Resting in Christ: Why the Reformed think Lutherans are second-class Christians.

By Dr. Gene Edward Veith

“OK, you’re a Lutheran but are you a Christian?” “That’s nice that you were baptized as a baby, but when did you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal savior?” Lutherans get this sort of thing all the time from their fundamentalist friends.

When they get to know us a little better and see that we hold to the Bible more fiercely than they do, even, they will say, “Well, you Lutherans are strong in doctrine, but weak in morals.” They are bothered at the way Lutherans are not quite so uptight as they are about whether things are right or wrong and what the Christian is supposed to do in every situation. They are annoyed especially at the Lutheran easy-going attitude towards practices that are not forbidden in Scripture, but which loom large in the fundamentalist lifestyle (such as drinking, smoking, dancing, and the like).

Lutherans understand Christianity––and their lives––in terms of Law and Gospel; the Reformed get it turned around: first comes the Gospel and then comes the Law. After you become a Christian then you are under the Law and are expected to follow it to the letter. Of course, this emphasis on human action tends to reduce the Gospel to Law, a matter of what you have to do to be saved (make a decision to accept Jesus into your heart). This contrasts with the Lutheran understanding that salvation is what happens to us through the grace of God, which comes by means of Word and Sacrament. It isn’t that you have to accept Jesus; the good news is that Jesus accepts you. He has saved you not by your will, but by His, not by any subjective soul-wrenching on your part, but by dying on a cross and rising from the dead. By bringing you onto His cross in Baptism and coming to you in the most intimate way in the Lord’s Supper— more objective facts— Christ gives you forgiveness of your sins. Now you can live in Christian freedom, not wanting to do the bad things, but living in the confidence of God’s grace.

The Reformed assumption that Lutherans are second-class Christians––or not Christians at all––goes way back into American history. The Lutherans then were immigrants, like Hispanics and Asians today, coming from exotic places like Germany and Scandinavia into a culture dominated by Puritan Protestants. The issue that got Lutherans in trouble was how they kept the Sabbath.

For the Puritans, the Sabbath meant working hard not to do any work. Moreover, honoring the Sabbath meant not only going to church, but not doing any kind of frivolous “worldly” activity. Sundays were to be a day of solemn meditation, full of rulesand Old-Testament-like strictness.

But here these Lutherans were, who, after going to church, spent Sunday afternoons going to concerts, playing sports, and even (shudder) going out with their families to something those Germans called beer gardens.

That kind of Sabbath-breaking scandalized the mainstream American Protestants. Having fun on the Sabbath? Blasphemy! This was even worse than the other things those Lutherans did, such as having Christmas trees. (When one of the founding fathers of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Rev. Heinrich Christian Schwan, introduced the custom by putting a Christmas tree in his church, the Calvinists accused us of rank paganism, of idolatry, of worshipping trees!)

Before long, though, even the Reformed were setting up Christmas trees, and soon the Lutheran way of keeping the Sabbath caught on throughout American culture. The notion that leisure and recreation are good things contributed to the rise of professional sports, orchestras, popular music, and on and on.

But the point is, those early Lutherans––with their music, games, and Biergartens—were keeping the Sabbath. Keeping the Sabbath day holy meant, in the words of the Catechism, gladly hearing and learning God’s Word. The Sabbath is not Law, as the Puritans made it, but Gospel. Not working on the Sabbath is not a stringent list of restrictions; rather, the Biblical notion of the Sabbath rest signifies our condition under the grace of God. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the peopleof God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work” (Hebrews 4:9-10). Since we are not saved by our works, we rest in Christ.

Furthermore, as was said by Jesus Himself––who was assailed by the Pharisees for allegedly breaking theirSabbath legalisms—“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The day set aside for hearing the Gospel is God’s gift, along with the faith that it proclaims, as are the innocent pleasures and recreations that we are now free to enjoy.

Dr. Gene Edward Veith is Dean of Arts and Sciences at Concordia University, Wisconsin. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Higher Things.