The Church That Hears the Word
A brief word on the keystone announcement of the Christian faith.
A version of this article originally appeared on Mockingbird.
It is well documented by this point that some of the most important verses in the entire Bible are found in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Verses 16 and 17 of the opening chapter have long been considered the instigating spark that lit the flame of the Protestant Reformation that swept across the European continent in the sixteenth century. Everyone’s beloved German reformer, Martin Luther, credited the apostle’s inspired words with breaking open heaven’s gates for him, ushering him into paradise and into a veritably new way in which to understand the Scriptures.1 The hope of righteousness and the status by which humankind is able to stand before God the Judge unafraid and unashamed isn’t realized through one’s own efforts. The works of men and women, however virtuous, are powerless to bring this about. Rather, it is only by way of God’s word of promise, a.k.a. the gospel, that sinners are bestowed the status of righteousness coram Deo (in the eyes of God). “This is righteousness not of our own (Rom. 10:3),” R. C. H. Lenski comments, especially it is “impossible for us to attain, but [it is] God’s gift to the believer, bestowed by God’s verdict upon him.”2
This, to be sure, is nothing short of the keystone announcement of the Christian faith. “This,” Lenski continues, “is the sum of God’s gospel, yea, its very heart.”3 The church is nourished by no other word, nor any other means, than the word that is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). As much as church leaders and institutions might fancy themselves as something else, they are and should be mere propagators of the euangelion. Put another way, imbibing the words of my dear friend Ken Jones (a.k.a.
), those who’ve been called to shepherd the church by preaching the Word ought to adopt as their motto, Evangelium loquor facilis. “I speak fluent gospel.” The church of Christ has nothing else to offer than God’s good news concerning the death and resurrection of God the Son, in which is found the saving power (dunamis) of God. All the actuating energy to bring about reconciliation is contained in the Word, that is, the Word who was with God from everlasting, the Word is God, and the Word who “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14).It is this same Word that continues to go forth through the preaching of the gospel. Carried along by the Spirit of Christ, the church is sustained by the preached Word of God, which “not only explains or informs,” writes Gerhard O. Forde, “but it also gives” to sinners the gift of God’s righteousness, by which we live (Rom. 1:17; cf. Hab. 2:4). “It ends the old and begins the new,” he continues, “it puts to death and brings to life.”4 Death to life is, we might say, the very trajectory of faith. It’s the same trajectory Luther underwent through the course of examining and studying Scripture, precipitating the movement that has forever altered the course of church history. More to the point, this is the trajectory of genuine discipleship. For as much as churches boast about being “discipling-making churches,” this objective is only realized as the gospel is proclaimed. No program, curriculum, or seminar is capable of putting you to death and making you alive. This is the power of the gospel alone. “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6).
Accordingly, the objective of the gospel is not, as Forde put it, “to present the hearer with one more option” among many. Rather, the “ultimate purpose of the proclamation is to raise the dead.”5 It’s to welcome the poor and the reprobate into the faith by declaring the Word that creates faith in those who receive it. After all, as Lenski asserts, “the good news of the gospel kindles faith, and nothing outside of this gospel in the slightest degree contributes to the product of faith.”6 It is in this way, then, that we are made to understand what the church is. The Body of Christ is an assembly of sinner-saints who’ve gathered to hear the Word of God’s gospel. All that the church is and does revolves around cherishing this Word, receiving it, and letting its truth conform it to the image of Christ by the ministry of the Spirit. “The church,” Forde says, “is a gathering called and shaped by the gospel of its Lord, Jesus Christ. The Christian church occurs where the quite specific activity known as speaking the gospel occurs and the sacraments are administered according to that gospel. Where that does not occur there is no such thing as the church of Jesus Christ.”7
Whatever might be the theological, social, or political posture du jour, the only pose that constitutes the church is that of hearing and receiving God’s word of promise through the preaching of the gospel. “So faith comes from hearing,” the apostle Paul declares, “and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). Forde continues:
The church thus knows itself to be the hearer of the gospel. If it knows itself properly it will have no illusions about itself. It will know that it is constantly in the position of the hearer and that it will desire and have to hear ever and again. It will know that such speaking and hearing cannot be taken for granted. It will know itself to be the company of those who are always sinners who live from the concrete, present-tense proclamation (simul iustus et peccator). It will know that it cannot live today on yesterday’s gospel. It must hear again and again and assembles so as to hear, and takes what steps it can to guarantee that it will indeed hear the gospel. It orders, cares for, and gathers around the public office . . .
The church, therefore, as hearer of the Word and receiver of the sacraments concerns itself, as pointed out in the previous section, with ministry, with the business of making the mystery known, both in its own “private” life and in its more “public” witness. It concerns itself with caring for and building up its members in the faith, and with filling the God-given office of ministry, with calling and ordaining appropriately qualified ministers to public proclamation. It takes steps to guarantee as best it can that what it has heard will be heard again, that the gospel be proclaimed. It arranges its organizational life to serve and foster the ministry of the gospel in Word and deed. It knows that this is its mission and believes that this is finally the only way it has to help the world: to “put an end” to it, a limit, and a goal (telos).8
Worship styles, ecclesiastical polity, missional emphasis, community outreach, and all manner of other ecclesiological distinctions might fall in and out of popular favor. But the preached Word never does. It is the evergreen announcement that dead sinners are made alive by grace through faith. The church, therefore, is not a theater for religious performancism, nor is it a training ground for increasingly impressive feats of moralism. Instead, it is the place where corpses are resurrected by the power of the Word of God. So long as that Word is still being preached, then the church is alive, for where this Word is proclaimed, the Spirit breathes life into the dead, faith is created, and Christ himself is present to justify the ungodly.
Grace and peace.
“There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’ Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.” Martin Luther, “Career of the Reformer IV,” Luther’s Works: American Edition, Vols. 1–55, edited by Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960), 34:337.
R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1961), 80.
Lenski, 79.
Gerhard Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990), 149.
Forde, 153–54.
Lenski, 75.
Forde, 187.
Forde, 188–89.