"Justification means: I do not have to justify myself any longer. I can, I may, be joyful and breathe freely. Before my justification encounters me, I stand continually under pressure and stress, having to "justify" myself. Beforehand, we live under some tribunal or other we must please, whose assent to us we have to safeguard. We must do so because only in this way do we gain the consciousness that our life is worth something and has the right to exist. It is a matter of indifference whether we call this tribunal "God" or whether it is a societal value or the psychological superego, or what Immanuel Kant called "the inner court" of conscience. Yes, it is part of this system that the tribunals we have to please can change, and are interchangeable. Now they are outer, now inner, now religious, now moral, now society, now psychic. But however they change, the system remains the same. And this was not just a problem for medieval anxiety; it functions in the modern world even more mercilessly. You are the author of your own fortune: it lies in your hand; the duty to which you are condemned is to bring before the respective tribunal the evidence that you are worthy of living and have the right to exist. You may need to bring it before the eyes of the so-called god, before the eyes of the societal convention, or the authority of your social group, or before the eyes of your superego, or your "conscience." You are really nothing if you do not get attention and esteem through achievement and still more achievement--such as in the academy, with its law of "publish or perish." The respective tribunal holds sanctions ready in order to drive us on: woe to you if you are a coward or a slacker or a failure or someone who dances out of line!
In all this, I can never be sure whether I please the respective tribunal enough or whether it might withdraw its favor from me, for example, when I fail. And this drives me on unceasingly to produce more, to make it better than before, until my death makes it impossible for me to make anything better than it once was. At bottom, everything I do always falls short of what I ought to do, and this gives me a constant feeling of guilt. For this I can try to get relief--in earlier times by accepting that divine grace strengthens me in my pressure to produce, today by pretending to be more than I am through an outward image. But these kinds of relief are only provisional. For if I am supported in my achievements by grace, or if I appear to be so much more than I am, then suddenly all the more achievement will be expected of me.
To this whole system in which I have only as much worth as I acquire for myself, the gospel stands diametrically opposed. For the gospel tells us: you do not have to justify yourself. You are of worth, your life has the right to existence and respect, not because you make it worthy by production and still more production. The endless battle is blown away, the battle that can never reach the goal because death, in which you cannot make anything better, breaks it off. Canceled is the battle in which those who lose are actually of no worth. You do not have to make yourself worthy, because you are already a person of worth. You are already affirmed and loved by God in Jesus Christ, and this without any conditions you have to fulfill first in order for this to hold. You are unconditionally and absolutely loved. You are of worth because you are already affirmed--and affirmed just as you are. You are affirmed, not because you are so acceptable, but because, although you are not acceptable, you are completely accepted, from head to toe. You are of worth, not through what you try in vain to give yourself. You are accepted by what God effectively gives you, not through your performance, but out of grace. For this reason no one is worthless. So it is not the case that a person's life is not worth living if that person has no achievement. Who in the end has achievement when in death he or she can have no more achievement? But you may breathe a deep sigh of relief, freely and joyously. You do not have to justify yourself."
--Eberhard Busch, Drawn to Freedom: Christian Faith Today in Conversation with the Heidelberg Catechism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010) 261-262.
In all this, I can never be sure whether I please the respective tribunal enough or whether it might withdraw its favor from me, for example, when I fail. And this drives me on unceasingly to produce more, to make it better than before, until my death makes it impossible for me to make anything better than it once was. At bottom, everything I do always falls short of what I ought to do, and this gives me a constant feeling of guilt. For this I can try to get relief--in earlier times by accepting that divine grace strengthens me in my pressure to produce, today by pretending to be more than I am through an outward image. But these kinds of relief are only provisional. For if I am supported in my achievements by grace, or if I appear to be so much more than I am, then suddenly all the more achievement will be expected of me.
To this whole system in which I have only as much worth as I acquire for myself, the gospel stands diametrically opposed. For the gospel tells us: you do not have to justify yourself. You are of worth, your life has the right to existence and respect, not because you make it worthy by production and still more production. The endless battle is blown away, the battle that can never reach the goal because death, in which you cannot make anything better, breaks it off. Canceled is the battle in which those who lose are actually of no worth. You do not have to make yourself worthy, because you are already a person of worth. You are already affirmed and loved by God in Jesus Christ, and this without any conditions you have to fulfill first in order for this to hold. You are unconditionally and absolutely loved. You are of worth because you are already affirmed--and affirmed just as you are. You are affirmed, not because you are so acceptable, but because, although you are not acceptable, you are completely accepted, from head to toe. You are of worth, not through what you try in vain to give yourself. You are accepted by what God effectively gives you, not through your performance, but out of grace. For this reason no one is worthless. So it is not the case that a person's life is not worth living if that person has no achievement. Who in the end has achievement when in death he or she can have no more achievement? But you may breathe a deep sigh of relief, freely and joyously. You do not have to justify yourself."
--Eberhard Busch, Drawn to Freedom: Christian Faith Today in Conversation with the Heidelberg Catechism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010) 261-262.
Thank you for posting this Andy. I needed this message today!
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