What Does God Say About You?

by David Haberstock

Who are you? It is an unavoidable question these days. Identity politics and tribalism are two ways in which the world seeks to answer this question. The world will put you in your place and label you. Victim. Oppressor. Winner. Loser. But what does your Lord and Maker say about you?

In recent columns, I’ve talked about the true marks of the Church according to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. But I’ve also been talking about some “alternate marks of the Church” which we find in much of North American Christianity. These alternate marks include enthusiasm, mysticism, revivalism (in my next column!), and pietism. 

According to Bryan Wolfmueller’s book, Has American Christianity Failed?, pietism “teaches that the Christian life is chiefly marked by growth in good works.” This is a pervasive assumption in much of popular Christianity. We easily become convinced that the Christian life is all about good works—that it is your good works, growth, and obedience which keep you in the Christian faith. 

If this is true, what happens when your good works don’t increase? Are you still a Christian? What happens when you feel like you have fallen down. Are you still a Christian? Your works, at best, place you on a pendulum that swings back and forth between thinking, “I’m an awesome Christian—better than this pharisee over here!” and absolute despair, thinking, “I am no Christian at all, because no Christian would do what I just did!”  

So, what does God say about you? Well, He who spoke all things into existence and named the stars blesses you with His name in Holy Baptism, restores you to His name in Holy Absolution, and protects you with His name in the Benediction. He has claimed you as His own through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and He names you as His child—and not due to your increase in good works; not due to any good works at all. This is what He calls you: My beloved child.

His favour towards you is yours apart from your actions. After all, you are His beloved child in Baptism. 

Parents delight in their children even when, especially when they are tiny babies, unable to do anything for themselves. They gaze at their chubby fingers with love, even when all they can do is eat, sleep, and soil their diapers. That overflowing love for their baby carries parents through the times when their beloved child runs away, denies their family and name, and breaks their hearts. So, if you who are evil know how to give grace to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 7:11)? How much more will our Father love us, the Father from whom all Fatherhood is named? The One who said to His beloved Son: “It’s time to have compassion. Then go, bright jewel of My crown, and win for all salvation!” (LSB 556:5).

Doing what you were made to do—producing good works according to your callings—can feel good! But do not mistake those feelings for the Lord’s good pleasure toward you, nor their absence as His displeasure. His favour towards you is yours apart from your actions. After all, you are His beloved child in Baptism. 

Satan is the source of these “alternate marks” of the Church that we have been discussing in my recent columns. He is the one who tempts you onto that pendulum of pride and despair where your inner monologue sound like this: “I’ve managed to please God by doing enough good,” or “I’ve failed to please God because I’ve sinned” (pietism). Or: “God is with me and loves me. I feel it,” or “God has abandoned me. I don’t feel it” (enthusiasm). This deadly pendulum is the swing many of our Christian friends who do not know the objectivity of the Gospel are on. 

That is why it is so important to go to a church where you hear that you are forgiven through the objective Word spoken by our Lord’s messengers. That it is all already accomplished. It can’t be undone. You are His Child. He loves and forgives you in Jesus so that you can have fellowship with Him. And in our Lutheran liturgy we hear it again and again in Holy Absolution, the songs of the liturgy, the hymns, the Creed, the distribution of Holy Communion, the prayers, and the final Benediction. It all comes from outside you, objectively, rooted in Christ’s finished work. 

You do not need to wonder what God says of you according to your works because you know what He has done for you and what He says of you, for you heard it from Jesus through your pastor just last week in the Absolution. In Baptism, He called you by name and claimed you as His own. Just the other day He placed His body and blood on your lips anew. You belong to Him. That’s what God says about you.

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Rev. David Haberstock is Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC)’s Central Regional Pastor.

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