A friend of mine who does not think that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews once said that if officially asked to recant his belief, he would do so ... immediately. "And if you asked me," says my friend, "why I'd recanted, I'd tell you, 'because it's not worth dying for!'" I think my friend is a wise man.
There are too many dubious things that we squabble about in our churches. We sometimes seem more willing to kill for them than to die for them. Most of these "truths" are not worthy of the sweat, struggle, and subdivision with which we load them. They become exhausting, damaging distractions that stir up clouds of dust and emit toxic emotional gasses that get in our spiritual eyes and lungs so we can't see or breathe deeply the pure air of what really does matter.
On the other hand, there are verities that lie in the fallow soil of our souls, unrecognized for their value. We may give them a certain lip service, but the attention they receive is not proportionate to their almost unbelievable value.
Human beings have always tended to be that way with the gospel. We tend to be that way with the primacy of the magnificent truth of justification (and please allow the use of such words in their classical form in this issue of Ministry!), along with the realities that cluster close to it, such as "sanctification." The gospel and justification always seem to come in a certain disguise, or appear dressed in camouflage; though their obscurity has much more to do with poor spiritual eyesight and the stuff we so expertly arrange around them than with some mischievous trait they possess in themselves.
The coming of "justification" to the human soul is like the appearing of Jesus Himself in the least of all towns, Bethlehem. He was conceived in questionable circumstances, born among animals (in the hotel garage, if you like) from the womb of a completely unsung peasant girl, wrapped in cloths (probably borrowed), and laid in a donkey's feed box. The Bible says that this happened because there was no room for Jesus in the inn itself. But the underlying reason for the lack of room was that nobody had an inkling of Who He was and so they did not value Him. If they had, they'd have made room for Him; even as we make ample room for justification the moment we realize its premier value in comparison with all the other things we have come to believe are so important and in many cases have put in its place.
And so it is true that at some point we may suddenly recognize some overlooked reality for what it actually is, grasp it up, and become willing to lay down our lives to possess such a treasure. The stone which the builders rejected becomes our chief cornerstone. This is what it was like at the time of the Protestant Reformation.
But what was it that caused the souls of those who became known as "Reformers" to burn like they did over things like "justification by faith"? This is a vitally important question as we take up the critical matters of this issue of Ministry. Such a question is foundational because it was not merely some carefully calibrated doctrinal equation that was formulated by Martin Luther and others. Though, by all means biblical, justification as the Reformers saw it, was definitely an experiential, life-altering paradigm shift that ushered into the human heart the peace and perspective every person profoundly longs for in his or her deepest being. The Reformers saw that the gospel (justification particularly) was the power of God unto salvation and that simple, uncluttered faith gave them the effective way of tapping into that power. It was the transcendent experience of justification, its regenerating, refreshing, life-altering effect on the human soul, conscience and consciousness, that made all the difference.
Thus, the significant divergence that came up between the Reformers and the mother church were not simply because they or their Catholic counterparts were obtuse and unbending. Rather, the Reformers could not go the way of the Council of Trent because Trent's positions effectively misdirected the basic principles upon which such a blessed sense of personal justification, innocence and peace before God had come to them. In the mercy of God, they had serendipitously come upon the pearl of great price, the treasure hid in the field. They knew their discovery was true to Scripture and to experience and, captured by its wonder, they could not compromise it in the ways that were being suggested without destroying it or having to let go of the treasure altogether.
When it comes to any dialogue over such things, such as the one we evaluate in this issue of Ministry. The Joint Declaration on the Dogma of Justification, we simply must fully factor in this subjective, experiential, or existential element or we will not understand what was and still is the essential reality that people are willing to die for and that must be dealt with before genuine understanding can emerge.
