Social action by the church wasn’t optional or secondary in the theology of the early reformers – or in their practice as church leaders. Luther and Calvin were militant for justification by faith alone, and also for church-driven efforts to alleviate poverty and improve social conditions. In this compelling EWP Talk, Jennifer Powell McNutt of Wheaton College explains how the imperative to responsible social action grew directly out of the early reformers’ theology of grace.
It’s this sort of insight that shows the value of drawing from church history as we face the complex challenges of our own day. We’re delighted to add this rich and vivid presentation to our collection of EWP Talks on History.
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McNutt begins by sharing the story of her own first encounters with poverty:
My dad pastored the largest white Presbyterian congregation in town. And while I was a teenager, my mom pastored the only black Presbyterian congregation in town. Her church, Messiah, was located on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, literally across the train tracks, and in a part of the city that was completely unfamiliar to me. Nearly every Sunday, as a teenager in the mid-nineties, I traveled from one church service to the next. And in that time, crossing the train tracks was like crossing between two different worlds. The tracks were emblematic of a racial and an economic divide.
Crossing those train tracks, McNutt explains, is symbolic of what God did for us when he came down to redeem us and reconcile us to God – and of what we must do to be formed in Christlikeness. Christ sets us free, but not free from good works; he sets us free unto good works: “The freedom that we have in Christ is never free from a responsibility to care for those in our community. By his love, we have been freed to love. Freedom in Christ is freedom to love neighbor.”
In the documents that launched the Reformation, we can already see this close connection between the freedom provided by grace and the life of love for neighbor that we are freed unto:
Luther’s 95 Theses highlight this point that God doesn’t need our money. He wants us to give it to our neighbor in need. In Thesis 43, Luther declared that giving to the poor is better than buying an indulgence. In Thesis 45, Luther declared that if you buy an indulgence rather than give to the poor, you will receive God’s wrath….And so when Luther’s 95 Theses went viral, so did this aspect of his message….Importantly, the treatise [Freedom of a Christian] is framed in reference to I Corinthians 9:19: “For though I am free with respect of all, I have made myself a slave to all.” Luther taught that Christ has freed us, our hearts are liberated, not that we might live for ourselves, but that we might cross the tracks in love of God and neighbor.
Nor was this merely a matter of words. In church leadership, Luther and his movement introduced a variety of church-led efforts to lift up the poor, including the Community Chest (“maybe you thought the game of Monopoly had made that up!”) as well as education and other forms of development. Even the translation of the church service into popular languages was introduced as a way of extending the ministry of the word to those who didn’t have access to education in Latin.
Like Luther, Calvin saw severe needs in his community when he arrived in Geneva. The city, already torn by conflicts between rich and poor, was now exploding with refugees fleeing persecution in France and elsewhere. A refugee himself, Calvin spearheaded the creation of church-led relief and education programs.
Calvin grounded this social action in his theology of grace, as Luther had done:
Calvin developed the theological concept of duplex gratia, meaning double grace. It’s the idea that justification and sanctification are both distinct and linked: distinct in that our justification is based on faith in Christ alone, and yet linked in that our union with Christ transforms how we live. And so the outworking of our justification is fueled by the Holy Spirit, who enables us to cross the tracks that divide us.
McNutt saw the same double grace in her own experience, as she and her family were transformed by the act of crossing the tracks:
For the first time, there was opportunity to hear the cadence of my mother’s preaching voice take on new rhythms and tones, as she preached at a gathering of black churches in the city, on the seven last words of Jesus, during Passion Week. There was an opportunity for solidarity through a shoe program that the church launched, which transformed kids’ lives at the elementary school, struggling under the weight of poverty and gang pressures. And today, as a professor and minister myself, I marvel at those two churches crossing tracks to worship and gather – at the unlikely friendship that was fostered and forged in that context at that time, and that could not be contained by church walls.
If we want to be faithful to the theological legacy of the Reformation, this transformation by double grace is not optional:
Reformation theology reminds us that the doctrine of justification is not the end of the story. It’s only the beginning. To believe in Christ is to receive the freedom that he offers, but that freedom is never free from a responsibility to care for one another in community. In the end, train tracks cannot stop the community that God intends to link. Train tracks cannot excuse us from the outworking of our faith. Train tracks cannot discourage us from the friendship that Christ intends to forge in us – and through us, in our broken world. The body of Christ is called to cross train tracks by the power of the Holy Spirit and out of love for God and neighbor, in the footsteps of Christ himself. Freedom in Christ is freedom to love neighbor.
Consider assigning this or another of our EWP Talks in your upcoming class!
