Pecca Fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in
Christ”
Sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in
Christ even more boldly
- Luther 1521
Luther’s
declaration is not one easily grasped. As followers of Christ we are often
encouraged not to just flee from sin, but flee from the temptation to sin! We
are called to pursue holiness and righteousness, to hate sin and to put to
death our sinful desires. So why
would Luther write for us to sin boldly? Does he mean for us to abuse the grace
given in the gospel? Would it not be much better to say as Paul does, “What shall we say then? Are we to
continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin
still live in it?”[1]
Yet, I
believe that Luther knew something deeply troubling within the human heart and
perhaps knew it better than anyone else. Luther knew that the default of our
hearts is to cover-up our sin, and what better way to cover it up than by
acting as holy as possible. See for us Christians it is often not the visible
sins that keep us from God, keep us from growing in our relationship with him
and keep us from experiencing intimacy with the Father, but instead it is the
ones we take great pains to hide. So often we believe that God is hidden from
us, when in reality we have simply mastered hiding from him. Luther was not
making an argument for the action of sin, but for the confession of sin. As one
writer puts it, “Pecca fortiter
is not a plan of action; it’s a script for a prayer of confession.”[2]
Flannery O’Conner’s character Hazel Motes in her work Wise Blood puts it like this; “There was already a deep black
wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.” This
comment often strikes deep within us. It calls us to question the very
motivation of our hearts. Why are we trying to by holy? Why are we striving to
avoid sin? Is it to please the Lord? Or is it because we desire to be justified
before him on our own terms by our own efforts?
We are
left in a world consumed by the need to be accepted. This is not new by any
means, yet in this time we have more tools that are more powerful than any ever
before to control who, what, when, and how people know us, keep up with us, and
understand who we are. It is seemingly becoming easier and easier to manage our
sin. We spend less and less time with those who know us the best and become
comfortable with those who only know a doctored 2-D image and self-projection of
our lives. We meet face to face and cannot enter into meaningful conversation,
but instead share by declaration. We treat our conversations like it was
another chance to “share” or “post”. When in truth we never intend to share,
but only to declare. We do not open ourselves to meaningful dialogue, but hope
simply that some one “likes” our declaration. We want to project ourselves, but
not loose ourselves. We want to be known, but not rejected.
It is
here that we find grace offensive. The grace of God does not come to us apart
from judgment, rather it comes only on the heals of judgment. Grace is not
grace apart from the judgment of the law, and that judgment is always
offensive. Luther is also famous for coining the phrase simul iustus et peccator, or simultaneously sinner and justified.
As followers of Christ we are always at the same time both a sinner and
righteous. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “’sin boldly’ (is not) a fundamental
acknowledgment of (a) disobedient life; it was the gospel of the grace of God
before which we are always and in every circumstance sinners. Yet that grace
seeks us and justifies us, sinners though we are.”[3]
In coming to God, in coming to Christ, we are always reminded that if it is by
grace that we are saved, kept, and restored then we must always remain before
him a sinner. Yet, Christ as always has the final word, the word of grace, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.” [4]
