For this evening’s lecture, Dr. Walther’s introduction to this lecture is of such churchly character and pastoral content that everyone in the congregation should read it, especially so if a congregation is receiving a candidate from the seminary. Walther covered how important and special the office of a Lutheran minister is, and how it should be the dearest, most beautiful, and most precious spot on Earth to him (the minister). Walther then covers scenarios new ministers will be faced with, and what to do in those circumstances. For example, if a congregation is young, “proclaim the truth so as to meet the needs of his people”, and ease the Law onto them, by holding back, progressively less. If his congregation is old, he must give “make up his mind also in due time give to those well-grounded in the truth the strong meat which they need.” Walther covers how new ministers should not think their days of hard work are over, just because they are now ministers. Also, equally as pitiable, the minister who looks upon his office as his craft, or trade, and resolves to prepare for himself a nice, comfortable parish by being careful not to make enemies and doing everything to make all his people his his friends. These unhappy individuals plan to employ spiritual assets for temporal profit. They are not true ministers of Christ, and on the Last Day He will say to them: “I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.” Walther also covers how the competent ministers are blessed.
Then Walther entered Thesis 10; “In the sixth place, the Word of God is not rightly divided when the preacher describes faith in a manner as if the mere inert acceptance of truths, even while a person is living in mortal sins, renders that person righteous in the sight of God and saves him; or as if faith makes a person righteous and saves him for the reason that it produces in him love and reformation of his mode of living.” This thesis is broken into two parts.
The first part refers to a mingling of Law and Gospel that occurs chiefly in the Roman Church and which is the principal reason why that Church declines Luther and his doctrine. From what Walther has said, the Catholic error in faith is found on page 213, “Now, to represent justifying and saving faith as the inert mental act of regarding certain matters as true, which can coexist with mortal sin, means to treat faith as a work which man can produce in himself and preserve in himself even while sinning. True faith is a treasure which only the Holy Spirit can bestow.”
The second part refers to the Calvinist’s view that you can’t fall from faith. This is proved on page 216, “David had ceased to be a prophet enlightened by the Holy Spirit and a child of God when he fell into sin. Had he died in those days, he would have gone to perdition. Yea, that could have happened to him during the entire year before Nathan came to preach repentance to him; for David had pronounced the man who had committed the crime narrated by Nathan a doomed man, when Nathan told him, “Thou art the man,” and showed him that he had uttered his own sentence: if he did not turn from his iniquity, he would go to hell and be damned.
The light of faith can be extinguished not only by gross sins, but by any wilful, intentional sin. Accordingly, defection from faith occurs far oftener than we imagine. Faith ceases not only in those who lead a life of shame, but also in such as permit themselves to be led astray against their better knowledge and the warning of their conscience. They plan to do a certain thing and carry out their purpose, although they know that it is contrary to God’s Word. In such instances faith becomes extinct; however, the person caught in this snare promptly recovers his faith if he promptly arrests himself in his wrong-doing, as the instance of Peter shows.”
Then Walther covers a few other points, such as the basic principle behind worship, which was on page 219, “How dare a person come before God with an evil conscience and praise Him in fulsome strains for the forgiveness of his sins? God will reject him together with his prayer. Such a person cares not for God, because he purposes to continue in his sin; how, then, can he engage in intimate converse with God?” He also covered how faith and good conscience must be companions.
Later, Walther concluded the evening with quite a bit, “Even after our conversion we lack the true fear of God, and all our sins are great sins. Even the so-called sins of weakness of which the righteous cannot rid themselves must not be regarded as a paltry matter. Although they do not extinguish faith, they are no jest.
Luther’s rejection of the sinner’s appeal to predestination is meant as a warning to us not to reason ourselves into a state of security on the ground that we simply shall have to go to heaven because we are predestinate The major of the syllogism is true: Whoever is predestinated will certainly go to heaven. But there is no evidence for the minor, viz., whether the party indulging in the above reasoning is predestinated. If a person lives in sin and continues that kind of life, this is a sign that he is not predestinated. Not as though God did not want to have him on any account, but because He foresaw that His grace would be misapplied by this or that wicked person.
Nobody can question that Adam and Eve were elect, and yet they fell, lost the image of God, the Holy Spirit, their holiness, in short, everything. But they repented and were thus restored to a state of grace.
As soon as faith is lost through some mortal sin, the grace of God is also lost, and such a person becomes a child of death and damnation. He may return to faith and ultimately be saved, but in the interval he was not a blessed, but an utterly miserable, lost creature.
A person with whom God is angry or whom He hates is not accepted with Him. There may have been elect persons in the congregation at Pergamos. But God hated also these elect persons and was angry with them because, for the time being, they had driven His grace, faith, and the Holy Spirit out of their hearts.”
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