Remembering Luther’s 95 Theses without forgetting the cross

What would it mean for mainline Protestants to understand and appropriate the message of Luther’s 95 Theses? For all the ballyhoo over the centuries, I have come to wonder whether the message has ever been heard, understood, and appropriated. It would not mean, I venture, a booster shot for habitual anti-Catholicism, nor would it  remotely endorse “cheap grace” as the remedy for ecclesiastical profiteering.

Hearing and understanding the Theses in their original sense, I propose, would entail a willingness to be shaped by the cross of Christ, as expressed in Luther’s opening statement: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” The Theses applied Luther’s theology of the cross (which he was developing at the same time) to the business of religion in his day. True penitents, Luther argued, welcome the cross laid upon them by God because it conforms them to Christ and so prepares them for heaven.

Luther was familiar with canon law, which had distinguished the guilt of sin from the punishment of sin. Guilt ruins the relationship of Creator and creature so that God alone can (and does) restore the relationship by the grace of forgiveness through the merits of Christ obedient to death, even death on a cross. The punishments of sin, which may be human and civil, ecclesiastical as well as divine, were understood to restore balance to the moral order that has been violated by injustice and incurred wrath. The satisfaction of wrath is provided for by punishment, which restores equilibrium to the system thrown into disorder by injustice. Like the thief on the cross, who is forgiven but not spared, forgiveness of guilt and pardon from punishment were seen as distinct notions.