The Joyous Exchange

Mike Reeves' Unquenchable Flame is a great collection of Reformation info, much of which I heard him present back at (the great!!) New Word Alive festival in 2009.

Here's one gem:

The third, and perhaps most important of Luther's main works that year, was The Freedom of a Christian. Having made his attacks, this was his positive explanation of his gospel, and he dedicated it to the pope, since, for all his attacks on Rome and the popes, he wanted to save the man himself.

At the head of it is a story of a man who marries a prostitute - Luther's allegory for the marriage of King Jesus and the wicked sinner. When they marry, the prostitute becomes, by status, a queen. It is not that she made her behaviour queenly, and so won the right to the king's hand. She was and is a wicked harlot through and through. However, when the king made his marriage vow, her status changed. Thus she is, simultaneously, a prostitute at heart and a queen by status. In just the same way, Luther saw that the sinner, on accepting Christ's promise in the gospel, is simultaneously a sinner at heart and righteous by status. What has happened is the "joyful exchange" in which all that she has (her sin) she gives to him, and all that he has (his righteousness, blessedness, life and glory) he gives to her. Thus she can confidently display "her sins in the face of death and hell and say, "If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his."

Bam! Damn right it's a "joyous exchange" - may we never, dear Christian, plunge ourselves into the faecal pit of intrinsic righteousness.

Sola scriptura

Sola fide

Sola gratia

Solo Christo

Soli Deo gloria!