Why Do Lutherans Use Crucifixes and the Sign of the Cross?

Lutherans kept many of these practices for a simple reason: the Reformation was a reform of the Church’s doctrine, not a demolition of everything old. Where a custom did not conflict with the Gospel, Luther saw no reason to throw it out—unlike some other reformers who stripped their churches bare. So crucifixes, religious art, candles, and the sign of the cross remained, understood rightly and used freely.

On images: the Second Commandment forbids making idols—images meant to be worshiped as gods or to represent the true God falsely. It does not forbid religious art as such. God himself commanded golden cherubim over the ark (Exodus 25:18) and a bronze serpent lifted on a pole (Numbers 21:8), the very image Jesus later applied to his own crucifixion. A crucifix or a painting is not an idol; no Lutheran prays to the wood or bows down to the picture. These images teach and point—and the crucifix in particular keeps before our eyes the one thing Paul was determined to know, “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). It preaches the Gospel in a glance.

On the sign of the cross: it is nothing magical or superstitious, just a small physical confession. Luther’s own Small Catechism instructs Christians to begin morning and evening prayers by making the sign of the holy cross and saying, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” It recalls your Baptism, where that same name and that same cross were placed on you. To trace it is to say, quietly and with the body, “I belong to the crucified Christ.”

None of this is commanded—these are matters of Christian freedom (Augsburg Confession XV), and no one should judge the Christian who omits them or bind the conscience of the one who keeps them. But neither should anyone be embarrassed by them as “too Catholic.” They are simply old, good, Gospel-centered helps to devotion—ours by inheritance, kept because they serve Christ.