“God doesn’t need your good works but your neighbor does.” Yes, but.

Last updated on: November 5, 2014 at 3:16 pm by nathanrinne

“God doesn’t need your good works but your neighbor does.” Yes, but. 2014-11-05T15:16:59-06:00 nathanrinne

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Luther on “The German Theology”: “Next to the Bible and St. Augustine, no book has ever come into my hands from which I have learned more of God and Christ, and man and all things that are.”

Lutherans like to emphasize that we love and serve God by loving and serving our neighbor. In short, it is we, not He, that need our good works. This is indeed an excellent Scriptural truth to emphasize.*

That said, there is no doubt that there are many congregations – Lutheran and otherwise – who might find it convenient to insist on such a truth at the expense of other truths. “Social justice” without a whisper of cross-proclamation is not an uncommon thing. All manner of innovations in worship are justified out of a “passion for the lost” that we sometimes might be inclined to doubt. Further, as society changes all around us, sliding into the world’s definition of love is really easy to do.

Meanwhile, what is often lost is this: what your neighbor needs from you more than anything else – whether they know it or not – is that you would love God above all things. That you would grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that your love for Him and His life-giving words would abound more and more.

This is an especially important truth for Christians in this day and age. I was struck by a quotation from a Catholic convert from 1951 on Rod Drehers’ blog the other day in post titled ‘The Moment When One Hand Will Have To Let Go’

We are appalled at the wholesale killing of the mentally-afflicted in Nazi countries, at the experiments carried out in mental hospitals, but it happened not infrequently to me later, in a different cultural environment, that I heard similar desires expressed by people who believed whole-heartedly in Democracy and even fought for it. In mental hospitals you pass rows and rows, hundred and hundreds of chronically demented men and women, drooling, staring into empty space, crouched motionless or rocking incessantly. In many cases their condition goes on for decades before they die a spontaneous death. Suddenly someone next to you is heard muttering out of the corner of his mouth: “At times I often ask myself, why don’t we really let them die a peaceful death, at least the hopeless ones, would it not be so much more humane?” It really does not make much difference whether the thought is spoken out loud by someone else, or passes as a faint shadow in the depths of one’s own heart, or appears as a fact reported from a faraway country. From a strictly pragmatic point of view, lacking a metaphysical concept of Man, there is no reason at all against such a step. We, in a non-dictatorial environment, are clinging to many patterns because of a Christian heritage, of which we are no longer conscious of vicarious suffering, or the Hindu teaching of karma, or simply in man’s immortal soul. In fact, most of us do not believe in any of these things. Thus, we cling with one hand to modern pragmatism, and with the other to the Hebrew-Christian philosophy. But the gap is widening all the time, and there will be a moment when one hand will have to let go.

– Karl Stern, Pillar Of Fire (1951)

How easy it has been, is, and will be to slide into the world’s definition of what love is. We are seeing that more and more so with each passing day.

But Christ has overcome the world. You to, to be zealous for His House above all. Pursue Christ. Pursue sanctification. Sit at His feet. Everything you need you already have. In Him.

Near the beginning of his career as a Reformer, Martin Luther reprinted a couple of classical “mystical works”, one by Johannes Tauler (1300-1361) and another mid-14th century work that came to be known as the German Theology . Before this second book was adopted by the Radical Reformers and the Pietists, Luther – even after publishing his 95 theses – said of it: “Next to the Bible and St. Augustine, no book has ever come into my hands from which I have learned more of God and Christ, and man and all things that are.”

If there is a valid expression of Christian mysticism though, what is its opposite? It is to be consumed by the teachings of the one who comes disguised as an Angel of Light, who insists that we are consumed by the impersonal Reality that is Divine – that human beings are Divine. Persons who believe this need to know the right teaching: man does not ascend to realize his Divine nature, but the Creator-God rather descends into His creatures in love, and this is clearly revealed in His Son and the words He speaks, which are spirit and life.

And He unites us to Himself in a union that is even more profound than the one flesh union that is shared by husband and wife. This is the highest of gifts – and in it we cannot exult enough!

FIN

*Note that in the Antinomian Disputations, Luther said that God does need our good works – because He is pleased to need them according to His will

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