The Hammer of God - a Book Review

The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

2 Corinthians 2:16 – “Who is sufficient for these things?”

Have you ever wondered what a pastor thinks and feels, what his relationship with God is like, as he ministers at church or visits you in the hospital?

This unique novel offers three stories of three young ministers, each faced with a spiritual crisis. Each is spiritually zealous and equally misguided. The main message is that pietism has no answers for the basic questions of the real spiritual life. What do you say when an otherwise Christian man raves on his deathbed, speaking profanely of his many sinful experiences? How do you help a woman who prays and seeks for a pure heart, but knows all the time she doesn’t have it?

Without a foundation of God’s grace to us in Christ, the Christian life is a shaky and brittle endeavor. The genius of The Hammer of God is to show us the truth of this in the minister’s own spiritual life, and his public ministry as well. Pursuing revivals and calling people to obedience and purity can be done in a way that focuses everyone on themselves or on the pastor. Such will pass as a wind-driven leaf. But to ground all we think, feel, and do in reliance on God’s grace, not finding our righteousness in our thoughts, emotions, or deeds, looking to Jesus only, brings sturdy, Gospel hope.

I was a pastor for many years, and this book ably gets inside the pastor’s mind and heart, in many ways.

The author is Lutheran, and baptismal regeneration is assumed at various points. But this is not overdone, and the main theme of the book is one every Christian needs to hear.

A strange omission: none of the clergy were married. Marriage as a minister wasn’t even a passing thought. Probably because the perpetual theme was the pietism-fighting pastor.

“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” – Colossians 2:20-23.

Highly recommended, especially for pastors.

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