Down the Rabbit Hole with Anselm
This past week, I participated in a two day workshop with a group of local pastors aimed at sharpening one another, both in spirit and in our skill in handling the Word. Along the way, I was remind of a quote by Anselm, a monk in the mid 11th century A.D., who wrote a famous work entitled Cur Deus Homo, i.e. Why God Became Man. Throughout the book, Anselm dialogues with a fictional character he calls Boso seeking to highlight the theological truths of substitutionary atonement. At one point, Boso questions the necessity of God sending Jesus to die, to which Anselm rather famously replies, "You have not yet discovered the weight of your sin."
While Cur Deus Homo is Anselm's best known work it is not his only work. And with my curiosity tickled, I sought out his Meditations and found some other gems. In Meditation 1, Anselm says, “I am afraid of my life. For when I examine myself carefully, it seems to me that my whole life is either sinful or sterile.” He continues with sentiments like a “foul smelling sinner” and “worse than a corpse.” “I blush to be alive, I am afraid to die.” Anselm, like another monk a few centuries later named Martin Luther, had a very developed sense of his own sinfulness before the Lord. Reading this gave me pause to wonder if I have truly discovered the weight of my own sin?
But lest you think this sensitivity to sin leads to moroseness, consider these words from Anslem, also from Meditation 1. “But it is he himself, he himself is Jesus. The same is my judge, between whose hands I tremble. Take heart, sinner, and do not despair. Hope in him whom you fear, flee to him from whom you have fled…. Jesus, Jesus, forget the pride which provoked you, see only the wretchedness that invokes you. Dear name, name of delight, name of comfort to the sinner, name of blessed hope. For what is Jesus except to say Savior? So, Jesus, for your own sake, be to me Jesus.” Awareness of sin can be answered with despair or denial, or it can lead to the cross. Clearly Anselm found himself at the foot of the cross, drinking deeply from the wells of grace. In Luther's case, his awareness of sin led him to a fresh draught of the righteousness that comes from God and sparked a Reformation.
We will be dealing with our own "consideration of the weight of sin" this week as we turn to the first 10 verses of Ephesians 2. In it we are reminded that we are DEAD in our transgressions and sins. But Paul doesn't leave us there as he traces a path for all of us to those fountains of grace, a path that begins with these two blessed words, "But God..."
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