It’s not often that a Bible commentary can make you laugh out loud.  Believe me, I know.  But this week, one did.  It was this Critical and Historical Commentary on Matthew 1-7 written by Ulrich Luz with this drab black and grey cover.

You can see here that there is absolutely no indication that humor exists within these pages.  It screams serious and boring.  And yet, there is at least one moment of levity.  It comes when he’s writing about Martin Luther’s interpretation of our Gospel from Matthew.

He writes, “Luther was unable to do justice to the text because of his opposition to works righteousness.  In order to vindicate the text Luther suggests that it does not speak so much of the works of love…but ‘rather principally…of stressing faith and showing how to strengthen and preserve it.”  And here’s the kicker: “It is not possible to misunderstand the text more thoroughly.  I am not aware of any interpretation in the early and medieval church” that supports this interpretation.

What he have here is a little theological smack down. In short, Luz says, Luther was so committed to his own idea that we are saved by God’s grace alone and not by works (by anything that we do) that he just could not get his head and heart around this text.  Basically and bluntly Luz says that Luther was dead wrong.  The funny part here is that Luther finally gets a does of his own medicine.  For, Luther himself was notorious for telling people off when he thought they were wrong (which was often) and he did it with the same kind of cutting self-assured pronouncements.

But I can see Luther’s quandry here. Continue reading