to make satisfaction for all my sins. This means that now in Jesus Christ I belong to God. I am in his hand, and no power in hell or on earth can pluck me out of it. God who has done so much for me will not fail me now. Not a hair can fall from my head without my Heavenly Father’s will. And more than that, he gives me his Holy Spirit to assure of eternal life hereafter, and to make me ready here and now to do his service and accomplish his will.
This is the comfort Paul knew. He did not mean he never suffered; this very letter includes a list of appalling suffering. It meant that in all these things he was more than conqueror, and that nothing whatever could separate him from God’s love. Whatever he did, wherever he went, he was armed and protected by God’s love. “As far from danger as from fear/ While love almighty love is near” (Charles Wesley). This is the comfort rediscovered at the Reformation, by Luther and his friends. If any person knew the meaning of “fightings without and fears within” it was Luther. But it was the core of his new faith that “I am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ,” and the man who knew that, knew that life and death held no more terrors. “Where will you go,” they asked him, “if you are put under the ban of the Empire?” “Sub-caelo,” somewhere under heaven, he replied. There is no need to fear.
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,One little word shall fell him. (Luther, “Ein Festeburg”)
This was not only Luther’s poetry, it was the price of his life. When he was warned, not unwisely, not to attend the imperial parliament at Worms, he said, “I will go, though there be as many devils as tiles on the roofs.”
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,And He must win the battle (Luther).
Is this out of date? Have human beings so come of age that they have no longer a need for this virile, positive comfort that God has to offer his people? I do not think so. Human beings still know they have to die, and the sin of the world is not now perceptibly less even though distinctly more respectable in places. We still need the positive victory over sin and death. Just because the Reformation is so positive, it has a negative aspect too; just because the comfort which comes from God is so adequate and free, it is wrong to seek comfort from any other source.
COMFORT FROM ANY OTHER SOURCE
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