Dear Ambassador's for Christ,
Below is an excerpt from a letter that Martin Luther wrote to Melanchthon on 1 August 1521. The contested errors in Luther's letter is highlighted in bold print.
If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (or bold), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2nd Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God's glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.
There is a beginning to the erroneous doctrine of the unconditional love of God. Martin Luther wrote and said many good things, but his writing to Melanchthon is layered in human excrement: "Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong", and "No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day". While it remains true that we are sinners in the flesh, we that are born again of God's Spirit, do not willfully continue in sin, but seek the Face of Almighty Yahweh God, for His forgiving mercy, though our High Priest, the Man Christ Jesus. Because of Luther's esteemed personage, it is problematic that his hyperbolic words were among those that first fermented error in the reformation of Christian theology. Also, Eric Fromm's writings in his 1956 book "The Art of Loving", may have become the written source which popularized in Christianity the recent notion of God's unconditional love. Eric Fromm was born in Germany into an orthodox Jewish family, whose father was a rabbi; nevertheless he used the scriptures to evolve his own mystical psychology, to the point of declaring himself to be an atheistic mystic.
There is not one of us who has not misinterpreted Scripture, and perhaps though the pride of our own erroneous discovery, communicated our error in speech, or may have compounded the error in our writings to those who hold us in esteem. I certainly can understand a teacher extolling the great salvation that we have in Jesus Christ: However, Martin Luther, a man held in the greatest of esteem and made an idol, was indeed a sinner like all of us, and sinned boldly in this portion of his hyperbolic heresy in his communication to Melanchthon. Luther's error of yesterday, remains doctrinally entrenched in sectors of today's protestant theology, and has given the Luciferian and demonic enemies of God, the opportunity to waylay the many souls who may have started new on their journey of salvation faith in Jesus Christ. Now, because of a few incantations in the past, the prideful say: We are all going to heaven, no matter what we do, after all, we're free, because there is no law. Nevertheless the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal: The Lord knows them that are His. And Let every one that names the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, depart from iniquity. (2nd Timothy 2:19.) What? know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price [that being the Covenant Blood of Jesus Christ]: Therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. (1st Corinthians 6:19-20.) Because it is written: Be ye holy; for I AM Holy.
Many theologians and teachers of Scriptures, step over the following Word of Truth from the Lord Jesus Christ. In their vanity they dismisses the Truth in Christ's warning teaching: When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walks through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he say: I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he finds it now empty, swept, and garnished. Then goes he, and takes with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: And the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation. (Matthew 12:43-45.) Unbelief can be an insurmountable problem for the sophisticated mind that is entrenched in the philosophical vanity of the world. Their carnal mind is dismissive of that which is contrary to spiritual discernment, and to that which is declared in Scripture.
God's Gift of Salvation for mankind, is revealed IN Christ Jesus, for God gave the precious Gift of His Son of TRUTH as an Act of immeasurable Sacrificial Love, The Gift of God was Perfect IN TRUTH and LOVE, for the Son of God loved His Father perfectly and would eternally be obedient to the Will of His God. Perfect Love cast out all fear and Christ's absolute trust IN His Father was demonstrated by the Incarnate Son of Man IN His Sacrificial death for humanity that was prescribed by the Will of His Father God, the Eternal Giver of Life. Now the TRUTH of that same Perfect Love that is Christ Jesus, is revealed in Christ's passion and death on the cross, for the Messiah's propitiating sacrificial offering is the same Perfect Love of His Father that Christ Sacrifices to save the lost of humanity from their self serving sins of death. It is impossible for sin to exist IN the Love of God: For the Love of God overcomes this world of sin and death. God's Gift is conceived in undying Faith, that is perpetuated through His Spirit of Grace, that is One with the Holy One of God.
Jesus the
Son of Man, in the perfection of Almighty God's Love, was raised from the dead for the
justification of the lost of humanity. Now, those of that One Faith IN Christ
Jesus, would follow after us, so long as we follow
Christ in His Love for His Father and that of our fellow man. God's call to the lost
of humanity, begins with a call for their repentance from their rebellious sin which leads
all
to a death sentence. Having answered God's Call to
Salvation IN Christ Jesus, they are exonerated from all past sins and have been
born again as new creatures IN Christ. Nevertheless, God from Eternity,
knew that we were forgetful hearers of His Word, and made Provision in His New
Covenant for the Life Giving Blood of His Beloved Son to cleanse us of our now
current trespasses against the Almighty's good and holy Word of TRUTH.
However, Martin Luther, in this noted flamboyant section of his letter, gives license for the continuation of the gross sins of death, which would thereby would test the limits of the grace and forbearance of Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty and the Judge of the whole earth. God does not change, for He remains Eternally Holy in all of His Essence. The Holiness of God envelopes the Perfection of His Love and His mercy: Therefore, be very careful in branding about the word unconditional, when attributing it to God's Love, when in fact the Love of God IN His Will, is conditional upon our own willingness to repent from our own destructive desires. We repeat Luther's false innuendo; No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day: Therefore, according to Luther's doctrine the ignorant would still be at liberty in our gross sins, and judged as not guilty because of God's now unconditional Love. Luther, obviously never considered the destruction of other lives that are violated with his flamboyant rhetoric, even with one willful act of our violence. There is no love of God in the violence of sin.
The evil weed seeds of Luther's hyperbolic message inevitably sprang up, and then flowered with more seeds being released along with every other wind of doctrine, thereby initiating Luther's need for a later defensive recantation of his antinomian statements. Unfortunately, without the true gospel message for humble repentance, the fire had already been started. but sin is exacerbated with Luther's hyperbolic error, and are being fanned by the winds of hell. Contrary wise, witness, that The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (2nd Peter 3:9) Our unchangeable Holy YHWH God is not willing for anyone to parish, let alone those who hear the true gospel, for in His patience, the Almighty will suffer long with all of us sinners, awaiting the change in the direction of the heart, and then in the conception of faith though His Spirit of Truth and Grace, He will direct us into the Way of Christ's righteousness, where we were re-birthed into the continuing labors of God's Perfect Love. We also, together with God, as His ambassador children, labor patiently in that Sacrificial Love of the new birth of soul and spirit, to testify of the Infinite's profound goodness to a corrupt world that is perishing around us.
However, pride will always give birth to confusion, and from the beginning of Satan's corruption, and for his own willful desires for power alone, the father of confusion has sought to circumvent or denigrate the Eternal Truth of the Almighty God. If Martin Luther found himself entangled in his own prideful hyperbolic soteriology and spent years recanting his error and that of the Lutheran faith, then why should the Lutheran pastors place themselves in peril of life by repeating Luther's error, as if Luther could make no mistake, and all of his words were the doctrinal words of God and His eternal Word and Son, Christ Jesus. As far as I know, Luther, in the spirit of his pride, never admitted to his felonious mistake, although he tried to cover his error with the brightness of his mind, both with his verbal and writing skills. Luther's "Sin boldly" is still being heard from the Lutheran pulpit, and any justification with embellished rhetoric is full of the vanity of the mind of flesh. Put these following words of the Lord into the context of which we ascribe: Neither shall you swear by thy head, because you can not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these, comes of evil. (Matthew 5:36-37) In any court of law, an accomplice to a crime, may be found just as guilty as the actual perpetrator. The driver of the getaway car in a bank robbery is every bit as guilty as the actual bank robber who holds the weapon of destruction. A false witness is also culpable before God, for the Truth of Scripture testifies: A false witness shall not be unpunished, for he that speaks lies shall perish. (Proverbs 19:9). An accessory or consoler to a crime, is guilty of aiding and abetting in the commission of the crime.
God, through His Spirit of TRUTH, gives grace to the humble so that they may recover themselves from the prior shackling abuses of sin, But they are not to be encouraged to return to that which imprisoned them in the first place. But those who pride themselves in their own wisdom, may in the end find themselves in the control of the master of all confusion. Know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortionist, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: (for all have sinned) but you are washed, but you are sanctified {set apart}, but you are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. (1st Corinthians 6:9-11). If we are washed from our prior sins in the Fountain of Water that flowed from the side of Jesus Christ, and we are set apart by that same Fountain of Blood by the Spirit of God, then why would you want to crawl back into a pigsty with the unclean hogs. If we are called by God into His Righteousness through His Son, Christ Jesus, then we will not defile the Name above all names that justifies us in His Mercy. We will not continue in unrighteous sin nor willfully test its unfruitfulness. [Why would you test the Almighty, by sinning boldly?] You can not love your sin, more than YHWH God. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. (Matthew 6:24). Know you not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? (Romans 6:16) God's Covenant of Grace is within His Spirit of Grace, Who is One with the Water and Blood of Jesus Christ. In the New Covenant of Communion Remembrance within the Body of Jesus Christ, we each have the faithful assurance of Holy God through His Spirit that the sanctifying Blood of our Savior will cleanse and renew the repentant believer in the spirit of our minds, so that in the One Body of Jesus Christ, we are each to be living epistles and ambassadors of God's good will towards mankind.
May the Love of God and His TRUTH, abide foremost in your hearts always,
Robert Glenn Pratten