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FORGIVENESS OF SINS MAKES VOCATIONS HOLY
Marney Fritts
The chief doctrine of the church, that “we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28) is summarized in the Augsburg Confession,1 the Apology,2 and Luther’s Smalcald Articles,3 and is based on holy scripture. This chief doctrine then spawned the second most important doctrine of the Reformation, Luther’s teaching on vocation. Not only does the gospel need to go out to all the world for the justification of the ungodly through Christ alone apart from works of the law, but the doctrine of vocation desperately needs to be taught, chiefly among all who are Christians. We need continual reorientation to the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit who make us holy in and for our vocations, rather than by the works of our vocations. With the proper teaching and the subsequent preaching, we are daily raised to new life in Christ, trusting that it is not our particular vocations and what we do in them that make us Christian and holy, but that having first been made Christian and holy through the forgiveness of sins, God makes these vocations holy.
Beruf/Vocatio
The locus classicus for the doctrine of vocation is Gustaf Wingren’s dissertation, Luther on Vocation,4 with its encyclopedic coverage of Luther’s teaching. Modern day scholars, such as James Nestingen, Oswald Bayer, Gene Edward Veith, and Karlfried Froehlich regularly defer to Wingren. In Wingren’s work, he points out that, “Luther does not use Beruf or vocatio in reference to the work of a non-Christian. All have station (Stand) and office; but Beruf is the Christian’s earthly or spiritual work.”5 Luther’s definition comes from his interpretation of the Greek term, klēsis, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 7:20, “Each should remain in the condition in which he was called,” as calling, or Beruf/vocatio. In several other locations, such as Romans 11:29, “the gifts and call (klēsis) of God are irrevocable,” and “Consider your call (klēsis), brothers and sisters; not many of you were wise by human standards” (1 Corinthians 1:26). Luther understands the “call” to be that of the Holy Spirit to faith in Christ, as he summarizes in the third article of the Creed in his Small Catechism. While the term was translated to mean either the call to faith in Christ by the Holy Spirit or the call to Beruf/vocatio, “Luther translated klēsis (1 Corinthians 7:20) here as Beruf,”6 the calling to a vocation.
Down-to Earth Vocations, Not Ascending Monastics
As may be well-known, but bears clear and strong repeating, Luther’s teaching on vocation revolutionized the so-called “religious orders” and the everyday lives of Christians. His interpretation of scripture and its distinction between justification by faith alone apart from deeds of the law and the vocations of everyday life, was a bold attack on the status quo of the “religious vocations” of the monastery and the nunnery. Until Luther’s confrontation with the Church, vocation was solely referencing religious orders of monks and nuns. In the orders, the candidates commonly took vows to poverty, chastity, and obedience.
There are plenty of commendable deeds for which the monks, nuns, and friars were known and praised. One considers their care for the poor and the sick, their prolific writings, copying, and translation of texts, and their preaching and teaching. There is, however, an overt asceticism within monasticism which begs the question of the denial of creation, particularly of the body and it’s needs as well as the earthly relationships into which people are called. Additionally, although Paul observes that the call to chastity comes from God, it is a rare gift (1 Corinthians 7:7), there is no scriptural demand for the ascetic life of the monastery for God to accomplish these good deeds. Quite the opposite, and Luther began to recognize this. Since the Garden of Eden, God established the spiritual orders on earth of Church and marriage, followed later by government, in order to produce the good deeds needed through ordinary people performing everyday activities in their vocations.7
In monasticism, there was an abandoning of the earthly calling of marriage, family, and the government, with each of their mundane and sometimes offensive minutia, for an artificial, self-chosen righteousness. Commoners, on the other hand, could not take up such vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, because they were beset with the demands of family life and work. Inevitably, there became a two-tiered class system within Christianity: the higher, truly spiritual monastics and the lower, soiled commoners; those who kept the demands of the vows and yellow-bellied sinners; the holy and the worldly; the higher-priestly class and lower-class of peasant Christians. The perception was that monastic life was for those who were serious about being a Christian and the common life was for those who couldn’t keep pace with the spiritual elites.
In monasticism, there was an abandoning of the earthly calling of marriage, family, and the government, with each of their mundane and sometimes offensive minutia, for an artificial, selfchosen righteousness.
Ascending the Glorious Escalator of Monastic Discipleship
From the time of Constantine to medieval times and beyond, there was an overt and clear division in society between the religious elite and the vast majority of common folk. Similarly, in our time, there is frequent discussion about the supposed difference between a baptized Christian and a true disciple of Christ—an artificial and dangerous distinction. Although we have had five-hundred years of the Reformation teaching which has revolutionized the preaching of the justification of the ungodly apart from their deeds, freeing people into the holy and down-to-earth vocations God calls each of us, there still seems to be the dregs of a monastic hang-over in everyday life of those who call themselves Christian. In monastic discipleship one is tempted to ascend an imaginary, glorious, heaven-bound escalator. Where there is the artificial distinction made between being a Christian and a true disciple of Christ, discipleship begins to sound like a new form of monastic holy orders. Christians are merely baptized, but if you are serious and want to be a true disciple of Christ, there are some spiritual practices for you to engage in, small group programs to participate in, seasonal devotions to consume, and Bible studies, Sunday school, and Vacation Bible School for you to lead. There is an inversion that has occurred because none of these activities makes a disciple, but rather having first been made a disciple through baptism in Christ Jesus, one spontaneously begins to produce all sorts of good works.
These activities are deceptive because for the world and the old Adam and Eve in us they appear to be draped with a Christian veneer. This veneer becomes seductive to the old Adam who, bit by bit, comes to believe that the more she does, the more of a Christian she is than on the day she was baptized. Little by little, she believes she is ascending the glorious escalator up and out of creation, out from under the cross of her vocations to heaven. She dismisses the actual person God places in front of her in her vocation and turns toward a different, self-chosen “cross,” or perceived higher calling. In fact, she has usurped the office of the Holy Spirit and has called herself and made an idol of her new, self-chosen acts of love. She is a higher class of Christian, a disciple of Christ, by her deeds. Slowly, we come to believe we are not a fully formed Christian until we have done such things. One recalls Jesus’ rebuke to his disciples that once they had done all that was commanded, to say that they were but unworthy servants (Luke 17:10).
So, rather imperceptibly, we fall into the precise theology of Roman Catholicism that Luther ferociously worked to topple: fides charitate formata, faith is formed by love. Luther writes, “The falsification or corruption of the Gospel is this, that we are justified by faith but not without works of the Law.”8 Our vocations are the fruit of justification, but they are not a part of our justification. We do not become more of a Christian by self-chosen acts of love, but by faith clinging to and filled by Christ and his promises alone. Luther offers the correction to the Roman teaching, “Where they speak of love, we speak of faith. And while they say that faith is the mere outline, but love is its living colors and completion, we say in opposition that faith takes hold of Christ and that he is the form that adorns and informs faith as color does the wall. Therefore, Christian faith is not an idle quality or an empty husk in the heart, which may exist in a state of mortal sin until love comes along to make it alive. But if it is a true faith, it is a sure and firm acceptance in the heart.”9
The problem of monastic discipleship is that the sinner, for all her efforts to seek a higher or better form of devotion to God, has managed to turn herself grossly inward. What I have termed monastic discipleship, Gerhard Forde once called this decadent pietism.10 In our present milieu, we have more or less swapped out, “getting right with God,” with, “I’m not just a Christian, I am a true disciple of Christ,” or “a Jesus follower.” Or worse, the false differentiation, “I’m not just a Lutheran, but a Christian.” But it seems that Christ was hung on the cross precisely because no one followed him. No one wanted to be a disciple at that point. Everyone either fled the scene or wanted him dead.
Gene Edward Veith has similarly observed this theological confusion of justification and vocation which ends up in making discipleship a new religious order. Veith writes,
"Today even Protestant Christians have often slipped into the assumption that serving God is a matter of ‘Church work’ or spiritual exercises, such as devotions and Bible studies. Churches set up programs that can take up every night of the week. Some Christians are so busy doing church activities, making evangelism calls or going to Bible studies that they neglect their spouses and children. Some Christians are preoccupied with “the Lord’s work” while letting their marriages fall apart, ignoring the needs of their children, and otherwise sinning against the actual responsibilities to which God has called them. But according to the doctrine of vocation, the church is the place where Christians meet every week to find the forgiveness of Christ, feed on God’s Word, and grown in their faith. Whereupon they are sent out to their vocations—to their spouse, children, jobs, and culture—for that faith to bear fruit in acts of love."11
In these instances, Christians are lured out of the mundane and often messy duties of their God-given vocations and into allegedly “higher callings” which then “churchify” their lives. If they do not do so, the implication is that they are not true disciples and so they remain low-level Christians. This is perhaps not all that surprising given that we are being put to death in our true vocations and would love nothing more than a “savior” to call us into a “higher” calling where there is no actual dying for the sake of the neighbor.
God’s Forgiveness Alone Makes Vocations Holy
The double-barreled Reformation teaching of justification and vocation broke the two-tiered class system within Christianity. If we are justified by faith alone, apart from deeds of the law, then the monastery and nunneries are not a location of higher, more religious, or holier orders of Christians. If we are justified by Jesus Christ alone with his holy and precious blood and his innocent suffering and death, then the law cannot justify. Likewise, if the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith—an actual disciple! —then my vocation and what I do in it does not. Luther understood, as did Paul, that we are justified and made holy by the forgiveness of our sins, and, in turn, God has established down-to-earth holy orders called vocations for all Christians without a hierarchy ascending heavenward. This means that this constant talk about discipleship is dangerous. It’s dangerous because the language around being a disciple slips very easily into what “I” am doing to be a disciple of Christ. The danger is falling into the false belief that if I am not doing something “churchy,” then I am not a true disciple. This is why Luther’s down-to-earth theology of vocation is vital to all of Christianity where the distraction of the glorious escalator has crept in.
The doublebarreled Reformation teaching of justification and vocation broke the twotiered class system within Christianity.
Making a disciple is God’s working upon us, not our working for the Lord. Scripture is clear that a disciple is made by being baptized (Matthew 28:18), whereby we are made an heir to the kingdom of heaven, right then and there! This constant drumbeat of discipleship, or making disciples, overshadows actually baptizing people, or it turns baptism into a step on the journey toward Jesus. But the direction is backwards. In baptism, Jesus Christ journeys all the way to the individual in water and Word and never leaves, “for we have been united with him” (Romans 6:5). In baptism, we receive the benefits of the forgiveness of sins, deliverance from death and the devil, and everlasting life. These are all God’s activities for us: we are the passive recipients who are raised from death to life.
Furthermore, Jesus urges his followers to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him (Matthew 16:28). Again, the matter of self-denial and being crucified is conspicuously absent from current church programs. It may be that we know that dying to self is tough to market. We may deceive ourselves and others by saying, “well, baptism is just a given.” And we further deceive ourselves that when Jesus says, “take up your cross and follow me,” that we have the capacity within to do what he says. Christ knows that we have an aversion to suffering and death. Therefore, as a result of baptism he calls us into specific vocations, rooted in his creation with particular people he places in front of us. In these vocations, we learn through the school of the Holy Spirit what baptism means for daily living. It means that our old sinful self, with all its evil deeds and desires, should be drowned through daily repentance; and that day after day a new self should arise to live with God in righteousness and purity forever. “The cross is not something to be sought. When the Word is near, the cross is close at hand; you don’t need to find it, the cross finds you. So, the cross characterizes all vocations, but becomes particularly evident in families.”12 Through these vocations, God reverses the central motive of all our sin (a concupiscence as old as Garden of Eden!) which is to ascend the glorious escalator and be like God. And He does this by utilizing our vocations to make us truly human, vocations that are part of his very own creation, trusting our Father in heaven who has sent his Son, Emmanuel to be here among us until the end of the age.
In order for us to live day after day in our various callings, we rely upon the promises given to us in baptism, particularly the forgiveness of sins. Apart from this forgiveness, we are prone, on the one hand, to turn our vocations into immortality projects and the number of those whom we are called to serve as a scoreboard of our progress. On the other hand, when we are not properly reoriented by the life-giving Word, we, to quote the song, are prone to wander from our mundane, earthly calls and other people whom God chooses for us, to serve for a self-chosen “higher calling.” Either way, we remain in our sin and our vocation is violated.
In Luther’s wedding sermons written in January of 1531, we are given the key for, not only marriage, but for all vocations. To be beneficial, “[marriage] requires belief in the forgiveness of sins, because, as with all other estates of life, marriage is not without sin.”13 Vocations of all kinds are messy with sinners tripping over themselves in things done and left undone. Therefore, we are daily called back to the promises given to us in baptism to hear God speak to us his grace in the absolution. In order for God to speak to us, he sends his preachers to give us his external word of grace (Romans 10:1417). In marriage, the closest preacher of the absolution is the spouse. In the family, the preachers of forgiveness are parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or even the children. In the neighborhood, it’s the next-door neighbor or the mailman.
"No one denies that [marriage] is without sin. But is there an estate that is without sin? In that case I would never be able to preach any sermon, no servant or maidservant could serve, the government could not use the sword, and no nobleman would be able to mount his steed! Not yet, dear sir! We will not be so pure in this life that we will ever do any good work without sin. This article, ‘I believe in the forgiveness of sins,’ must stand."14
Luther here is explicitly preaching the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed, teaching the betrothed how it is that they as baptized Christians are made holy and how their marriage is made pure. They are made holy by the Holy Spirit who day after day fully forgives their sins. This is the Word, the forgiveness of sins of the baptized, which make marriage and any other vocation holy. Notably, no work that a spouse does, no amount of counseling a couple seeks makes a marriage holy. Professional counseling, which is an occupation of the law not gospel, may help to support or stabilize a marriage, between Christians or non-Christians alike, in the lefthand kingdom, but that is not to be confused with making the marriage holy. That comes only through the Holy Spirit speaking the forgiveness of sins through the mouth of sinners. Out of that Word, the Holy Spirit produces an array of good fruit. Luther continues, “But now he says here that God wishes to have this estate endowed with grace. . . Thus, He sets to work to purify this estate with His Word so that consequently it becomes a divine, holy estate. . . He calls it purified in the sense that God declares it pure by grace and does not impute the sin that is in nature.”15 This is a comforting message for those who are burdened by sin in their marriage, whether by one’s own failings or the failings of their spouse. When God opens his mouth and declares through the voice of the betrothed, “I forgive you on account of Christ,” then the union is made holy once again. On the other hand, this removes the presumption of righteousness in the marital union. While the world and our old selves only see the outward form of righteousness, for a righteous marriage, or any other vocation, the source of righteousness comes from the external preaching of the forgiveness of sins.
Luther here is explicitly preaching the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed, teaching the betrothed how it is that they as baptized Christians are made holy and how their marriage is made pure. They are made holy by the Holy Spirit who day after day fully forgives their sins.
It is only God’s word of forgiveness that makes a person righteous and makes the vocations they serve pure and holy. It is this Word which makes a disciple and at the same time, returns us to creation to be of benefit to our neighbors whom God has given us.
"What I have purified do not make impure (Acts 10:15). Here what was otherwise impure and forbidden became pure and holy by God’s speaking alone. So, here, too, because God purified this estate with His Word and calls it a chaste, holy estate, we, too, should regard it as pure, yet with the knowledge that this purity does not come from nature but from grace alone, which covers and blots out the natural impurity and sin, just as He does with all original sin in those who are baptized and believe that through the Savior Christ they have forgiveness of sins and have become children of eternal life. For though this original sin always adheres to and is active in the flesh for as long as we live on earth, yet we who are Christians are called pure and holy because He makes the sign of the cross over us and in addition gives us His Holy Spirit, who begins to do away with sin and always keeps doing so until death. Thus, while we are not without sin, we nevertheless have the judgement of heaven spoken by God’s mouth that we are now pure and holy. Because of that, a beautiful heaven of grace, which is Christ with His purity, righteousness, and holiness, has been spread over us, covered us, and surrounded us, so that we are incorporated into Him through baptism and cling to Him by faith."16
The two great teachings of the Reformation, on justification by faith alone apart from works of the law and vocation, work together to foster a proclamation of the gospel of Christ to the ungodly such that they rely on the benefits of their baptism to make them Christians.
Conclusion
The two great teachings of the Reformation, on justification by faith alone apart from works of the law and vocation, work together to foster a proclamation of the gospel of Christ to the ungodly such that they rely on the benefits of their baptism to make them Christians. And when we are tempted to ascend the glorious escalator, may the Holy Spirit come and speak the Word of absolution to justify us by faith alone, once again. By this forgiveness are vocations made holy.
Marney Fritts teaches systematic theology for Saint Paul Lutheran Seminary and is the pastor of Tahoma Lutheran Church. She and her husband live with their two children in Maple Valley, WA.
Endnotes:
1The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert, 3841.
2Ibid., 132-140.
3Ibid., 300-301.
4Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation, translated by Carl C. Rasmussen (Evansville, IN: Ballast Press, 1999).
5Ibid., 2.
6Karlfried Froehloch, “Luther on Vocation,” Lutheran Quarterly, 13 no 2 Sum 1999, 197.
7Martin Luther, Lectures on the Galatians (1535), LW 1, 103-115.
8Martin Luther, Lectures on the Galatians (1535), LW 26: 88.
9Ibid., 129.
10Gerhard Forde, “Radical Lutheranism,” in A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and Ecumenism, edited by Mark C. Mattes and Steven D. Paulson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 6.
11Gene Edward Veith, Working for the Neighbor: A Lutheran Primer on Vocation, Economics, and Ordinary Life (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library Press, 2016), 29.
12James Arne Nestingen, “Luther on Marriage, Vocation, and the Cross,” Word & World, 23 no 1 Winter 2003, 38.
13Martin Luther, Sermons III, LW 56: 358.
14Ibid., 371.
15Luther’s Works 56, 373.
16Ibid., 373.
