I'm also someone who has crossed the Rhine as an adult. I often describe my journey to Lutheranism as an accident, because when I was in the wilderness the Lutheran tradition wasn't even on my radar. I grew up Evangelical/Pentecostal, but began to question certain things I had been raised to believe in my late teens. I slowly became disenchanted with it, especially as I began to study Scripture and the history of the Church more in depth. I was early on drawn toward ancient expressions of the faith, in particular Eastern Orthodoxy. Fundamentally what shook up my world was a Lutheran expressing the Gospel very plainly and clearly--and that it is God's gift, God's work, apart from myself. That, in truth, my hope and salvation didn't depend on me, but God in Christ.
I had grown up hearing the words "grace alone" and "faith alone" but these were never interpreted in a way except that my salvation was, ultimately, up to me and my choices and actions. It was up to me, ultimately, to turn toward God, it was up to me to accept Christ; and the underlying presentation of the Christian life which I had been raised with was such that I was supposed to grow and change and become more righteous as evidence and fruit of my salvation. But this theology of moral progress continued to leave me in a state of despair.
The first time I started to question my own salvation was when I was 8 years old; one of my very earliest memories was being about 3/4 years old and my parents leading me through the "Sinner's Prayer", but I also distinctly remember trying to "shoo" Jesus out of my heart when my parents corrected a misunderstanding on my part, that even though I accepted Jesus into my heart I would still die (my grandfather had recently suffered a stroke and so this was also the "death talk" from my parents since we didn't know if he would make it at the time). Fast forward to me at 8 years old, and I had my first existential crisis of faith--I confessed to my dad that I didn't know if I had "meant it" when I asked Jesus into my heart, I also remembered the whole "shooing" thing I did. So my dad led me through the Sinner's Prayer again. He asked if I had meant it that time, and I told him that I didn't know. I didn't know how to know if I had meant it, I didn't know what it was I supposed to feel, or how to feel like I meant it.
This was a repeated theme for much of my younger life. When I started going through puberty, I was inundated with all the hormonal insanity that comes with puberty, and the sermons and talks from various youth pastors and teachers led me feeling absolutely horrid, because I was looking at women differently than I had before--new feelings which I was deeply ashamed of. Being reinforced fairly routinely. A youth evangelist came to our church and preached on a Sunday night, the point of which was to get us kids to go forward to receive "Baptism with the Holy Spirit", so I went forward and had hands laid on me and I was "slain in the Spirit" as is called. At first I thought this was a godsend, now maybe I could start living rightly and thinking rightly--but that's not what happened. Instead I continued to be hounded by my own sins, my own sinful thoughts, and feelings (or at least what I had been conditioned to believing were sinful) and I remember pleading with God to save me, pleading for Jesus not to abandon me. Time and again I was convinced that I was outside of reach, I was beyond hope, surely the Lord would not have me, I was beyond forgiveness.
That was the state of things for most of my teenage years. I tried hard to feel God, to feel God's presence. I would throw all I had into worship, I would fall face down, prostrate, both during worship in church and privately when I was alone at home. And just beg God to heal me, to rescue me, to save me. And sometimes I would feel better--for a time. But it didn't last. And when I didn't "feel God", I took it to be a punishment from God, God withdrawing Himself from me because I was such a huge disappointment. All I wanted was a God of love. I just wanted a God who would love me--but He was so far away, so distant, my sins were so great and surely He could have nothing to do with me. Meanwhile, most of my church friends would tell me how they respected me, they would tell me how spiritual I was, and the youth leaders at my church, and pastors would say I was going to be really important. By all outward, observable metrics I was a very pious person--I didn't just try to look religious outwardly to save face, it was part of a desperate interior battle that waged inside me to want to be a godly person--but I knew the truth. I knew the me that nobody could see, the me that was full of fear and doubt. I wasn't a spiritual person, I was a terrified sinner before a wrathful, angry, holy God.
Then one day a Lutheran said it clear as day, that we are justified freely by God's grace, on Christ's account. That God is the One who comes down, always comes down, always, always, always comes down. We don't go up, God comes down. It is that God comes down, throws Himself away for sinners in Jesus, to make us His own. God loved me, and God saves me apart from me--He has done this in Jesus.
It was, so similar to what I had always heard my entire life, but there was something different this time. There was no, "God did that, so now you have to do this." It was simply, purely, "God has done this, for you." Full stop. Period. That's it. God has done. For me. For me this wretch.
It was like an ocean of calm and peace.
The terrifying God of holiness loves me. He just does.
There's no impressing Him. There's no requirements, or conditions, or small print. God just loves me, and Christ is His love for me, God comes down. God throws Himself away in Jesus. I didn't earn it. I didn't have to. God just did it. He did it without permission. God decided to love me without getting my permission, because Lord knows left to my own devices I wouldn't let Him--I loathed myself far too much to let God love me. But God loved me anyway.
God loves everyone anyway.
God is for everyone. God is for everyone in Jesus. God is for the whole world. God loves us to the very worst of us, and drowned Himself in the ugliness and suffering of the very worst the world could throw at Him--and He took it all. He abandoned Himself to all the ugliness of humanity and the world--in order to save us. Us, who would choose every day to be God's enemies, He saved us. He reconciled us. He came for us. To reconcile us. To make us not just friends, but children and heirs.
That's who God is in the Gospel. That's what the Gospel is: The God who throws Himself away in Jesus, for us--for all of us, for the very worst of us. To rescue us, to justify us, to save us.
And that's why I'm a Lutheran.
-CryptoLutheran
