I mused over a past devotion that my wife and I read this past January 4th from Rev. John Sander's Devotional Readings From Luther's Works, LutheranLibrary.org regarding Galatians 3:26, "Ye are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."
And, yes, upon my meditation I thought how well it applied to show Christians how they should honor and esteem faith in Christ alone when speaking of Justification. It is that way, of course, if it is to be simply Lutheran, I thought.
"...whoever has faith and works cheerfully is a child; for he has received the Spirit of God trough Christ. Now, the apostle names Christ, referring to the faith that believes and abides in Jesus Christ. No other faith is effective, no other faith is the right faith, let one believe in God as one will. Some there are, particularly among our modern high schoolmen, who say: Forgiveness of sins and justification depend altogether on the divine imputation of grace; God's imputation is sufficient. He to whom God does not reckon sin, is justified; he to whom God reckons sin is not justified.
"Were their theory true the entire New Testament would be of no significance. Christ would have labored foolishly and to no purpose in suffering for sin. God would have unnecessarily wrought mere mockery and deception; for he might easily without Christ's suffering have forgiven sins. Then, too, a faith other than faith in Christ might have justified and saved - a faith relying on God's gracious mercy not to impute sin." [Here I thought how Luther would never have become a "Waltherian" who speaks of some Universal Objective Justification declared by God to the entire world regardless of having faith, or prior to any faith, in Christ.] "In contrast to this deplorable theory and abominable error, it is the apostle's practice to speak always of faith in Jesus Christ, and he makes mention of Jesus Christ with a frequency surprising to one unacquainted with the important doctrine of faith in him. Hence our learned university doctors no longer know Christ..."
As I mused on these faithful words of Dr. Luther I recalled all those "modern high schoolmen" and "modern university doctors" who preached to me that I had to believe in an Objective Justification whereby God had already declared the whole world justified (forgiven their sins) and sanctified in Christ Jesus prior to having faith in Christ (this is stated as Objective Justification in the 1932 Brief Statement of Missouri). I was told that unless I believed that the whole world was declared justified, prior to faith in Christ, that I didn't have the true faith and that I didn't have the real Jesus.
(Above is a representation of the "modern high schoolmen" selling Universal Objective Justification, hook, line, and sinker, in the LC-MS and smaller synods, especially the three pastors of the OLCC)
Luther ends his comments on Galatians 3:26 with these words:
"It is supremely essential to possess him who has accomplished the purchase for us. Nor is it possible to obtain grace otherwise than though him"
Earlier this year (2020), a young Christian wife and mother had essentially told me I wasn't telling the truth about Universal Objective Justification. She told me, "There's something 'out there' that we have faith in" referring to a declared justification for the whole world. This is exactly the same thinking that my former pastor (who said he can no longer even be my personal friend) had when he told me, "Jim, you just have to have faith to believe it" (i.e. UOJ) This is like saying you have to have faith in some doctrinal statement of C.F.W. Walther, that is not contingent upon faith in Christ, in order to have faith and the real Justification!
To conclude my musings, I would like to quote my pastor, the Rev. Dr. Gregory Jackson, in his book "The Path To Understanding Justification" p.69:
Your Faith Is in Faith-Your Faith is Not in Christ, It Is in Yourself, You Are Not a Christian- You Are a Faithian
"This attack seems to crawl out of the muck of Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne. The hyperbole ignores the real meaning of Subjective Justification, which is agreeing to the notion of world absolution without faith. That is not faith in Christ but making a decision in favor of a dogmatic point. If more people read Luther, they would know that Luther called himself a faithian, more precisely a solafideist - a faith-alone-ist."
Isn't it amazing how up-to-date Luther's ideas are? And not just on UOJ! Chris S.
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