Gifts Extensive and Intensive

The work of Christ has such a grand and sweeping impact on the consciences of poor sinners like us. This is why we live in this fabulous freedom in which we have no fear of the law, death, sin, hell, the devil, or any other plague. Christ's salvation leaves nothing to chance. Nothing is doubtful about the intensive and extensive fullness of the salvific work of God's eternal Son. He does everything and does it perfectly. How could it be otherwise? If He is God, then in what way could His work be incomplete, imperfect, or only partly done? Christ our Lord, God of God, could hardly be accused of acting like a teenager, who will hardly ever do a task completely and correctly the first time. Yet many so-called Christian preachers presume that Jesus is just that kind of cosmic teenager who has trouble getting His work done completely and correctly. Worse yet, those who preach this way always presume that we need to help Jesus by completing what He has left unfinished. They think that Jesus is not quite competent and really needs our help. At bottom, this is a sin against the first commandment, because it attributes to us what God alone could do and takes from Christ His divine glory by refusing to attribute what is properly and rightly His.

We should bask in the completeness of Christ's work and luxuriate in the freedom which He has lavished upon us by the power of His blood and death. Not only does He grant us His righteousness as a gift, so that we stand before God as holy, He also counts all our actions to be right, and when we fail and fall into sin, he remits all our guilt. We are like the baseball team that seems to get a hit every time they swing at a pitch. Nothing can go wrong. Why shouldn't we live in this freedom? To live like we are slaves again is to deny that Christ can do what He promises He did. It is to step up to the slave market, indenture ourselves to the worst tyrants, and give ourselves back into bondage.

The completeness of the work of Christ, then, is both negative and positive, as well as intensive and extensive. Positive, in that it attributes to us Christ's righteousness; negative in that it forgives or remits sin. It is intensive, in that it is absolutely complete and perfect at any given moment; extensive in that it endures through time with the same perfect merit. This means that we are continually living in the freedom with which Christ has set us free. The imperative verb used when Paul tells us to "stand firm" in our freedom (Gal 5:1) implies that this is our ongoing status before God. But this is exactly where we often struggle with our confidence in God's grace. We have trouble seeing its enduring merit; especially in the midst of suffering or spiritual struggles. Our sin looms up before our eyes in our weakness and we begin to think we are in charge of "fixing our own stuff." This is why the church's preaching must be predominantly the gospel so that in the midst of our weakness we fully experience our freedom: intensively and extensively.

Martin Luther

"Let us learn to set a high value on this freedom of ours; not the emperor, prophets or patriarchs, not an angel from heaven, but Christ, the Son of God, through whom all things were created in heaven and earth, provides it for us through His death, to set us free, not from some physical and temporary slavery but from the spiritual and eternal slavery of those most cruel and invincible tyrants, the law, sin, death, the devil, etc., and thus to reconcile us to God the Father. Now that these enemies have been defeated and now that we have been reconciled to God through the death of His Son, it is certain that we are righteous in the sight of God and that all our actions are pleasing to Him; and if there is anything of sin left in us, this is not imputed to us but is remitted for the sake of Christ.

Paul is speaking very significantly and emphatically when he says 'Stand in the freedom for which Christ has set us free' (Gal 5:1). Therefore this freedom is granted to us, not on account of the law or our righteousness but freely on account of Christ. Paul testifies to this and demonstrates it at length throughout this epistle. Christ says: 'If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.' (Jn 8:36). He alone interposes between us and the evils that oppress us. He conquers and abolishes them, so that they no longer oppress and condemn us. In place of sin and death He grants us righteousness and eternal life, and He changes slavery and the terrors of the law into the freedom of conscience and the comfort of the gospel, which says: 'Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven' (Mt 9:2). Therefore he who believes in Christ has this freedom."

Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, loc. cit.