Luthers view of the cross began to change when he realized that Christs cry or scream [My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?] was the result of bearing human sin. Christ himself had not committed sin; he voluntarily took upon himself the entire sin of the world. This was not done only in a conceptual or theoretical way. Christ really and truly took sin upon himself, as if he had committed them in the first place… Luthers next step was to take the logic of the cross and apply it to his own situation. If Christ has the worlds sin on himself, then Luthers own sin is on Christ as well. If Luthers sin is borne by Christ, then he (Luther) is free of sin. If he is free of sin, then he is righteous. The very thing that Luther tried to obtain by all his labors in the monastery was given to him freely in Christ. Luther termed this the happy exchange, whereby Christ, out of love, traded his righteousness and purity to sinners and received from them their guilt and shame. It is a terribly unjust exchange, since our sin kills Christ while his righteousness yields life and freedom for undeserving sinners. But it is all accomplished by God in Christ by a remarkable and radical act of love. - Mark D. Tranvik
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 12:00:00 +0000
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