This year we observe the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. We might do more justice to the goal of Martin Luther and others who worked with him if we called the movement they ignited the “good news” movement rather than the Reformation. Luther’s goal was to contribute to a recovery of the gospel, the good news.
This central focus on the good news is why the main Reformation churches in Germany to this day are known as evangelisch, from the German form of the Greek word for “good news.” For the same reason, the church that publishes this magazine is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Many congregations of this church have “Evangelical” in their full official names, even if we frequently use shorter versions that omit the word.
One of the watchwords of this good news movement is “grace alone.” Around the world, in this year when we observe the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, people are speaking on and writing about the phrase grace alone. The watchword grace alone is vital to teaching and preaching in the Reformation tradition. This doesn’t mean that Reformation churches need to make frequent use of the word “grace.” Grace alone is not primarily a summary of the content of what Reformation churches should be talking about. Rather, grace alone is a reminder about how to talk and act in order to communicate the good news.
Grace alone is, in part, an instruction to preachers. The instruction is not primarily to talk about grace. Instead it says: Preach in such a way that your hearers understand their lives in the light of grace alone. That is, do not preach in such a way that people walk away from the sermon turned inward, fretting about whether their lives measure up. Preach in such a way that people understand their lives in the light of God’s grace, God’s unconditional favor.
Not only that, but preach in such a way that, when push comes to shove, God’s unconditional favor is the only thing that counts for people in making sense of their lives. In short, let preaching be guided by the watchword of grace alone.
Grace alone isn’t just instruction for the relatively small group of people publicly recognized as preachers. Grace alone is instruction for all who would speak the good news to others around them, whether the setting is formal or informal, public or private.
Grace alone isn’t just instruction for the relatively small group of people publicly recognized as preachers. Grace alone is instruction for all who would speak the good news to others around them, whether the setting is formal or informal, public or private.
To communicate the good news, speak and act in such a way that God’s unconditional favor is the light that reveals the shape and value of your neighbor’s life. Speak and act in such a way that people can recognize their lives as defined fundamentally by God’s grace—not by socially powerful ideas of moral worthiness, economic accomplishment, psychological well-adjustedness, educational attainment, personal maturity, romantic attractiveness, popularity, productivity or other types of conformity to standards of how a person “ought” to be.
Grace alone doesn’t name some abstract theological idea that people need to understand and embrace in order to be “good Christians.” The function of the Reformation watchword grace alone is thoroughly practical. It orients our communication with each other to make it good news. It guides the church to speak and act such that people aren’t left to their own devices. It guides the church’s communication so people see themselves, the whole of their lives, the most beautiful parts and the ugliest parts, in the refreshing light of divine unconditional love.
More specifically, the phrase grace alone guides the church’s communication so people can see their lives, in all their complexity and even self-contradiction, as being inseparable from the life of Jesus. As Colossians 3:3 puts it: “Your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
The significance and direction of our lives may not be clear to us. But we can be assured that, in Christ, God refuses to live without us. Our lives are bound to Christ’s life—regardless. God regards us with the same unbounded love with which God regards Jesus. This is the deepest meaning of grace alone.
