General Theology
Old Time Religion
by Matt Tootle
Please don’t ask me why, but I was flipping through AM radio stations the other day and I stumbled across a gospel radio station. At that particular point, a song by the Canton Spirituals was playing (no, I didn’t know that – I had to google it), and the lyrics that caught my attention went as follows: “I’ve got to clean up what I’ve messed up. I’ve started my life over again. I’ve made up my mind I aint lying no more.”
Why, you might ask, did that catch my attention? As unpleasant as the song was to listen to, the lyrics totally described how I have lived much of my life. I’ve tried to clean up many things that I’ve messed up. I’ve started my life over again…and again…and again. And I’ve made up my mind, many times, that I aint (fill in the blank) no more. And I’ve failed miserably each time. Each time I have thought if I pray more, read more, memorize more, become more disciplined or more accountable I will finally be able to succeed. I bet you can guess the result.
I am very slowly starting to learn that my ugliness is much more messed up than I have ever realized. And hand in hand with that reality is, because of God’s grace, I can’t clean it up. I really do need the gospel. Apart from Christ’s work I am a cynical, frustrated, hardened failure.
Posted by Matt Tootle at April 10, 2008 09:25 PM
Matt, Well said. You are in good, good, historical company. As Martin Luther pored over Romans in disbelief and finally enthisiastic relief he said: “I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. But…a single word in Chapter 1…stood in my way. For I hated that word “righteousness of God,” which, according to the use and custom of all the teachers, I had been taught to understand as that righteousness…with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner. “Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God…I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners…Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place…desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.” “At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’” “There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith…it is the righteousness of God revealed by the gospel, that is, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith…Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates…And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word “righteousness of God.” Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise.”