Of Dunghills

A friend and I were discussing Luther’s views on salvation vs. Orthodox.  I mentioned, during that conversation, Luther’s analogy about the dunghill, which is debated as to whether it exists.  However, I came across the following two quotes:

Therefore let us embrace Christ, who was delivered for us, and His righteousness; but let us regard our righteousness as dung, so that we, having died to sins, may live to God alone [LW 30:294].
Explanation of Martin Luther: I said before that our righteousness is dung in the sight of God. Now if God chooses to adorn dung, he can do so. It does not hurt the sun, because it sends its rays into the sewer. [LW 34: 184]

It is the latter quote which implies that our sins are covered over in the eyes of God, perhaps covered in snow, or maybe whitewashed.  This morning, the daily gospel reading was, interestingly enough, from Matthew.  Within the reading is the following passage:

27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’sbones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

It’s interesting to me because Christ doesn’t seem to look very fondly on the notion of whitewashing the outside.  In other words, would God really participate in a fiction where he pretends that we aren’t sinners?

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