Everything is Done

Thesis 26. The law says, “do this,” and it is never done. Grace says, “believe in this,” and everything is already done.

Looking back, we see that the law simply cannot bring about what it commands. Furthermore, we see that whatever the law does bring into being bears no real relationship to what grace inspires.

Law is indeed right, but it simply cannot realize what it points to. So it works wrath. It can curse, but it can’t bless. In commanding love law can only point helplessly to that which it cannot produce. So we repeat the paradoxical word of Leif Grane, “What the law requires is freedom from the law.”

We should note that there is a certain exuberance in the language here. “Faith obtains” what law commands. Through faith Christ is in us. We fulfill everything through him since he was made ourse through faith. The theologian of the cross simply will not back off from this and, when challenged, drives it home all the harder. To the theologian of glory the language seems utterly hyperbolic at best and at worst quite dangerous. What will happen to moral earnestness if people get wind of the claim that through faith all has been fulfilled in Christ? The temptation is always to fall back on the law, either in its original sense or perhaps in some new sense, like a “third use.” But the theologian of the cross knows that there is no way back. So Luther here pushes the language to the limit and will not back off. He knows that if there is faltering here, all will be lost. This is expressed nicely in a passage from Luther’s 1519-21 Operationes in Psalmos:

Wherefore, let this be your standard rule: wherever the holy scriptures command good works to be done, understand that it forbids you to do any good work by yourself, because you cannot; but to keep a holy Sabbath unto God, that is, a rest from all your works, and that you become dead and buried and permit God to work in you. Unto this you will never attain, except by faith, hope, and love; that is, by a total mortification of yourself (Col. 3:5) and all your own works.

The insistence that only those works are truly good that are done spontaneously and joyously out of faith, hope, and love belongs to the very heart and soul of Luther’s Reformation. That is why he can make the claim that faith doesn’t have to be prompted to do good works because in faith everything is already done. This seems a preposterous claim. It is based, however, not on any claim we can make about ourselves but on the fact that the Christ who creates faith has fulfilled all things. Indeed one should not miss the spectacular nature of the claim here. The believer is not being exhorted to do works on the basis of faith in order to catch up with what is demanded. Rather, the announcement is made that because the Christ who has fulfilled all things dwells within the person of faith, everything has already been done! There is simply nothing to do!

Here is a drastic parting of the ways with a theology or glory. The Christ of the cross takes away the possibility of doing something. The theologian of glory might be able to follow to the point of accepting the truth that Christ has fulfilled all things, but then that will have to be used as motivational fuel to make sure the law gets its due. Th point is precisely that the power to do good comes only out of this wild claim that everything has already been done. The language has to break out in our preaching. Never mind that when we look to ourselves we find no sign of good works. Never mind out fears and anxieties. We are looking in the wrong place. Look to Christ! He has done it all. Nothing will be gained by trying to shore up the Old Adam. Christ leaves nothing for the Old Adam and Eve to do. The old can only be killed by the law, not given artificial respiration by recourse to it. To the theologian of the cross the language of grace an faith must be pushed absolutely to this length–until it kills the old and raises the new. Nothing at all will ever be gained by backing down. We will only fall back into the law where the demand continues endlessly and nothing is ever finally done.

So we can only let the language of grace sound forth. Grace says, “believe it” and everything–EVERYTHING!– is already done. It is the creative Word of God. If that doesn’t work then nothing will.