Title: Only by Life
Contents
Luther's cry for faith, grace, and the Bible came from this situation, and it was a very natural claim. The acts of law that Luther insisted on are specifically, for lay people, giving donations to buy indulgences and observing canon law, and for monks, it refers to reciprocating God's righteousness through good works and asceticism and observing canon law. It is God's grace that human beings are born again and become new, and forgiveness is only done by God. Therefore, the principle of 'faith alone' that Luther insisted on was that we could never be saved by indulgences or good works, and it was a strong rejection and resistance to religious practices based on mammonism and the church authority that excluded the Bible and God's grace.
However, in the faith of 'by faith alone', in which Paul's original intention and Luther's original intention were distorted, exclusive, ups and downs, and practical ethics were excluded, faith was reduced to a tool for obtaining something. So, believing in Jesus became irrelevant to the life of Jesus, and he became obsessed with religious practices solely through the worship of divine beings. Therefore, even if 'by faith alone' is a principle originally proposed by Paul and Luther for reform, we must think deeply about the danger of this word itself in today's situation. In that sense, we need to take a closer look at Paul's words 'by faith alone' that appear in the Bible.
Today's Korean church, which is immersed in the supremacy of faith and makes many errors, has become difficult to reform with the principle of 'by faith alone' passed down from Paul to Luther. The de-historicization of Paul's faith developed the Korean church into a belief in the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic afterlife, depoliticizing it, and leading to exodusism. The Korean church now reproduces the medieval ecclesiastical authority, clericalism, and mammonism as it is. Now, I think it is time for the church to move away from just believing in the kerygmatic Christ based on Paul's theology and listen more to the words and stories of the Jesus movement.
The Jesus movement places life and livelihood at the center. And as shown in today's text, the Jesus movement's understanding of truth is that the truth does not come from outside, but comes from nature and is inherent in nature. Jesus conveyed the will of God in nature for man. The vitality of the Jesus movement is the physical imperfections alienated from the community, those who cannot adapt to cultural change, the weeping people who always need tolerance, care and comfort, the persecuted, the hungry and thirsty, and the people who are thrown into the bottom of society. It is about setting up fallen people who have lost or deviated from the framework of that culture as lively, lively, and proud beings. They are expressed as symbols of the kingdom of God. So, the Jesus movement was a theology of life and living, and it was completely different from dogmatism. Only when 'life alone' becomes the standard can we overcome the walls of all doctrines and religions.
Our life is to live the life of Jesus. Faith is living the life of Jesus. To believe that it is 'life'. Believing in Jesus means taking part in his life's path, witnessing it, and walking together.