More on Luther...

Today I read Martin Luther's sermon "Two Kinds of Righteousness". The first kind is the what he calls "alien righteousness", or the kind of righteousness that Christ has, and we can receive only through Him. Luther expounds upon this with Scripture, and he then goes on to say, "Christ daily drives out the old Adam more and more in accordance with the extent to which faith and knowledge of Christ grow. For alien righteousness is not all installed all at once, but it begins, makes progress, and is finally perfected at the end through death."

This is an interesting idea, and it makes me feel better in some ways. I still struggle in my walk. This is reassuring to know that Christ is going to keep working and perfecting me, and it will be a lifelong project. I won't be perfected until He returns to redeem His bride. So I guess my source of joy is that I have assurance that even though I still have sin issues, Christ is going to work these things out of me.

The second type of righteousness Luther talks about is "proper righteousness." This type springs out of the first. We work with the righteousness that Christ gives us. This righteousness leads us to not become puffed up or haughty, but rather to put the other members of the body of Christ ahead of ourselves. "For thus no member of the body serves itself; nor does it seek its own welfare but that of the other. And the weaker, the sicker, the less honorable a member is, the more the other members serve it..." He cites Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12.

I had never thought of it quite like this. I had read these Biblical passages several times, but I had never thought that those members who are stronger should serve those who are weaker precisely because they are weaker, so that the whole body is taken care of.  I mean, I knew that those who are stronger were not supposed to lord it over those who were weaker and that we were to put others before ourselves, but this was a new line of reasoning for me.