Lately I've got this way of thinking that I don't want to follow rules and be someone's servant. When I pray to God I don't feel anything like I used to, the things I enjoy on earth make me happier than turning to God does.
I'm just wondering, why should we even care about going to Heaven? It seems like you have to fight every natural urge and desire you have just on the off-chance you might get to Heaven, despite the fact that we can't help our human nature and we didn't ask to exist I'm the first place. Isn't it better to go to Hell knowing you lived for yourself and didn't deny yourself happiness, than stressing out all the time on Earth just to then go to Heaven and continue being someone's servant for eternity? I feel like if I go to Hell at least I lived for myself and didn't let myself be bullied/strongarmed into following rules that I don't even really want to.
I used to be terrified of Hell and constantly try to please God, and I never felt as happy as I do when I just please myself and don't worry about it.
The idea of following rules to get a good reward is going to lead to despair, or at least this kind of exhaustion.
Martin Luther in the 16th century identified this attitude and way of thinking as being, essentially, the root problem behind most of the spiritual problems facing the Church at the time. He called this by the Latin term "theologia gloriae", theology of glory.
The theology of glory (or theologies of glory, as there can be many kinds) can be summed up as the idea that we view God chiefly as the Law-Giver whose laws we must keep and if we do so He will reward us: it can be in the form of the idea that God will bless us in this life with goods based on our performance or personal righteousness; or it can mean that we have to earn God's favor through acts of merit, or it can be the idea that we can please God with our own righteousness or that we can attain a certain level of righteousness or holiness for ourselves through our own efforts. It can mean wanting to know God through the Law, through His holiness, through His glory and that we if we just try hard enough, search long enough, do this or do that, then we can know and experience the Holy and Glorious God. The theology of glory has many forms and many faces.
This is in stark contrast to what is called
Theologia Crucis, the Theology of the Cross. The Theology of the Cross is chiefly this: We do not know God through His Law and glory; because He is actually hidden from us behind the veil of the Law, He is hidden behind His glory. Instead we can only truly know God as He reveals Himself and gives Himself to us through the Person of Jesus Christ, and in Christ's sufferings. We behold God not in His naked and hidden glory, but rather clothed and revealed in the Crucified Lamb of Mt. Calvary. For Christ says, "If you have known Me you have known the Father", He says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by Me". It is here, in Christ, that we behold the Father through His Son.
For through the Law there is the Dreadful Glory on the mountain, fire and smoke and terrifying who says to Moses, "No one can see Me and live". But in Christ we behold God as He would be known by us, the loving and compassionate Father of Jesus who, through Jesus, would become our Father too.
He did not give the Law to kill us, but because He is Good and so His Law is good; but because we are sinful the Law is a curse to us, it kills us. And no amount of trying to be righteous and holy will make us holy and good--the Law cannot make us good, the Law cannot make us righteous, the Law cannot make us holy. Instead the irony is that the harder we try to be righteous, the more unrighteous we become--because the Law acts like a mirror. The more closely you look at yourself in a mirror, the more you see--the imperfections, the blemishes, they all start to become more and more obvious; and the more we try be perfect the more imperfect we find ourselves to be. The Law, in this way, shows us just how empty and without we truly are, and the harder we try to be righteous by the Law the more sinful we discover ourselves to be. The Law, therefore, does not make us good and righteous, but instead shows us to be sinful beyond measure. And thus seeking to please God by being good enough breeds despair, apathy, and pride; and in all these ways hinders and hurts and wrecks faith.
But in Christ, in the Gospel--the Good News of what God has done for us in Jesus--we behold the Grace, the Mercy, the Compassion, the Unfathomable goodness of God toward us by the love with which He loves us.
The Law says, "Do this" but it is never done because of our sin. The Gospel says "Trust this" because the work is already done.
Christ has already made satisfaction, He is righteous and holy, He has measured up, filled up, and made whole the entire Law of God. And here He comes to us, by His suffering and death, and by His resurrection, to say to us, "I am enough, trust in Me" and whoever trusts in Him is not put to shame, but rather is fully justified because through faith we receive the righteousness of Jesus. And in Jesus' righteousness we are indeed righteous before God.
And here is freedom. Freedom to a new kind of obedience, not an obedience which is transactional--I do this and God does that--but rather an obedience that is a living sacrifice out of love. For God loved us, and now transformed by His love, He invites us to love the same: And so now I behold my fellow human beings--my neighbors--I see that my neighbor is hungry and thirsty, or naked or in need, or hurting, and God works to sanctify our hearts, to love. So that when I see my hungry neighbor I give them food, drink to my thirsty neighbor, clothes for my naked neighbor, giving and helping my needy and hurting neighbor.
For we here, in the grace and freedom of God, recognize that it is not God who needs our good works, but rather it is our neighbor who needs them. What the Law could not do, on account of sin, God has done by sending His Son; and now through His Son gives us the Holy Spirit, and works on us, washing us clean, forgiving us all our trespasses, justifying us and also sanctifying us--transforming our minds, renewing our hearts, conforming us to be more like Jesus.
It is a new obedience, not done for glory; but rather a new obedience done out of love and for love's sake.
These are not rules that God says to obey in order to earn His favor, to earn reward, or to attain a good afterlife. Rather God says, "I welcome you to My table as My beloved child, and so as I have welcomed you welcome others" And while we shall fail and falter a hundred times daily, Christ still says, "Come to Me who are weary and overburdened, I shall give you rest", and so we have the promise, "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.". And so God will daily work on us, daily and continuously He declares our sins forgiven on Christ's account which He speaks to us through Word and Sacrament. Daily and continually He fills us with the Holy Spirit, and He invites us to live and walk in that freedom: That freedom to love, that freedom of new obedience. And here the Holy Spirit makes us holy, not by our becoming rule-followers for the sake of following rules or for the sake of glory; but rather making us holy by changing us and making us more like Jesus, to have the mind of Christ, the heart of Christ, the love of Christ, the compassion of Christ. And that work will continue on this entire life.
For Jesus did say, "Take up your cross and follow Me". And so to be His disciple is to take up a cross in this life. That cross will take on many forms. But it is a cross we do not bear alone, but bear with the Lord who walks with us and who holds us dear to Himself and who says His yoke is easy and His burden light. And as we tread the ground He shall keep His word and promises to us, and He will not let us go, He will neither forsake nor abandon us, but be Faithful and True.
And so the joy of knowing Jesus shall daily work upon us.
But theologies of glory are death, they always lead to death for it is the aspiration toward a glory that is unreachable, and often false. But the theology of the cross, the way of the cross, though it is hard and looks ugly compared to the easy path of glory which looks attractive, is nevertheless life and life everlasting.
-CryptoLutheran
