Preach Faith Into Hearts Without Mentioning Faith if You Want to Preach a Christ-Centered Sermon
I ran across a sermon on Jesus famous story about the Pharisee and tax collector and sadly, though preached by a Lutheran pastor, it got the whole point of the story wrong. The preacher used the occasion to wax on about faith and how we must have genuine faith, real faith, living faith, repentant faith and that’s the difference between the two. That’s like preaching about electricity and putting all the focus on the electrical cord, instead of on the power source! Here’s what C.F.W. Walther wisely noted in his magnificent book on Law and Gospel
A preacher must be able to preach a sermon on faith without ever using the term faith. It is not important that he din (shout) the word faith into the ears of his audience, but it is necessary for him to frame his address so as to arouse in every poor sinner the desire to lay the burden of his sins at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ and say to Him: “Thou art mine, and I am Thine.” Here is where Luther reveals his true greatness. He rarely appeals to his hearers to believe, but he preaches concerning the work of Christ, salvation by grace, and the riches of God’s mercy in Jesus Christ in such a manner that the hearers get the impression that all they have to do is to take what is being offered them and find a resting-place in the lap of divine grace.
A great paper by Daniel Preus, an oldie but a goodie, reminded me of this quote. Here’s a link to it.
Wow…That first sentence by Walther is pretty hard to ground scripturally. The Scriptures (in particular the Apostle Paul) do preach faith… a lot (Acts 16:31; Romans 1:16, 17; 3:21-26; 10:4; Galatians, chapter 3; Hebrews 10:38; chapter 11; etc.) Have you ever read Luther’s Commentary on Galatians? I can understand that a pastor does not need to mention faith every other sentence, but to say that a preacher “must” preach a sermon about faith without mentioning faith is not sound, scriptural advice. I’m sure the Apostle Paul would have somewhat to say unto Walther…
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@A. Berean
Uh … while the point that the Scriptures do clearly teach and preach faith is an important one, you skipped over a significant verb in Walther’s statement. He said a preacher “must *be able to* preach a sermon on faith without ever using the term faith” not “must preach a sermon on faith without ever using the term faith”. The latter — your interpretation — requires the preacher pretty much never to mention the word. The former — what Walther actually said — emphasizes the important truth that it’s the object of faith (Christ, the gospel) that needs to be focused on in a sermon, not the concept or act of faith.
To put it another way, a sermon about faith that never mentions its proper object (Christ) is a useless sermon that no faithful pastor could/should ever preach. A sermon about Christ that clearly preaches the gospel but never mentions the term “faith” (or “belief” or related words) is still a worthy and faithful sermon, because it has, with its good news, encouraged faith in its proper object.
Obviously, most sermons will be of neither extreme, but the faithful preacher of God’s Word will always want to make sure his gospel proclamation predominates over … well, pretty much everything else in his sermon.