LUTHERAN SPIRITUALITY
Is it sensible to ask whether there is something particularly “Lutheran” about Lutheran spirituality?
I
s it sensible to ask whether there is something particularly “Lutheran” about Lutheran spirituality? On the one hand, we might say no, realizing that devotion and piety have always been areas where grass root ecumenism has made great successes. Lutherans, Catholics, Anglicans, and other Protestants happily borrow hymns and prayers from one another, read the same devotional classics, and admire similar pieces of art. On the other hand, the Lutheran Reformation was deeply devotional in nature from its very beginning. The popular narrative of a personally anguished monk seeking a merciful God is not altogether wrong. Many explanations have been offered to the question of why the writings of Martin Luther spread like wildfire, but the most obvious, credible, and
true is this: Luther’s preaching of the Gospel met the deep spiritual need of ordinary Christians. The Lutheran Reformation did not remain merely an academic project; it broke out of the Wittenberg lecture halls and into parish churches and the prayer chambers of private homes. Seeking clarity in matters of salvation and finding peace of conscience have always been central to Lutheran faith and spirituality, and they remain so in our day as well. The Lutheran insistence on certainty of salvation—certainty that Christ was crucified and resurrected for you—has sometimes been criticized as neurotic, but such criticisms fail to understand the gravity of the alternative: condemnation for sin and eternal damnation. What therefore characterizes Lutheran spirituality more than anything is
the centrality of repentance and forgiveness.
Godly Grief
St. Paul speaks of grief that leads to salvation as “godly grief,” writing: “I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us” (2 Corinthians 7:9). God wants His creatures to be happy, but in order to secure their eternal happiness He allows them to experience temporal grief in this life. The idea that Lutheran, Gospelcentred faith would have no room for grief over sin, or that all grief is simply a sign of lack of faith, must be rejected. Grief in itself has no merit in the eyes of God. No one should imagine that by grieving over sins they can
THE CANADIAN LUTHERAN March/April 2020
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