Authentic Christianity: How Lutheran Theology Speaks to a Postmodern World

by Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Having authority is not a matter of “lording it over” other people, according to Jesus; rather, it is a means of serving them.

Vocations have their authorities, and they also have their authorizations, to the point that some actions are sinful when done outside of vocation but are good works when done within vocation. Luther gave as examples the soldiers’ authorization, under a Romans 13 chain of command, to “bear the sword,” and the judges’ authorization to punish criminals, while the Christian without these callings must forgive his enemies and wrongdoers (see LW 46:87–137). The principle also explains why sex outside of marriage is immoral, but sex within marriage is moral. The difference is not “a piece of paper.” It is vocation. We have no calling from God that would authorize having sex with someone to whom we are not married. But within the vocation of marriage, sex is not only authorized, but it also becomes the means by which God creates a one-flesh union, engenders new life, and builds a family.

Loving and serving in vocation involves an act of self-denial for the sake of someone else. That is, it involves a sacrifice. The world is preoccupied with self-assertion and self-fulfillment. Vocation, on the contrary, is about self-sacrifice. That is to say, vocation involves bearing the cross: “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23, emphasis added). The cross doesn’t just signify suffering; the cross is also an instrument of sacrifice. The word daily suggests that this passage refers not so much to martyrdom but to the everyday, routine acts of self-denial that take place in vocation. Such self-sacrifice is called for day after day in the Church, the society, the workplace, the family, and the “common order of Christian love.”

The father, coming home from work dead tired, yet still finding the energy to be attentive to his wife and children, has presented his body as a living sacrifice for his family. The mother, yielding her sleep and sanity to the children, has presented her body as a living sacrifice to the family. The same is true for the worker who puts in long hours to do the best job possible for the company’s customers. Christ, who is in vocation, takes up all of these sacrifices, small or great, into His sacrifice. And He loves and serves His creation by means of our love and service in our vocations.

To be sure, we often sin in and against vocation. Instead of serving, we want to be served. Instead of loving our neighbor, we often use our neighbor for our own selfish purposes. We constantly violate God’s design and His calling. As a result, our relationships are often twisted and unhappy, a source of conflict and misery. We must confess our sins against our vocations and against our neighbors and receive the forgiveness of Christ, who bore all of those sins in His body on the cross. And then, in faith, we find love again and work to restore those relationships. This is the Christian life.

Vocation is far more than work-life integration, bridging the chasm between personal and professional; it is the integration of heaven and earth, God’s work and our work, family and faith, daily life and divine power, culture and the Christian life. Vocation reveals the spirituality of everyday life.

Seeing the spiritual realm and the earthly realm as being in opposition to each other is to deny God’s rule over His whole creation.

The doctrine of the two kingdoms, far from being a dualistic separation of the physical and the spiritual, is actually a model for bringing them together and relating them to each other. Both realms have the same King. That there are different kinds of existence we experience is self-evident. But, in the words of the Nicene Creed, the one God is “the maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.” These are different categories, and their Creator governs them in different ways. But they are all the work of “the Father Almighty.”

God is hidden in the world, where He reigns over all things. But at the same time, as Luther says in “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” Satan is “this world’s prince” (LSB 656:3). Thus, the world is a battleground between Satan and God, a realm of continual conflict, which is the context for Christians living out their faith in the world. This is not a conflict between the two kingdoms; rather, it is a conflict within the kingdoms. Christians participate in this conflict as they battle sin, struggle against temptations, and undergo trials and tribulations. As they do so—in both kingdoms—they are forced to depend more and more on God and so grow in their faith.

According to the doctrine of the two kingdoms, God governs His temporal, earthly kingdom by means of His Law. The moral law applies specifically to the secular realm. It does not apply, strictly speaking, to the spiritual kingdom. God’s heavenly kingdom comes not from the Law but from the Gospel, being governed only by God’s grace in the Gospel of forgiveness through the cross of Jesus Christ.

The heavenly kingdom, as revealed in God’s Word, rests on certain historical, objective, physical facts in the earthly kingdom—such as the incarnation of the Son of God, His atoning death on the cross, and His resurrection. These saving events are revealed in the Word of God, but they are nevertheless actual events. They are miraculous and so could not be deduced by reason alone, and yet they happened in the world. The same can be said of the creation. Science could not be expected to uncover its details, which elude empirical observation and can only be known through the Word, but if the doctrine of creation is true, it must have actually happened.

God works in His temporal kingdom by means of vocation; that is, by working through human beings in the ordinary tasks and relationships of earthly life. That Christians have a double life, as citizens in both of God’s kingdoms, is a continual theme in Luther’s writings. Christians are simultaneously saints and sinners. Spiritually, they are clothed in Christ’s righteousness. And yet, they still live in the flesh, where they must struggle against sin and perform good works.

The purpose of every vocation, as we discussed in the previous chapter, is to love and serve the neighbors that each vocation brings into our lives. Thus, in marriage we are to love and serve our spouse. In parenthood, we are to love and serve our children. In our jobs, we are to love and serve our customers. In our citizenship, we are to love and serve our fellow citizens. In the Church, we are to love and serve the other members of our congregations. In loving and serving our neighbors, God works through our vocations to bestow His blessings—our daily bread, the joys of family, peace, and security, the Word and Sacraments.

As we have seen, God’s will for human society is for everyone, in each estate, to love and serve one another. But sin, as always, violates God’s will. The doctrine of vocation can also serve as a critical model, a way to see why responsibilities and relationships are going wrong.

According to Luther’s theology of the two kingdoms, God is hidden in His temporal kingdom. He is revealed in His spiritual kingdom. But hiding is a mode of presence. A little boy hiding in the house is present; he is just not seen. To be hidden means to be present without being perceived.

The Church—dwelling in both the spiritual and temporal kingdoms—recognizes that God’s people have dual citizenship in both heaven and earth.

The Church is part of the spiritual kingdom, ruled and governed by God’s Word. But the Church exists in the world and thus is also subject to kingdom-of-the-left-hand concerns. A Reformed version of the doctrine of the two kingdoms teaches that the spiritual kingdom is the local church.6 And the earthly kingdom consists of unbelievers, though Christians must live out their faith in this hostile environment. But the Lutheran view teaches that both kingdoms are good, being two different domains of the same King. The Church, like the Christian, inhabits both kingdoms. Congregations are subject not only to the laws of the state—zoning regulations, safety requirements, tax codes—but also to the moral law, which teaches how its members get along with one another.

Lutherans have a theology of presence. God comes to us creatures of flesh and blood by assuming flesh and blood. He builds His spiritual kingdom by means of what is physical, so that the “incarnate and human God” comes to us by His Word (sound waves in the air; ink imprinted on paper) and Sacraments (the water of Holy Baptism, and the bread and wine of Holy Communion).

Because of our sinful condition and God’s grace, He comes to us through means: As a result of humankind’s sinful nature human beings cannot see God, in His naked transcendence, and survive. Therefore since the fall of humankind into sin through the rebellion of Adam and Eve against God’s will, there can be no unmediated relationship between God and humankind. God must wear a MASK in all of His dealings with human beings.

A true and proper knowledge of God is derived solely in a theology of the cross. In His Son alone, who reveals the Father’s heart and will, do we see and know God correctly. This knowledge of God is revealed to us through those MASKS ordained of God: (1) the Word of God; (2) His incarnation; (3) Baptism; and (4) the Lord’s Supper.

Lutheran Christianity is characterized by freedom. Not in the sense of “do whatever you want”—since what we want will often destroy our own freedom and that of others—but in the sense of being liberated from spiritual bondage.

When Lutheran immigrants came to the United States from Germany, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe, they sometimes received a chilly and perplexed reception from American Protestants. Sabbath-keeping was a major emphasis in nineteenth-century Protestantism, and here these Lutherans, after going to church on Sunday mornings, would go to beer gardens! They would listen to concerts! They would watch and play sports! And then on Christmas, they would decorate evergreen trees in their homes and even churches, like Druid tree worshipers! Are these people even Christians?

Lutherans never had a Puritan tradition. They did have their Pietists, who sometimes rejected such worldly pursuits, but only as an individual discipline, rather than a social mandate. A major conflict between Lutheranism and American Protestantism came with the Prohibition Movement, with Lutherans and Catholics being perhaps the only religious groups to strenuously oppose the banning of alcohol.

Lutherans believe that their relationship to God is based not on their works but in His grace; that is, in the forgiveness of their sins through Christ. Grace brings an end to endless self-scrutiny, parsing God’s Law, and being obsessed with perfecting our own righteousness.

Today, when those who feel heavily burdened from a legalistic religion discover Lutheranism, their exhilaration and sense of freedom is so great that they sometimes veer toward antinomianism. There are also the so-called radical Lutherans, who downplay the third use of the Law (its use as a guide for Christians), insisting, among other things, that those transformed by the Gospel will automatically do what God requires of them. Yet, while there is some truth in that, it is not the whole truth.

Our wills, Luther explains, are in bondage to sin. We cannot just “choose” to always do what is right. When we exercise our will to choose what we really, deep down want to do, our bondage is such that we will choose sin. Every. Single. Time.

Jesus’ next words show the power of the Gospel: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). When we are justified not by our works but by faith in Christ, we are freed from the bondage of the will to sin. This means we are free, finally, to do what is right. We do what is right not because we have to—not as a way to earn salvation—but because we want to. We do good works for our neighbor not simply because we are supposed to and not to use the neighbor as a prop for our self-righteous display of our virtue; rather, we have been freed from seeking to earn God’s love so that we can love our neighbor, for his or her own sake. That is, we have been set free to care about our neighbor from the inside.

Often our moral actions are seen through our external behavior, though, as we say, our “hearts are not in it.” Such external behavior can be a valuable moral discipline, but faith is a matter of the heart and faith changes our hearts. When we honestly face up to our own sinfulness and find our justification in Christ, how can we fixate on the neighbor’s faults? Christ loves and died for the neighbor too, so if we are in Christ, how can we not partake of that love and that self-sacrifice?

Justification by faith means that we are not doing good works for ourselves. We have no need for good works to earn salvation. Since we are not “getting anything out of it,” the good works that we do freely acquire genuine moral significance. Of course, Christians do sin. We do not always love our neighbors or do good works spontaneously and freely. Part of us still lives in bondage. Although we have been redeemed, we are still “in the flesh” and still must struggle against our sinful nature. The Gospel does free us to do good works and to love our neighbor as we should. But we do not always do that. Or we do to a certain extent, but parts of our lives remain moral cesspools. Which means that Christians still need the Law, still need to be brought to repentance, and still need the Gospel. This is the basis for the classic Lutheran paradox: a Christian is simultaneously a saint and a sinner. Clothed in Christ and His righteousness, a Christian is holy before God. And yet, the Christian is also a sinner, in constant need of Christ’s forgiveness. It is not a binary sinner or saint; rather, it is both sinner and saint. A Christian has two identities, and the conflict between them shapes the Christian’s spiritual life. This struggle between sin and grace—described also in Scripture as “the flesh” and “the Spirit” (Romans 8:1–17) and “the old self” versus the “new self” (Ephesians 4:22–24)—is that of sanctification.