The Indicative And Imperative Nature Of Sanctification

V. Conclusion a. The Indicative and Imperative Nature of Sanctification: A Resolution? If a good tree brings forth good fruit automatically and does not need to be exhorted to bear good fruit, then why not preach only accusing Law and forgiveness and let the rest take care of itself? Why exhort a good tree?156 Even a cursory glance at the New Testament will make clear that large portions are dedicated to admonishing followers to flee from unrighteousness and to strive towards righteousness. It would seem that if we uphold that God is the sole source of sanctification along with the claim that there is nothing innate in the nature of man that is capable of righteousness, we would then need to assert that the imperatives found in Scripture could not possibly be intended for us actually to do them (at least as they are meant to be fulfilled), but for some other reason. It seems that indicative and imperative brings us back to root of the issue. As Helmut Thielicke writes: “These problems [posed by indicative and imperative] are identical with those of the new obedience generally, and thus include the key question of evangelical ethics as a whole.”157 These are problems that have not been addressed sufficiently in the Lutheran Church, especially within the LCMS. We are comfortable with talking about vocation, civil righteousness, and even with claiming that the gospel motivates good works, and that the sacraments strengthen and enliven one’s faith. The problem with this is that the gospel, the indicative, merely becomes a helper in an existence that is ultimately defined by the law. As Gustaf Wingren writes: “The Christian is crucified by the law in his vocation, under the earthly government; and he arises through the gospel, in the church under the spiritual

156

Paul R. Raabe and James W. Voelz, “Why Exhort a Good Tree?: Anthropology and Paraenesis in Romans,” Concordia Journal 22, no. 2 (1996), 154. 157 Thielicke, Theological Ethics, 83.

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government.”158 Against this, is there a way in which the indicative and the imperative can be resolved, where the gospel is not merely a “helper” in sanctification but rather where the gospel is our sanctification, and can the imperative, far from being resubjection to the law, be incorporated into this understanding? No resolution between indicative and imperative can be formed without a correct understanding of Christian anthropology, and an understanding of man’s creational and relational status as ordained in God’s original will for creation. When we see that man’s justification and sanctification is not a destruction of creation but an affirmation of, and a restoration of that creation, we will start to look at the matter appropriately. As Oswald Bayer notes: “The work of Jesus is to restore creation, to validate again its original purpose, the will of God in creation…In this, Jesus Christ is the ‘mediator of creation,’ through whom all that now is was made.”159 What we will find is that indicative and imperative, far from being contradictory or two ways of looking at and distinguishing between our states of life, are rather an affirmation of God’s original creational-relational will. Helmut Thielicke writes: The connection [between indicative and imperative] can be demonstrated only within the sphere of biblical anthropology, where the concept of the person is such that man can be described only in terms of his relationship to…God present in Christ.160 Isolating either indicative or imperative as the “true” nature of sanctification is a repudiation of God’s ordained ordering of creation. We read: Whenever the imperative is isolated from the indicative or the indicative from the imperative, the absolutizing in either case leads to autonomy of 158

Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation, trans. Carl C. Rasmussen (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1957), 30. 159 Oswald Bayer, Living by Faith: Justification and Sanctification, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 62. 160 Thielicke, Theological Ethics, 82-83.

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the ego, to its separation from the fellowship between God and man, to its release from all connection with the alienum.161 When the indicative nature of sanctification is isolated from the imperative this destroys the entire nature of our createdness, our being set in a situation in which we are called to relate ourselves to, and within, God’s will. It destroys our freed will, and thus our responsibility. Piotr Malysz writes: Thus with its origin in the divine love, human existence is one of freedom. God did not create automatons but beings that were beautiful, interesting and worthwhile for their own sake—individuals with the capacity, of their own free will, to reflect the love received. A loving relationship by nature implies an option for un-love. Love as self-giving implies the possibility of rejection. It is in this context of what love is that the presence in the garden of the tree of knowledge of good and evil finds its purpose.162 This understanding of man’s primal state is pivotal for understanding Christian anthropology. None of this can be understood if we completely reject the possibility of the Christian having a arbitrium liberatum—a freed will.163 Many would deny such a possibility claiming, “free will…exists before God only as evil.”164 They would claim that while we have free will as to our horizontal relationships, these actions in the civil sphere don’t count as righteousness in the true sense. This is popularly cited as the Confessional position. From this reasoning we would see only two options before us: 1) there is no such thing as sanctification, as properly understood, this side of heaven, or 2)

161

Ibid., 82. Malysz, “Third Use of the Law in Light of Creation and the Fall,” 13. 163 The term “free will,” as Luther notes, is a dangerous and often misleading term. Luther states that there is a tendency to consider free will as “a power of freely turning in any direction, yielding to none and subject to none.” Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston (London: James Clarke, 1957), 105. The Christian’s liberated will (See: Kolb and Wengert, 557, par. 67.) does not mean that there is some capacity “in” man himself which is able to do good, rather all this needs to be attributed to the gracious work of God, from whom we receive this “capacity” to will only insofar, and as long as, God remains to give (See: Kolb and Wengert, 556-557, par 66; 560-561, par. 87.). 164 Wingren, Luther on Vocation, 16. 162

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we only “suffer” sanctification and our wills are completely uninvolved in this process.165 The Confessions, though, strongly reject both these positions. That they truly do believe in sanctification in righteousness this side of heaven needs little argumentation.166 The Confessions likewise deny that the “spontaneous” automatic nature of sanctification does not involve with it our will, which “is not idle in the daily practice of repentance but cooperates in all the works of the Holy Spirit that he accomplishes through us.”167 We do not suffer sanctification. We read: It is indeed true that both the Enthusiasts and the Epicureans misuse in unchristian fashion the teaching regarding the impotence and wickedness of our natural free will and the teaching that our conversion and rebirth are the work of God alone and not of our powers. Because of such talk, many people became dissolute and disorderly as well as indolent and sluggish in all Christian activities, such as prayer, reading, and Christian meditation. They say that because they cannot possibly convert to God on the basis of 165

While Luther makes clear that our wills are not uninvolved in sanctification and are disposed to everything good, his words need to be clarified when he says that it is impossible for them not to be. He writes: “Here, too, there is no freedom, no ‘free will’, to turn elsewhere, or to desire anything else” Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston (London: James Clarke, 1957), 103. What this does is destroy God’s creational ordering in which our freedom—our ability to decide against God—, and thus our responsibility—the ever-present question of whether we will remain in relationship with God—, defines our very humanness as socially and vocationally responsible beings. If Luther means that the “impossibility” of our wills to turn away is because God’s imposition then he is mistaken; even in heaven God will allow man to fall away—man is “free” in this respect. That in heaven we will not fall again will not be due to “inability” but rather will be due to a will that would never want to—it is not that it will be “impossible” but rather that it will simply never happen. 166 The Formulators write, much more beautifully than I ever will be able to, of the gracious work of God in sanctification: “For, on the one hand, it is true that in conversion there must be a change—new impulses and movements in mind, will, and heart. As a result, the heart acknowledges sin, fears God’s wrath, turns away from sin, acknowledges and accepts the promise of grace, has good, spiritual thoughts, Christian intention, and diligence, battles against the flesh, etc. For where none of these things takes place or exists, there is no true conversion. However, on the other hand, because the crucial question concerns de causa efficiente (that is, who accomplishes these things in us, and from where the human being acquires these things and comes by them), so this teaching states the following: Because the natural powers of the human being cannot do anything or help in any way (1 Cor. 2[:4-12]; 2 Cor. 3[:4-12]), God comes first to us, out of his immeasurable goodness and mercy. He causes his holy gospel to be preached, through which the Holy Spirit desires to effect and accomplish this conversion and renewal in us. Through the proclamation of his Word and meditation upon it he ignites faith and other God-pleasing virtues in us so that they are the gifts and the activities of the Holy Spirit alone. Moreover, this doctrine points us to the means through which the Holy Spirit wills to begin this conversion and effect it. It also reminds us how these same gifts are retained, strengthened, and increased, and it admonishes us not to let God’s grace have no effect in us, but to exercise ourselves diligently in considering what a grievous sin it is to impede and resist the working of the Holy Spirit.” Kolb and Wengert, 557-558, par. 70-72. 167 Kolb and Wengert, 561.

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their own natural powers, they want to continue to rebel against God or to wait until God converts them against their will with his brute power. Or they say that because they can do nothing in these spiritual matters but everything is solely the work of the Holy Spirit, they do not want to pay attention to Word and sacrament nor hear or read the Word. Instead, they want to wait until God pours his gifts into them from heaven without means, so that they can really feel and perceive in themselves that God has converted them.168 We see therefore how this “absolutizing” of sanctification under the indicative, automatic work of God leads to the “autonomy of the ego.” We see that, as in the case of the Enthusiasts and Epicureans, when we ignore the imperative—that we are called to respond to God’s words— man, in the best case, goes about his civil business with little thought of God’s desire to work through him and his will, or in the worst case, man does not “hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matt. 5.6) because of the claimed impossibility of its accomplishment through conscious attempts. When we ignore the imperative, we, at the same time, reject the life God ultimately is calling us to which will be fulfilled in heaven where we will live in his creation and in communion with him and our neighbor. Just as the absolutizing of the indicative alienates us from the relational character ordained in creation between God and man, so too does the absolutizing of the imperative lead to an independence that alienates us from the alienum. Under this error it is held that, because Scripture continually calls us to righteousness, it makes perfect sense therefore that, at least to a certain extent, we are capable of at least cooperating with the Holy Spirit in sanctification. This is the: “I’ll do the best I can, and the Spirit will do the best he can.” It is asked: Does not the mere fact of the command involve a vote of “no confidence” in the perfect tense of the gift? Is the gift not sufficiently powerful and 168

Ibid., 552-553.

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effective to assert itself in the new existence? Does it need the help of subsequent co-operation?169 As Gerhard Forde notes, this reasoning will always lead to the autonomy of the ego. He writes: “When one attempts to combine freely given grace with an empirical legal scheme…everything will come to depend on me in the end, no matter how much one talks about grace.”170 What this error fails to realize is that there is nothing “in” man from which one can act in righteousness. This is what Adam and Eve failed to realize; that there was nothing “outside” of God’s divine creational and sustaining order on which they could define themselves. They knew that everything “they were and all that they had came from him.”171 And yet, in spite of this, Adam and Eve proceeded to look outside (and coincidently “inside”: homo incurvatus in se ipsum) the God ordained relational bounds of creation in order to establish themselves under self-definition. “By attempting to be like God, man separates himself from God. He forgoes the gift of freedom in favor of self-establishment and self-centered independence.”172 So too, whenever we look to ourselves for sanctification, this automatically involves an exertion of ourselves against God. The Christian’s creational and re-creational status should sufficiently make clear that we can attribute nothing that is “of ourselves” outside of God; we certainly did not give birth to ourselves. Paul emphasizes this by “locating” everything in our rebirth and renewal outside ourselves and solely upon God their sole origin. Paul writes: “Or do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit in you, which you have from God, and you are not of yourselves? You were bought with a price; then glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are of God” (6:19-20; cf. Rom. 14:8-9). The given169

Thielicke, Theological Ethics, 70. Forde, Justification by Faith, 27. 171 Malysz, “Third Use of the Law in Light of Creation and the Fall,” 13. 172 Ibid., 14. 170

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ness of our new identity as the adopted children of God makes it impossible for us to define ourselves outside of this “relational” status with God. Likewise, just as our adoption makes it impossible to look to ourselves for self-definition, so too does every gift of God make it impossible for us to view these things in isolation from the giver; when we do, we cut off God’s ability to give in the first place. Therefore we see that, though we may “will and do,”173 these things “are” only because they are given us, and if they are given us how can we boast as though they were ours all along (1 Cor. 4:7)? As John the baptizer clarifies: “A man is able to receive nothing unless it has been given to him from Heaven” (John 3:27). So why do we look to ourselves, to whom the gift is given (as if it comes “from” us), and not upon the giver, without whom we have nothing? Paul is especially careful in this, that he does not point his congregations back to themselves but rather keeps clear the “external-ness” of everything that is given, which thus ultimately directs us to the giver himself.174 In all this we begin to see the interrelation between the indicative and the imperative. The imperative (in its positive sense) does not throw man back onto himself and his own agency, but rather points us to Christ our sole agency—the indicative. This then affirms and restores God’s will to create us as relational beings.175 There is no “positive” role in the imperative for us to look to

173

See section III.c.1. Though we have been crucified with Christ and our lives are hidden with him, we are called to put him on (Rom. 13:14). Though the new man “was created,” we are called to put him on (Eph. 4:24); i.e. he is not a “part of us.” Though, along with the flesh, we have the Spirit who dwells in us, he never becomes part of us (Rom. 8:9). We are not the armor of God from whom we receive power, might, and strength, rather we are given the armor of God, from God, in whom we receive these things (Eph. 6:10-11). In this way Paul directs our attention onto the giver and not onto the self, who is completely incapable of anything without God (John 15:5). 175 Piotr Malysz writes: “Humans are created to love God, their fellow man, and God’s gift of creation. By definition, they are social and vocational beings, relating to others in such a way as to further their good through God appointed means. In so doing, they surrender their being in all its individualism only to gain it back, in, with and through the being of another. Only by receiving and giving can they realize their humanity. Only thus can they be human beings.” Piotr Malysz, “Third Use of the Law in Light of Creation and the Fall,” 13. 174

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ourselves for its achievement. When we do see the sanctified life in this manner, solely as an imperative that needs to be fulfilled, far from improving matters it actually accentuates man’s autonomy of ego—his “out-of-relation-ness.” Helmut Thielicke writes: Works can only intensify but never dissolve the incurvitas, as may be seen again in Pharisaism. To this degree the imperative has no place here [in man’s works]. For the imperative is a call for action. But action is quite incapable of effecting the transition to the new man. Action simply throws me back upon the old man: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24).176 This “throwing back” onto ourselves is the very sin of Adam and Eve, that is, trying to establish ourselves outside of God’s relationally sustaining self-giving. It becomes clear that, when it comes down to it, all of this, all of my argumentation, is dependent on whether we acknowledge God as the sole effector of sanctification, our causa efficiens, or whether we hold that man contributes, even in the slightest bit, towards this end.177 There is admittedly good Scriptural evidence that would support both sides of the issue. But if we are to hold to, as I believe, the Confessional and Scriptural witness of God’s sole efficiency in sanctification, then we will need to further analyze the intent of the imperative description of sanctification found in Scripture. Adolf Koberle writes: The paradox of God’s sole activity and man’s responsibility which is found in sanctification as well as justification, brings with it an entirely new conception of the New Testament imperatives whose importance and frequent occurrence cannot be emphasized strongly enough.178 176

Thielicke, Theological Ethics, 86. The Formulators write: “However, on the other hand, because the crucial question concerns de causa efficiente (that is, who accomplishes these things in us, and from where the human being acquires these things and comes by them), so this teaching states the following: Because the natural powers of the human being cannot do anything or help in any way (1 Cor. 2[:4-12]; 2 Cor. 3[:4-12]), God comes first to us, out of his immeasurable goodness and mercy. He causes his holy gospel to be preached, through which the Holy Spirit desires to effect and accomplish this conversion and renewal in us. Through the proclamation of his Word and meditation upon it he ignites faith and other God-pleasing virtues in us so that they are the gifts and the activities of the Holy Spirit alone.” Kolb and Wengert, 557-558. 178 Koberle, The Quest for Holiness, 150. 177

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Both Helmut Thielicke and Adolf Koberle very perceptively divide the imperative description of sanctification under a twofold significance. The first significance of the imperative is that it is a call for us to consider ourselves in a particular relationship with God. As Thielicke characterizes it: it is a question of whether or not we will “drink from the right source,” that is, we are asked whether we will relate ourselves to the Spirit or to the flesh.179 Our answer to this question determines where we “receive the orientation” of our existence, whether from the one or from the other.180 Thielicke quickly makes it clear that this idea of a “decision” taking place must be “protected against the misunderstanding that what is involved in it is simply a form of human co-operation or even autonomy.”181 Likewise Koberle writes: “Our surrender to God does not come out of ourselves but from God’s promise to us and from the renewing power of His Spirit, Who bears His own witness within us.”182 When we consider the imperative in this way we can begin to see through Paul’s seeming contradictions between his indicative and imperative statements.183 For example, we read: It is only in these terms that one can understand the demand of Paul: “You also must consider yourself dead to sin, and alive to God in Jesus Christ” (Rom. 6:11). The imperative does not refer to the dying. Over this we have no control, since Jesus Christ has died for us and we only receive the gift of his dying and are drawn into it. The object of the imperative is that we should take this death into account, take it seriously, and thus make the gift become a gift in which we participate.184 Indeed all of Paul’s “indicative and imperative” statements, to use Herman Ridderbos’ terminology, can be explained when this significance of the imperative is taken into 179

Thielicke, Theological Ethics, 84-86. Ibid., 57. 181 Ibid. 182 Koberle, The Quest for Holiness, 144. 183 See section IV.b. 184 Thielicke, Theological Ethics, 85. 180

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account.185 The command (imperative) becomes an invitation to partake in what is given (indicative). Koberle writes: Because Christ has taken hold upon us we are already partakers of His resurrection, and for that reason the call [imperative] comes to us to awaken the gift of God that is in us [indicative]. Because Christ died once unto sin and we have died to sin in Him, sin needs no longer reign in our members.186 Consequently, Koberle argues, “the commandments of the new covenant become proclamations of the Gospel and witnesses to the sanctifying, regenerative power of the Spirit.”187 The second significance of the imperative is for the Christian is to renounce whatever hinders the work of the Spirit. While there is nothing in us that can contribute towards our sanctification, we certainly are capable of preventing the gracious work of the Spirit through the means of word and sacrament. Koberle writes: “In view of this terrible dualism of flesh and Spirit the imperatives of the New Testament receive a second significance.”188 Koberle notes that when Paul addresses himself to the natural man, his commands take on a completely different meaning and emphases from their first significance. He writes: It is not by accident that they are mostly negative: to flee, not to be deceived, not to despise the riches of His grace, not to harden the heart, not to cast aside our confidence, not to turn aside from the living God. All these prohibitions are intended to tell us that the flesh can never by itself renew and quicken our will or understanding, but it can defy, reject, destroy, and for that reason needs continued warnings, threats, exhortations and coercion just as well as the man who is still under the Law.189

185

c.f. Rom. 6:4; 7:4; 12:1; 2 Cor. 5:14; 5:15; 7:1; Gal. 5:24-25; Eph. 5:2; Col. 2:6; 3:1; Tit. 2:11-12. Koberle, The Quest for Holiness, 151. 187 Ibid., 152. 188 Ibid., 153. 189 Ibid. 186

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This second significance of the imperative is the total ministry of the law under their first two uses—to reveal sin and keep us from its gross expression in which the Holy Spirit cannot work. For obvious reasons this must keep a completely negative function. The reason for this is that the law can only tear down and not build up; it strips man of all his pretensions of his ability of establishing himself outside of God’s will and self-giving. Werner Elert notes that the law “serves not in the construction of the new man but in the destruction of the old.”190 This mortification of the flesh can never be characterized as a progression and certainly never as growth in sanctification.191 Thielicke writes: The result of a successful conflict here [against the flesh] cannot be that actual cause is given for the emergence of the new man, but only that the indispensable precondition for that emergence is not sabotaged, the condition without which the new man remains embryonic.192 It should be noted that this function of the imperative also speaks against man’s own attempts at self-sanctification in all its forms. Koberle writes that every attempt of man to attain a moral goal is “always accompanied by an all-defiling, all-destroying pride that whispers to itself, ‘My name be hallowed.’”193 It is always an act of idolatry: “Countless are the altars at which humanity has brought its offerings to the ‘unknown’ God in the hope of reconciling Him and earning a claim to fellowship with Him.”194 Idolatry prevents the work of the Spirit because it sets something up in place of him; it completely denies the Spirit his proper place. Paul writes: “you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and a cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and a table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?” (1 Cor.

190

Elert, Law and Gospel, 36. See section III.b. 192 Thielicke, Theological Ethics, 93. 193 Koberle, The Quest for Holiness, 22. 194 Ibid., 17-18. 191

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10:21-22; cf. 2 Cor. 6:16). Paul sets forth idolatry as a fruit of the flesh thus negating the possibility of the “fruit of the Spirit,” because, “the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another” (Gal. 5:17-24). Because of this, all of man’s idolatrous attempts at self-sanctification need to be torn down in order for the ministry of the Spirit’s sanctifying work to proceed. Thielicke illustratively summarizes the twofold significance of the imperative in this way, he writes: “First, the imperative requires us to drink from the right source, and second, it commands us not to keep our mouth shut.”195 If someone says that, since God is the sole effector of my sanctification, I therefore do not need to exert any effort or respond to his imperatives, this person, both, whether consciously or subconsciously, rejects the life we are ultimately being called to, and does not understand that God did not create us to be robots but to be relational beings who both hear and respond. On the reverse side, likewise, the person who does not recognize that our ability to respond comes from God alone, declares, whether consciously or subconsciously, that he does not wish to live through the means that God has given him in his self-giving, but rather from his own will and abilities. Sanctification is not either indicative, or imperative; it is not somewhat indicative, somewhat imperative; rather, sanctification is both fully indicative and fully imperative—you cannot have the one without the other. God desires us to receive the life he is giving us—the indicative—and to live it—the imperative; the power to respond to the imperative is not reflective of a life that has its sufficiency in itself, but rather, of a life that receives its sufficiency, fully and completely, from God—our indicative. From what we have seen, the response to the imperative is not some “rededication” of ones self and efforts to the divine will; it is not: “Ok Lord, I’ll do it this 195

Thielicke, Theological Ethics, 93.

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time.” Rather the response to the imperative goes something like this: “Lord I can’t…but you can, and you will.” Koberle adopts Augustine’s reasoning, writing: Man has to “learn the greatest and most difficult art known on earth,” namely, to gain the consciousness of being a sinner; he must learn to regard his riches, his dependence on the results of his own efforts as his poverty, and the poverty of a humble contrite heart as his true riches. Torn from the heights of dominion and growth and life, and cast down into the lowliness of decline and submission and mortality, man can only stammer, “Forgive us our trespasses.”196 And from this knowledge of our complete inability to contribute anything towards our justification and sanctification, Paul would likely continue by saying: “Look! See! Do you see the cross? It’s Jesus! It’s Jesus who is our ‘righteousness and sanctification and redemption’ (1 Cor. 1:30).” This is the perfect description of the Lutheran understanding of law and gospel. A correct understanding of sanctification shows us that we are taken away from ourselves, away from our old selves under the wrath and judgment of the law, and places us with Christ within his redeeming work of the gospel. Sanctification takes us away from the old Adam’s attempts of self-definition and autonomy and places us back into God’s original creational-relational order where we live as the social and vocational beings God created us to be.

196

Koberle, The Quest for Holiness, 28.

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