Christian Life and Witness. Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf
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him to send: those [helpers] were the Judges, who delivered the people from their enemies, and renewed the lost rule of God time and again among the people; therefore they were also called the saviors of the people.
The Jews might easily have thought of the name in terms of the yoke of the Romans. Therefore, the old prophets said, “Your king comes to you meekly” (Zechariah 9:9). With that the idea of Gideon and Samson and Jephthah and Barak is cancelled. Consequently, John was sent to make clear to the people that the promised salvation consisted in something different, namely in the forgiveness of sins (Luke 1:77). And on the basis of this first principle the angel, too, testified that the Savior will deliver his people from the misery, rule and power of sin. “He appeared that he might take away our sins” (l John 3:5).
But who are the people he will deliver? Here the Jews will be properly understood, to whom he chiefly professed his loyalty. “I am not sent, except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24). “He came to his own, to his own people” (John 1:11). But his office nowhere carried less weight than in his fatherland and among his own people, and the Jews did not accept him as their Messiah; because they wanted to have a physical king of Israel, who would be no lackey of the Roman Overseers, like the four princes1 who had to carry on with cunning and politics, but rather [a king] who would make the people prosperous through a declared earthly kingdom; thus the Gentiles were chosen for the spiritual kingdom, yes the whole world, and now the word “his people” has a great and wide extent. “I have still other sheep,” says our Savior, “Who are not of this fold, who I must bring here” (John 10:16).
We are not of the Jewish line and fold, but rather by grace came to it, and shall in a certain degree fill that position. Therefore, Matthew 28:19 says, “Go out into all the world, and preach the Gospel to all creatures, beginning in Jerusalem”; and Acts 1:8 says, “You shall preach in Jerusalem, and in the whole of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” That was the Savior’s wish and desire, because he had come to cast a fire upon the earth that it might soon be kindled. He is a Savior for all people (1 Timothy 4:10). But his believers experience, enjoy, and make use of it. The apostles extol salvation in all their speeches and writings, so that everyone who wants to have it might possess an interest in it and hope for it. Since Jesus is the universal Restorer of the whole human community, and a propitiation not only for our sins, but rather for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). The old fence and dividing wall is struck down, the gulf is filled in, in order that even those who are far away might become nearer through the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:14, 17).
This is not opposed to the sayings of John 17:2 and Hebrews 7:25, that he does not intercede for the whole world, but rather for his faithful ones. Because that was a Will and Testament, in which he appoints heirs and makes a bequest to be carried out. But soon after on the cross he thought not only of his own who were in the world, whom he loved to the end, but rather he also thought of the crucifiers, of his enemies, of the greatest sinners, of evildoers, and prayed for them all (Isaiah 53:12). The first demonstration of the answer [to his prayer] appeared in his nearest neighbor, who converted on account of Jesus’ intercession and became his friend.
But what is the sin from which he will deliver us? Everyone knows and feels that sin is something neither good nor happy for humanity. Thus, one does not first need its description in terms of the Law; but on the authority of the Gospel one can show it in summary, from John 16. Sin is not to trust in Jesus, when one either directly hates the Savior (John 15:18, 19), or on account of one’s fleshly mind has neither heart nor desire for him and his community (Romans 8:7). This enmity of unbelief goes so far that children and servants of God in whom one notices nothing otherwise offensive, indeed [in whom] great kindness is noticed, are hated only because they stand surely with him: “We cannot tolerate him before our eyes, he prides himself on being God’s child” (Wisdom of Solomon 2:12–16).2 “You must be hated by everyone on account of my name” (Matthew 10:22). Autos ephra.3
Not only in the time of the pagans was it said, “A good man; but bad because a Christian.”4 That is to say, he would be an upright man, if only he weren’t a so-called Christian. But this sentiment is held in the very midst of Christendom. As is generally known , it is no particular merit or quality for a follower of Jesus to stick to the book. How little honor is gotten with the message of Jesus? How much insult and pressure on the other hand are bound up with it?
To be sure, not many people pay attention to the witnesses of Jesus, because to these witnesses love for Christ’s cross and bliss with their Lord is more dear to them than anything; they know that he himself was treated no better, that he was persecuted first and most of all (John 15:18), and that their humiliation is nothing compared to the contempt which he had to experience in his life (“We took no notice of him,” says Isaiah in the name of the Jews, “He was the most despised and least esteemed”; see 53:3), compared to the affront which he still daily has to suffer from the world. And if Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:15, “I love much, and am loved little”; it is multiplied in the case of our Lord, who in suffering as in all things has pre-eminence.
Just consider the wretched idea, attention and opinion which we ourselves had of him and in relation to him from childhood on; what a poor submission of the heart, what thanklessness in relation to his merit, what estrangement from following him, what a secret fear in the presence of his people because we were all called Christians and were baptized in his name. Thus sin lies in unbelief and expresses itself in an indifference, alienation, deviation, and cold-mindedness toward the Lord, or in open enmity with and rebellion against him. The outbreak of the deed (for which conscience and law punishes) is only the fruit and testimony of the inner corruption and wicked motives of the heart, in which sin is actually to be sought, and according to which people are of two sorts: first, completely dead; second, awakened to life.
Those who with their corruption are completely dead and insensible, that is, cool-headed and composed, come to be thought of in part as fine, honorable, quiet, yes, even pious and God-fearing people, as if they still had a feeling of God and conscience, a sense of the numinous.5 But they are without feeling for the Savior and are indifferent and cold-minded toward the true good; with respect to the Savior they are without him, that is to say, without God. Moreover, they can often to be sure intend good, they can look closely at much good in the understanding and in the depths of the self through presentations of the divine Word and the power of prevenient grace, or they can also be excited at times by solid inferences and thoughts, but it goes no further than fantasy, or reason, then vanishes again and cannot be from God because it does not remain. (If its source were God the person would abide in him. 1 John 3:6, 9). It surely happens that those people are not hostile and obstructive to the rule of Christ, yes they are even useful to and promotive of it, and they love the good; but their hearts remain stone.
They can also grasp that they are good for nothing and are in poverty, but it is only a fleeting thought; at the same time they remain lazy, negligent, and carefree and cannot get a handle on their very selves. They have no power to help themselves, but rather remain lying in death. Still, they remain well-disposed toward the good, and their hearts are a tender object of the Savior, so that when he sees his time and they are brought to the sign of grace, they soon can be helped; it might be that they are too well pleased in their present circumstances and through them perish wretchedly.
Such dead people are either virtuous, finally able to go so far in the false piety and improvement allowed by Satan that they progress in spirituality to the angels; or they are corrupt. Even though they live in all sins just the same, these people do not blaspheme, but rather allow the good to stand, like Felix: because they are dead to spiritual things; and there is with those same people, if they are not met at a sensitive corner, almost the same circumstance [as Felix], (and then it amounts to a manner of life).
Others in the category of unbelief are not dead, but rather living and active enough, enlivened and invigorated