Crucifying the flesh - By Kathy Walzer

[joseph]

The Place of Works – Crucifying the Flesh (and confidence therein)
Deacon Kathy Walzer

In the second part of “Freedom of a Christian,” Luther goes on to
teach about the place of works, law, commandments, in relation to
faith, gospel, and promise. Here he moves to the second part of his
thesis: “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject
to all. Insofar as he is free, he does no works, but insofar as he is
a servant, he does all kind of works.”

Luther begins this section posing the antinomian question, “If faith
does all things and alone is sufficient for righteousness, why then
are works commanded? We will take our ease and do no works and be
content with faith.” Luther answers that this would be right if we
were wholly spiritual beings, but we aren’t, at least not yet. All
that we attain in this life is the first fruits of the Spirit, because
we will attain the fullness in the life to come. As long as he is in
the flesh, the Christian “must control his own body and have dealings
with men.” There are then two reasons for works – to control or
mortify the flesh and to serve our neighbor. Next time, we will look
at the place of works as service to our neighbor. But today we will
focus on controlling the body.

Luther uses the analogy of Adam and Eve in the garden before the
Fall. They were not idle, but did the things God had assigned to them
out of love for Him and freely, in faith, as an expression of their
relationship to Him. When we put our faith in Christ for our
righteousness before God, we are like Adam and Eve, in that the new
nature loves God and desires to please him in all things. But we run
into a contrary will in our flesh and so we act to bring the flesh
into submission to faith so that the body serves the spirit and
expresses the freedom of faith in Christ to serve God. “In doing
these things, however,” Luther cautions, “we must not think that a man
is justified before God by them, for faith, which alone is
righteousness before God, cannot endure that erroneous opinion.”
Rather the Christian does the works “out of spontaneous love in
obedience to God and considers nothing except the approval of God,
whom he would most scrupulously obey in all things.”

A person does good works because they are righteous, not to become
so. And there is no one size fits all prescription to be imposed on
Christians. As Luther says, “In this way everyone will easily be able
to learn for himself the limit and discretion…of his bodily
castigations…sufficient to repress the lasciviousness and lust of his
body. But those who presume to be justified by works do not regard
the mortifying of the lusts, but only the works themselves, and think
that if only they have done as many as and as great works as are
possible, they have done well and have become righteous.” Luther goes
on to say that in their folly of trying to justify themselves by
rigorous works, some have even injured themselves to point of addling
their brains or rendering useless the natural strength they were
given.

Luther contends that the commandments are good, but they do not come
with or impart the power to keep them. Rather they teach us to
despair of our ability to do them in our own strength and to seek help
outside ourselves. But faith works what the Law commands so that the
glory goes to God. Both the Law and its fulfillment belong to God.
In fact the Law must be fulfilled before good works can be done. And
so by becoming righteous by faith in Christ, we become good trees able
to produce good fruit. For good works can only proceed from faith.
All that proceeds from unbelief is evil for, even if it appears to be
good fruit, it leads us into the error of trusting in ourselves and
our works and so is really evil. All our faith and hope must be in
God and not our own efforts. As the old German hymn puts it so
beautifully (speaking of “Blessed Jesus”), “thou alone to God canst
win us, thou must work all good within us.”