Christ Did Not Die to Make Sinners Secure
The Antinomians, you know, were followers of John Agricola, of Eisleben, who taught that the Law must not be preached in the Christian churches because it belongs in the court-house, on gallows’ hill, etc. Luther has given an extreme description of Antinomian preaching. None of you will readily imitate that method, but it is easy to fall into something like it. When you are about to comfort people effectually who are in anguish and distress because they imagine that their sins are too great, that they have sinned too long a time, etc., then you must proceed to glorify grace and say: “Though you had committed all sins that have ever been committed on this earth, though you were Judases and Cains and had persecuted Jesus, you need not despair of the mercy of God.” However, this correct statement must be delivered in such a manner that reckless sinners will feel that the statement applies only to such sinners as are alarmed and in distress over their sins and not to people like themselves, who think that, after all, matters will not be so bad as the preachers say. Be careful, then, for God’s sake, when preaching the Gospel, not to make sinners secure and thus become seducers unto sin and defenders of sin.
Luther’s remark about the class of sinners for whom Christ died must not be interpreted to mean that Christ did not die for all sinners. Luther manifestly means to say that Christ did not die to make sinners secure.
Luther’s remarks about Easter and Pentecost preachers deserve to be remembered. It is well if on Easter Day you emphasize with great force, and expatiate on, the victory of Christ over sin, death, devil, and hell. But you must also be good Pentecostal preachers and say to your hearers: “Repent; for then the Holy Spirit will come with His grace and comfort, enlighten, and sanctify you.” We shall never attain to perfect sanctification in this life, but we must make a beginning and progress in this endeavor. For he that does not increase, decreases, and he that decreases will ultimately cease entirely using what God has given him. Finally, he will be a dead branch on the vine.
What a stern utterance are these remarks against the Antinomians by Luther, who is known throughout the Christian Church as the greatest witness for the magnitude and riches of the grace of God in Christ, and who, as few others in the Christian Church, had the gift of speaking words of comfort to men. You see, when it is incumbent upon him to preach the Law, he is stern and incisive; he spares no one; he brings the staff Bands down on all the secure.
from C.F.W. “Walther, Law and Gospel, Thirteenth Evening Lecture” (January 9, 1885)
