• God’s nature doesn’t change• His Word—‘Jesus the Christ’—has same plain

meaning now as when Holy Spirit authored it• Truth is an unchanging absolute• Translate Bible for plain, intended meaning

– Scripture to interpret Scripture– Declarative to understand symbolic– Everything centers on Christ, and Him crucified

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Sola Scriptura• Some say

– “gender inclusive” language for Holy Trinity—“Mother, Child & Womb” or “Rock, Redeemer & Friend” or “The Lover, The Beloved & The Love”

– “As we are all aware, the Bible contains many errors that need to be corrected”

• Lutherans say– Insulting to not use God’s self-given name– God’s Name is who He is

• God’s Word, as a whole and in all its parts, is the inspired, inerrant and infallible Word of God

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Sola Scriptura

• II Timothy 3:16: All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness

• II Peter 1:20-21: …no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

• I Corinthians 2:13: And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

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Sola Gracia

• Pope Paul: “Indulgences are applied to a sinner’s account as if they are the meritorious good works of Mary and other saints...to satisfy the justice of God concerning the temporal punishment of the sinner’s transgressions.

• Arminianism: Man has free will to respond or resist God’s invitation to believe. God does His part, now it’s up to you to do your part.

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Who Chooses?• Salvation is by God’s grace alone• Romans 5:10—For if while we were enemies we

were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life

• Romans 9:16— So then it [faith] depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy

• Romans 11:35-36a—Or who has given a gift to Him that he might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

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Presence of God in Saving• Lutheran viewpoint ‘Incarnational‘

–God's purpose done through earthly things, such as a Jewish nation or even a person: Jesus

• and ‘Sacramental‘–God's saving work, as promised,

borne through earthly things, such as Jesus Himself, and what He said would bear His presence

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Grace Delivered“Means of Grace” Tangible ways to deliver grace and assure sins are forgiven for Jesus’ sake God’s Word breathes His life into us (II Timothy 3:16a—All Scripture is breathed out by God)Holy Baptism is adoption by the Father and ties to rebirth and renewal in Jesus (Titus 3; Acts 2:36-39, 22:12-16; Romans 6:3-5; Colossians 2:9-12) I Peter 3:18-22—“Baptism now saves”)Lord’s Supper is our closest communion with Christ as we receive His body and blood (Matthew 26:26-28—“This is My body…this is My blood…forgiveness of sins” (Mark 14:22-25, Luke 22:14-20; I Corinthians 11:17-29) 12

What’s Communion?

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a partaking of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a partaking of the body of Christ? Because we, the many, are one bread, one body, for we all partake of the One Bread. I Corinthians 10:16-17 LITV

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Lord’s Supper• Power in promise & fulfillment of Christ's presence• God acts through symbols that He has a real presence in

– Burning bush (Exodus 3:1-8)– Pillar of fire at night & cloud during day (Exodus 13:18)– Column of smoke, tent of meeting (Exodus 40:34-38)– Prophets acting as Gods visible presence (Hosea 3:1-5)– Jesus birth and Name “God with us” (Matthew 1:18-23)– Jesus with us gathered in His Name (Matthew 18:23)– Real presence of Jesus in, with and under the bread and

wine in the Lords Supper (I Corinthians 11:29; Matthew 26:26-29) 14

What do I get in Communion?

• If judge by senses or reason—just bread and wine• Some say, physically changed into blood, body• Bible says

– Cup we bless, bread we break—so real bread & wine– Also, “partaking” body & blood of Christ– So: BOTH bread & wine, body & blood– How? Same supernatural presence as when two or

three are gathered in Jesus’ Name—He is really there!

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Sola Fide

• Romans 3:22: Everyone who believes has God’s approval through faith in Jesus Christ

• Romans 3:28: For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law

• Ephesians 2:8-9: For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast

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Sola Fide

• “through faith alone” permeates everything we Lutherans believe and teach

• Sole object of saving faith is Jesus Christ and His resurrection

• Only by Holy Spirit can say, “I believe”• Proclamation of Gospel—in Word and

Sacrament—that Holy Spirit gives gift of faith

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Sola Christos

• John 14:6—I AM the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to the Father except through Me.

• Sincere beliefs in wrong thing not effective– Like child draw stamp on envelope, expect delivered

• I Colossians 1:22-24—For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God

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What is the Theology of the Cross?

NOT “simply a repetition of the Passion story,” or “just another treatment of the doctrine of atonement,” or a theodicy or theology of suffering, or “just an account of an unusual sort of religious experience, a kind of spirituality.” “It is rather a particular perception of the world and our destiny, which Luther came to call looking at all things through suffering and the cross.” [Forde, xi-xii]or, to put it another way:

in one’s whole life, suffering God’s action in the cross

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Scriptural Basis• Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone

would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24)

• But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world (Galatians 6:14)

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• The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him (Romans 8:16-17)

• For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (I Corinthians 1:17-18)

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Baptized into Crucifixion with Christ

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His (Romans 6:3-5)

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Alive with Christ!

We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. (Romans 6:3-8)

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Heidelberg Disputation

I-VIII The Problem of Good WorksIX-XII The Problem of WillXIII-XIVThe Way of Glory versus the Way of the CrossXXV-XXVIII God’s Work in us: the Righteousness of Faith 24

16th Century Sinner

• We don’t have what God wants

• God seems like an ever present angry parent

• No way to meet God’s demands in the Law

• I feel guilty and want to make amends

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Modern Day Sinner

• I don’t have what I want and I demand to know why

• God is a neglectful, absent, unconcerned parent—cannot be helpful

• Guilt is replaced by meaninglessness (Forde)

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Good Works Not the Question?• Theology of the Cross explains difference:

– Desire vs. Experience — Perception vs. Reality• Does not provide means to manipulate God

– “We do not yet see everything in subjection to Him. But we see Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone” Hebrews 2:8-9

– Deus Absconditus and the cry of: “Why?”

– Deus Revelatus and the response of: “Christ!”

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The Cross

• Doesn’t explain life to us, it kills us and makes us alive!

• “Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God.” [LW31:10] (see Genesis 3)

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Next Week

Overview of what is this Theology of the Cross and what is the Theology of GloryThen– The Two Theologies Explored Further– Teaching the Theology of the Cross– How They Affect our Vocation– Their Meaning for the End of Life

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Theology of the CrossThe Two Natures of God

© 2011 Rev. Michael L Mueller