Speak the Truth Simply, Or Don’t Speak It At All!
Alas! there are other preachers, who, while they are believers, preach in such high-flown language that it passes the comprehension of the people. In such instances we behold the spectacle of a believing pastor and a congregation of spiritually dead people. Not only must we proclaim the truth, we must also speak a language so simple that a peasant listening outside of the sanctuary can understand it and feel himself drawn into the church. With noonday clearness we must show the one way of salvation than which there is no other. It would not be surprising if God were to hurl His lightning at every preacher who has filled his manuscript with high-flown terms, intending to shine by his oratory. Such language is not understood by the common people. It may, at best, enter their intellect, but it does not enter their hearts, where it ought to lodge.
Let us hear what Luther writes in his House Postil, in his exposition of the Gospel pericope for the 19th Sunday after Trinity (St. L. Ed. XIIIa, 917): “The Anabaptists likewise say: How can we receive forgiveness of sins through Baptism? There is nothing but a handful of water there. If we are to be really purged from sin, the Holy Spirit must do it; water cannot do it. In this manner they take forgiveness of sins away from the Word and refuse to leave the matter where the good people in the Gospel put it, who glorified God for giving such power unto men. The Sacramentarian fanatics, likewise, say that in the Sacrament there is mere bread and wine, hence forgiveness of sin cannot be found there. The Spirit must provide that; the flesh profits nothing.
“To sum up, no sectarian spirit, no priest or monk has been able to see that forgiving sins is a power conferred on men, as this Gospel-lesson states. Learn, then, how to speak of this matter. I know well enough, and also confess, that God alone forgives sin. But I must know, too, how I may perceive that my sins are forgiven or by what means this is done. Regarding this point the Holy Scriptures teach me and all Christians, when we desire forgiveness of sin, that we must not sit down in some nook with the prayer: My God, forgive me my sins, and then wait for an angel to come from heaven with the announcement: Thy sins are forgiven thee. For God promises that He will descend in His Word and there assure me of the forgiveness of my sins.
“Now, this is done, first, in Holy Baptism, which is connected with God’s command to baptize men in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; furthermore, with the promise: ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.’ You object: Is not Baptism mere water? True, but this water is not alone; God’s Word goes with it. Likewise, when you go to your pastor, who has been given a special commission, or to any other Christian and desire to be comforted and absolved from your sins, and he says to you: I, in God’s place, announce to you through Christ forgiveness of all your sins, — when this happens, you are to be certain that by such external word your sins are truly and surely forgiven; for Baptism and God’s Word will not prove lying devices to you. Such things were not preached in the Romish Church, and to this day no papistic preacher understands them. Therefore thank God for this mercy and learn that God wants to forgive sins in no other way than is here written, viz., by giving the power to do it to men. Christ here makes a beginning of this power and later commands that henceforth to the end of the world this order is to be observed in the Church, that repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be preached. Let every one, then, learn that he must seek forgiveness of sins from men and nowhere else. For thus reads the command of our Lord Christ: ‘Verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,’ Matt. 18, 18; likewise: ‘Whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them, John 20, 23. For God will not tolerate the building of special ladders and stairways to heaven to suit every individual; He alone wants to be the Architect.
- from C.F.W. Walther, ‘Law and Gospel, Eighteenth Evening Lecture’ (February 13,1885)
