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SSis for
Sweet Swap
If there is anything that Bob has taught his students well, it is the
"sweet swap"--a Bertram rendering of what Luther called "the happy
exchange," whereby Jesus the Christ takes unto himself what we have coming
to us (sin, death and the curse) and gives to us what He has coming to Him
(divine righteousness, life and blessing). Luther's eloquent explanation
of this "happy exchange" and the faith (our faith) which grasps is one of
the primary foci of Bertram's doctoral dissertation, entitled, How Theology
is about Man: Luther since Barth. (Only Bertram could find a way, let alone
have the audacity, to turn Barth on his nose and get him to say what is the
more evangelical truth.) Here is an excerpt from Bertram's graduate work.
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The answer, as might be expected, is that when
they do come together it is the divine powers--divine righteousness, life,
and blessing--which of course prevail over their lesser contraries, sin and
death and the curse. But the secret, indeed the prerequisite, of the
victory is that it all occurs "in his [Christ's] own body and in himself."
Both sets of contraries are really his. If the sin had not been his, as
truly as the righteousness was, the law could easily have avoided its
blasphemy against him by cursing only the one and not the other. However,
"he joined God and man in one person. And being joined with us who were
accursed, he became a curse for us; and he concealed his blessing in our
sin, death, and curse, which condemned and killed him."
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The sinlessness of Christ, indispensable as this was for Luther's
christology, was seldom the major point at issue. In fact, Christ's
innocence, readily enough accepted by Luther's opponents, threatened to
overshadow what was equally essential to Christ's redemptive achievement:
that "for our sake God made Christ to be sin," "a curse for us," or in the
words of Isaiah, "numbered among the thieves." In Luther's own words,
Christ "has sinned or has sins," he was "a sinner of sinners," indeed "the
highest, the greatest, and the only sinner."
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Preaching in the pulpit of the Valparaiso University Chapel
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The culpable decision by which Christ attached himself to the enemies of
God is simultaneously the decision of this very God. "Of his own free will
and by the will of the Father he wanted to be an associate of sinners."
Indeed, it is "only by taking hold of Christ, who, by the will of the
Father, has given himself into death for our sins," that we are "drawn and
carried directly to the Father."
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What finally makes the predication meaningful and real is that it is
soteriologically necessary. Unless Christ was our sinner, we ourselves
must be; but since through him we are not sinners, it follows that he was a
sinner and had to be. . . . In other words, our sins are Christ's as
really and immanently as they are ours--that is, "as if he himself had
committed them." But all this, for a very "delightful" purpose.
"Now let us see," asks Luther, "how two such extremely contrary things come
together in one person."
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I is for
In,
in our faith, or by our faith, which goes hand-in-hand with the "sweet
swap." In fact, faith is already alluded to in the above reference,
"taking hold of Christ." How do we do that? By faith, and faith alone.
Barth might have been willing to go along with Luther's sweet swap, but he
really had trouble swallowing what he (Barth) called Luther's "extravagant
view" of faith. Nonetheless, God has very much valued human history as to
take seriously our faith--our faith in the sweet swap of Jesus the Christ.
In a lesser known work (Faithful to Our Calling, Faithful to Our Lord), put
together by the embattled faculty majority of Concordia Seminary during the
early 1970's, Bob asks, "What is so great about faith?" Listen to his
answer:
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