Sermon manuscript:
504 years ago today, October 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted
95 theses, or statements, against the Church’s sale of indulgences to the door
of St. Mary’s Church in Wittenberg. Luther making this protest is the reason
why October 31st was the date that is chosen to commemorate the
Lutheran Reformation of the Catholic Church. But October 31, 1517 was just the
beginning of the story.
The pope’s sale of indulgences was not going to be the main
point of contention. Fairly quickly much bigger questions were raised. Who or what
is authoritative for Christians? Do Christians need to submit to the pope or to
the Scriptures? Who or what determines the doctrines that are taught? What if
there are discrepancies and conflicts between the authorities in the church and
the Scriptures?
We could talk a long time about these questions and issues.
But what I’d like to spend our time on today is what became the most important
issue during the Reformation. The most important conflict was concerning how a
person could be found to be acceptable in God’s sight. When God renders his
verdict concerning an individual, what will that verdict be? And why? What is
the basis for God’s verdict concerning the individual? These are the questions
behind an important church word that it is good for you to know and understand,
which is “justification.” How can a person be justified in God’s sight? That is
a pretty important and practical thing to know, since our eternal fate is
dependent upon it.
Before we speak about what Luther and the other reformers
rediscovered from the Bible, let’s first briefly describe how justification was
understood in the Roman Catholic Church. Overall, the most important thing to
understand is that according to the Catholic Church if we are to be justified
before God it is because of a cooperative effort between God and I. God does
his part. I am to do my part.
God’s part is largely a matter of several different graces
or gifts, such as the seven sacraments, and some other less important things. (Included,
by the way, among these less important things would be indulgences, which
Luther posted the 95 theses about.) God gave these graces to Peter and the
other apostles. Therefore, through the ministers of the church, God dispenses
his grace to those who wish to receive it. This is God doing his part, and you
can count on God doing his part.
But, according to Roman Catholic teaching, I also have to do
my part. What is my part? First and foremost, I must receive these graces that
are given out by the clergy. Then I must live a good life, keeping God’s and
the church’s commandments.
Whereas God can be counted on for doing his part, the
Christian is not so trustworthy. Even the Catholics recognize that. But there
is a remedy for that. The Christian can go to confession with the priest. He
can buy indulgences. If the Christian sins a lot, then (even if all else fails)
he can still work off his guilt in purgatory after he has died. Purgatory is
not taught by the Bible, but eventually it came to be understood as a place
where imperfect Christians who have died can go to get cleaned up through
suffering, through being purged of the guilt that has been accumulated. Eventually
the Christian will have done his part and will be holy enough to become a saint
and can enter heaven.
There is a lot more that we could say about the Roman
Catholic Church’s teachings about being justified before God. Great big books
have been written about this. Let it be said that the Roman Catholic Church’s
teaching is not wild and nonsensical. It is not something that can just be
written off as stupid. There is a good deal of truth in Roman Catholicism,
particularly with what they say about God doing his part. Indeed, the whole
overall arrangement makes a lot of sense to our natural way of thinking. There
are so many things in life where the one party does his part, and the other
party does their part. It seems reasonable that a person’s relationship with
God should be that way too.
But, as we heard in our reading from Isaiah 55 a couple
weeks ago, God says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways
your ways.” What is often reasonable and helpful in our daily, earthly life
can be a roadblock if we transfer that thinking over to the kingdom of God. God
doing his part, and we doing our part, sounds reasonable, but that’s just not
how it works.
From long and bitter experience Luther learned how
unreliable our reason is when it comes to the things of God. He tried his
hardest to do his part. One of his problems, some Roman Catholics have said,
was that he was too honest about his efforts. No matter how hard he tried, he
couldn’t achieve what the church taught him he should be able to achieve. This
made him very concerned about how he might be judged by God. How would God
render his verdict concerning Martin Luther?
Wanting to know God’s will and judgments led Luther to
search the Scriptures. What he found in the Scriptures was different from what
the Church had taught him. It is not a situation where God does his part and I
do my part. It is a situation where God does everything. I do nothing—at least
not anything good.
Our being justified before God is completely God’s doing.
God chose those whom he would save from eternity, before they were even born.
The Son became man in order to redeem sinful mankind as the great atoning
sacrifice. God causes his Word of salvation to be spoken so that sinners are
justified through faith in Christ, through Christ’s goodness, instead of the
life that they had lived and are living.
The end point for the Christian is not purgatory. It is not
a self-improvement project. It isn’t a big fat bill of what we owe in order to
do our part after God has done his part. The end point for the Christian is joy
and thanksgiving at what God has done and is doing.
It’s like when the Angel spoke to the shepherds on Christmas
Night. The Shepherds were encouraged to rejoice: “Fear not, for I bring you
glad tidings of great joy that will be for all the people, for unto you is born
this night in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” God
gives a great gift of salvation to poor, miserable sinners. He distributes his salvation
through the Word and the Sacraments. To receive these things we believe them,
and thereby make good use of them. It is a dreadful thing to disbelieve these
things, because that is calling God a liar.
“But,” you might be wondering, “what about our part?” “Isn’t
there something that we have to do?” “What about our good works?” “The Bible
talks a lot about us doing good works.”
This is true. The Bible does talk a lot about good works. What
is important is that we properly understand these works that a Christian does.
They are not our part of the bargain, like it is in the Catholic system. They
are an added gift, separate from how God regards us. Good works do not enter in
to whether or how we are justified before God. If our works are considered for
that judgment, it cannot result in any other verdict than condemnation. But we
are not judged according to our works—good, bad, or otherwise—when we believe
in Christ. Through faith in Christ we are judged according to a different
basis, which is Jesus alone.
Instead of good works being something that is required from
us for our end of the bargain, good works must be understood as yet another
gift from God on top of his justification of us sinners. He declares us not
guilty with Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. Jesus died for all our sins and
atonement has been made. On top of that, together with faith in Christ, God
begins to heal our sin-sick heart. Instead of being sold to sin and enslaved to
the devil, we are set free to walk in the good works that God has prepared for
us beforehand to walk in.
The best picture for what is going on here is a picture that
Jesus himself uses. He says, “Every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad
tree produces bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree
cannot produce good fruit.” As we are of ourselves, as we were born by
nature, we are bad trees. We live in ignorance of God, or, if we learn of him, we
rebel against him and his will. We care for nothing and for no one except
ourselves and what is ours. We are bad trees. We cannot help but produce bad
fruit.
God creates a good tree by killing the old tree and uniting
us with Christ. This is brought about by God converting us to faith in Christ.
Those who believe in Christ are well pleasing to God. After all, it was for the
purpose of believing in Christ that God sent his only begotten Son to begin
with. Thus, through faith in Christ, a person’s whole life is sanctified, is
made holy. God does not count our sins against us, and all the activities that
we do otherwise while believing in Christ are sanctified so that they are
acceptable and pleasing sacrifices to God. Even if we pick up a single straw or
give a cup of water to a child, such humble acts, done with faith in Christ,
are better than anything we might come up with in our sinful flesh to establish
our justification before God.
Faith has the power to change our whole life. It doesn’t
change our life in an outward way, where people can see it. It might not even
be changed in the way that we can always feel and know. But faith changes our
life before God—which is all that matters.
Entire lifetimes could be spent studying all the different
facets of what happened and what was discussed in the Reformation. There are
many other important, godly, and helpful things that we could talk about. But
the most important thing that happened during the Reformation was the return to
what the Bible says about our justification before God. Our relationship with
God is not a matter of the Law. It is not a situation where God does his part
and we have to do our part.
Our justification before God is a matter of the Gospel. It
is a situation where God pardons and forgives us for Jesus sake. He also gives
us his Holy Spirit to fight against our sinful flesh. Even where you might
anticipate that we are supposed to do our part—with our good works—it is a
matter of grace. For good works to be
genuine, and not self-serving, they have to be created by the Holy Spirit. This
is what the Bible teaches about our justification before God.
Luther understood how hard it was to believe what the Bible
says about our justification. He always warned those who were younger than him,
who didn’t go through the struggles that he went through, that this teaching
could easily be lost. That is true. It can be and has been lost in vast swaths
of our own Lutheran Church. Our Synod, also, is not immune to this being lost.
This is not surprising. The fact of the matter is that our
old Adam doesn’t like the Gospel and cannot understand it. The grace of God,
the giving and giving of God, is incomprehensible to our Old Adam. That is why
the miracle of a conversion is necessary. It is only by the almighty power of
the Holy Spirit that we can see God and his will for what it really is. If God
has bless you and enabled you to know him from the Scriptures and to see from
the Scriptures how God regards you, then you will rejoice even while you bear
your cross.
In order that we may enjoy this good life of knowing God and
believing in Jesus, let us not forget to pray in all seriousness what Jesus
taught us to pray. Let God’s Name be regarded as holy among us. Let God’s
kingdom come among us. Let God’s good and gracious will be done among us.
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