As I've heard from many of you that you're still awaiting the arrival of your book, I'll fool around here in the Introductory Matters for a few more days in the hopes that you'll not get discouraged or impatient or covetous of those of us who have Kindles or who ordered the book weeks ago and have already dug into it.  The truth is that I love this chapter and could hang out here indefinitely. 
    
    Forde is developing the thought that the theology of the cross is offensive because it attacks what we "usually consider best in our religion." Of course, we're not terribly concerned about discussing what is evil or obviously bad in our religion, "our bad works," because we don't fall into the trap of feeling proud about them or putting our trust in them.  He says that theologians of the cross are more concerned about the "pretension that comes with our good works." In other words, we're not tempted to be proud about our sin, we don't put our trust in it, but we are tempted to be proud and put our trust in our goodnesses -- our prayers, our devotions, our witnessing, our church attendance, our good theology, our growth in sanctification, our refusal to sin. Which leads me to my discussion tonight: There Really Are Only Two Religions in the World. The ultimate question in your religion tonight is, "Who do you trust?"

   I'm sure you've noticed the "Co-Exist" bumper-stickers that use the symbols of different religions. The message is clear: there are all sorts of equally "true" religious "truths" so in the words of that great diplomat, Rodney King, "Why can't we all just get along???" 
    
    The producers of that bumper sticker (and most of us) have misunderstood Christianity. Christianity is not like any other religion. Christianity does not tell you how to live so that you can obtain eternal life. Christianity tells you that you cannot do anything worthy of eternal life. Christianity tells you that all your goodnesses are like a used Kotex (Isa. 64:6). (Sorry, guys!) Wow! That's offensive! Put that on a bumper sticker! "Hey, you, reading this bumper-sticker, all that good you did today (recycling, mowing, exercising, eating healthy, giving blood, volunteering, being nice to a nasty co-worker, merging without screaming at other drivers, remembering your dad) that made you feel good about yourself and assured you that you're really okay, is in actuality a putrid pile of rot and God thinks it's like a used Tampon." Yipes. Maybe it's a good thing I couldn't fit all that onto a bumper sticker. 

    All that good you did will damn you if you trust in it, or as Forde writes, "...the way of glory, the way of law, human works and free will...simply operates as a defense mechanism against the cross." (12)

    On that "Co-exist" bumper sticker there should be only two figures: the cross and a human stick figure that would represent everything else: Islam, Buddhism, atheism, intellectualism, hedonism, Mormonism...I know that most of you are shaking your head in agreement with that. Yeah! Those people and all their "works-righteousness" really stink! Those people!!! But now stop and think: Luther isn't talking only to "those people." He's talking to us all. To people who would say that they trust Christ for their righteousness and then live as though what he did was nice but not all that necessary. Or maybe it was necessary but just for getting in the door. Surely, there's something we can add, isn't there?And, by the way, the way of the cross and the glory story will NEVER just get along because the way of the cross is so demeaning and frankly, apart from the work of the Spirit it just aggravates us. How insulting! The cross is offensive. Being told that all your goodnesses reek will tick you off unless God's been at work attacking your self-esteem. Perhaps that bumper sticker should have a cross and next to it a stick figure fighting against it with the word "impossible".

    The Disputation demonstrates that there are antitheses -- the differing stories "focus on basic issues of salvation: the question of law and works; the power of the human will; the attempt to 'see' God; the task of speaking the truth in these matters; faith and ultimately of the love of God, which creates its own object...In every instance all loopholes are closed so that the believer will in the end simply be cast on that creative love of God, which makes the object of its love out of the nothing to which the sinner has been reduced." (p. 12, italics added).  Better go back and reread that quote. Here's the difference between gospel Christianity and every other form of religion, including all so-called Christianity that isn't focused on the cross: in gospel Christianity we are annihilated by the cross and then God, by his love makes us into what he wants us to be and we become this simply by believing that he's that good, that powerful, that loving, that merciful. This is shocking. It is humiliating. It is annihilating. It is freeing. It makes us smile.  

    There are only two stories, only two religions. There is the doomed and despairing glory story, the "'glory road', a way of law, which the fallen creature can traverse by willing and working and thus gain the necessary merit eventually to arrive at glory....[In this view]
[t]he cross 'makes up' for failures along the glory road." (12) Works-righteousness is the way of every religion. This is the way of Chutes and Ladders Christianity: Attend church today? Go ahead 3 spaces. Say a bad word in your heart? Move back 2! Practice hospitality? Move ahead 6 spaces and pick a pretty flower! Lose your temper with your spouse on Father's Day? Spend three turns in purgatory. Feel properly sorry. Make up for it by making his favorite meal. Tell the children to be quiet. Light candles. Work it off. Read Joel Osteen? Fold up the board. You lose. You lose because you've landed on a chute that will slide you down into the drowning despair of a "sea of narcissistic moralism" (Mike Horton's phrase). You're dying of thirst but you'll never get a soul-satisfying drink. You'll never make it out of this bog on your own because your  "soul's insatiable thirst for glory is not ended by satisfying it but rather by extinguishing it." 

   And then there is the story of the cross. "In theological terms, we must come to confess that we are addicted to sin, addicted to self, whatever form that may take, pious or impious. So theologians of the cross know that we can't be helped by optimistic appeals to glory, strength, wisdom, positive thinking and so forth because those things are themselves the problem. To repeat Luther again, the thirst for glory or power or wisdom is never satisfied even by the acquisition of it. We always want more -- precisely so that we can declare independence from God" (17), or to paraphrase Tim Keller, we construct strategies of our good works precisely so that we can avoid the humiliation that comes when Jesus is Savior.  

    Luther's (and, I believe, the Bible's) cure for this thirst for independence and self-erected glory is the cross. "The cross does the extinguishing. The cross is the death of sin, and the sinner." (17, italics added) Why? because the cross tells us the truth about ourselves. We've got nothing to offer but demerit. But we are loved. Because we are loved, we'll be kept and changed and glorified. Because we've been loved, we've been effectually called, given faith, granted a heart of repentance, justified, adopted and sanctified. He speaks as though our glorification has already happened. We're in union with Christ. Annihilating, liberating truth! Alleluias! 

    Fold up the board. He's won. You're in him. Now...live in the light of that. Trust him. There are only two religions. In one you trust in yourself. In the other you trust him. He's already made every righteous move on the board and he's been punished for every wrong move you've made. He's ruling now as the exalted King and...oh...by the way...he's your husband. So, put away the board and pick up all the game cards that tell you how to make yourself good and flush 'em with...everything else that needs flushing... and trust in him. Alone.