Grammar and Jesus Christ
Grammar is key to the Gospel.
Just recently on Apopka’s (Florida) 1st United Methodist Church building wall facing Park Ave I saw this beautiful mural with the simple statement “You Are Loved,” lovingly painted. We passers-by are invited to believe this is true. We are to think that somebody, somewhere, somehow, loves us. This truth, if we can call it that, is then rather a concept, a proposition that is at our disposition to believe is true or not. We are to conjure up an action, call it belief, to make it true and to receive it. Belief depends on me.
If, however, the sign would rather say “I Love You,” things change. Just like the difference between someone telling me my wife loves me and my wife herself telling me “I love you.” The “I love you” is an active statement, performatory and prescriptive and not just declaratory and descriptive. It leaves me no choice and no doubt because it is not up to me to make it true. Belief depends on the word spoken, and the person speaking. It is not “everybody is loved” by all, or even by God, but rather that I am loved by this person speaking.
When I am told “I am loved” I am there invited to think of my qualities, or quality, that I already own, hold, possess that make me lovable. “Yes,” I think, “of course I am good, strong, wise, lovely. I have just been reminded of something I already possess.” I am invited by this to feel good, or at least better, about things, about myself. But of course, even as this is true (those qualities are something I possess) that is not what all is true and I know it! For me to believe I am loved thus depends on me. Contrast that to “I love you,” wherein I am not to think of why (but which we do anyway because we cannot not think about ourselves!) but simply to take the words at face value. Not my value, but the face value, the face of the one who just told me “I love you.”
All of this just now shared is generated by this from Oswald Bayer’s Promissio:
“Luther does not see the ‘opportunity to believe’ created by the word of absolution as a fundamental possibility, unlimited in its generality, but defined in its particularity. For it is precisely this definiteness and specificity that makes the word unambiguous and creates in turn the certainty of faith. Faith, if it is to be certain, must remain bound to this place of the word, where the word is understood to be a specific word (such as a sermon). Faith is just as little a general possibility as is a word. When Luther says that the priest ‘exercises’ faith with his ministration of the word (thesis 22), he does not mean that the priest is actualizing a latent possibility that lies hidden in the receiver of the word. Rather, he exercises faith by ‘ministering’ or bringing the word of forgiveness to people in their sin. It is not a general ability to need that is being addressed but God’s forgiveness that is being given to sinners. Thus they are called out of sin and ‘provoked’ to certain faith; that is, they are placed in forgiveness for the specific word. ‘Thus the word will keep you, and your sin must therefore be forgiven.’ Certain faith is based on the specific word, understood as a completed work.”[i]
We are invited to know something new and real. It’s not like all the reminders by our fitness instructors who constantly tell us “you are strong,” “you are a part of this community,” “you are an athlete!” The truth of all of those declarations ae forced into an imperative of thinking, believing, it’s all true and actual. It’s not actually actual. Rather, I must believe it’s actual. But, differently, when we are told “I love you,” or, “I see your strength, your presence in our community, your athleticism” it is not up to me anymore to actualize it by believing it. It’s a gift to me. I can believe that, or not. Luther’s “You are loved not because you are loveable, but you are loveable because you are loved,” from his Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, says what I am describing here. The “you are loved because you are loveable” drives us to focus on our lovable qualities. The “you are loveable because you are loved” drives us to the love given and to one doing the loving.
We spend so much time in our lives, incessantly, wondering how we are doing. And blaming ourselves and others for how we are doing. It would be nice if someone would change my wonder not by a catalog of proof but by a word spoken that kills all blaming and gives peace regardless. I heard that word this morning in a church Service when the Pastor told me God forgives my sin because of Jesus Christ. Not a bad way to start the week.
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[i] Promissio: The Reformational Turn in Luther’s Theology, Oswald Bayer, Translated by Jeffrey Silcock, 1971 (Translation in English, 2025), Lutheran Quarterly Books, Fortress Press (Minneapolis)
