God's Masks and God's Speech

Living Holy Lives

Martin Luther had a profoundly biblical understanding of the creation.  He also had a profound understanding of the immanence of God in all He has made.  God is working in and through all things.  All things.  So declares the Bible (Romans 11:33-36).  So believed Martin Luther. 

One implication was that Luther had a deep respect for one's circumstances in life.  They were a living Bible of natural revelation.  Our circumstances, he said, were comprehensively ordained and ordered by God.  They were God's "masks".  Behind each and every circumstance was the Person of God Himself.
In our circumstances God comes to us.  Now, since God had commanded us to love our neighbour as ourself, discovering what God wants us to be busy doing each and every day is not hard.

There is no place for inner contemplation to try to discern God's will and calling (or vocation) for our lives.  God is speaking to us constantly and comprehensively, not only in Scripture, but in the circumstances of our lives, all of which have been personally ordained for us (and all others) by God Himself.  

Here is Gustaf  Wingren's paraphrase of Luther's instruction on the matter:

The incomparably clearest sign in God's providence is that fact that we have the neighbour we actually have.  In that fact lies the law, an evidence of a definite vocation.  Uncertainty as to whether one is called is often due to regarding oneself as an isolated individual, whose "call" must come in some inward manner.

But in reality we are always bound up in relations with other people; and these relations with our neighbours must affect our vocation, since these external ties are made by God's hands.  A craftsman's workshop is like a Bible, in which is written how he is to conduct himself toward his neighbor.  Tools and food, needle and thimble--not excepting even "your beer-vat"--call aloud, "Use us for the well-being of your neighbour!"  Things are the vehicle of the Word of God to us.  [Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock), p.72.]

Wingren then goes on to quote Luther directly:

To use a rough example" If you are a craftsman you will find the Bible placed in your workshop, in your hands, in your heart; it teaches and preaches how you ought to treat your neighbour.  Only look at your tools, your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel, your articles of trade, your scales, your measures, and you will find this saying written on them.  You will not be able to look anywhere where it does not strike your eyes.  None of the things with which you deal daily are too trifling to tell you this incessantly, if you are but willing to hear it; and there is no lack of such preaching, for you have as many preachers are there are transactions, commodities, tools, and other implements in your house and estate; and they shout this to your face, "My dear, use me toward your neighbor as you want him to act toward you with that which is his." (Ibid.)

How sad that so many Christians today are confused on this matter.  They disbelieve the clear teaching of Scripture and divide their lives up into the "secular" versus the "sacred".  Worldly, or secular things are necessary evils.  By them we support ourselves so that we will have some spare time and money to do God's work, the "sacred" things.  Such perversity is blind to Who God is and what He has done, and is doing, every day.  Such perversity makes us deaf to the living words of God, spoken to us loudly and clearly every day.