Sermon manuscript:
Laws, regulations are powerful tools. Laws and regulations can
change people’s behavior. As powerful tools, laws and regulations have been
used for good and for ill.
For examples of how laws and regulations have been used for
good, you only need to think about how almost every area of modern life has
developed best practices. Practically every industry and every service has been
shaped by regulations so that things today are much safer and more efficient
than 100 years ago. Licensing, accreditation, and other regulatory measures
have raised standards so as to prevent incompetence and malpractice. We have
become an ever increasingly regulated society because folks continue trying to
solve problems.
On the other hand, laws and regulations have not always been
used to do good. It is always possible to make laws and regulations that are
unjust, prejudiced, and self-serving. The really wealthy people of this country
have a keen interest in state and national politics because they know how laws
and regulations can affect their bottom line. Laws and regulations can make
them a lot of money, or laws and regulations can make it impossible for them to
do business. Tax laws can make some people a lot of money or they can take a
lot of money away from others. A great deal of what happens in state and
national government is not for the public good. It’s for private interest. That
is why there is always going to be corruption involved in the making of laws.
This does not change the fact that laws and regulations are
powerful tools. To the contrary. The fact that laws and regulations are
effectively used for good or for ill proves how powerful they can be. If you
want to change things on this earth, there might not be any more powerful tool.
It’s a way to change not only the behavior of one individual but to make other
people act a certain way too. Mass movements are what history is made of.
History couldn’t care less about this or that individual. History is interested
in the big movements. That’s how things are in this old world.
The Gospel, however, teaches us differently when it comes to
such matters. The Gospel gives us quite a different view of history: God has
made me and all creatures. God gives me my clothing, shoes, food, drink, and so
on. God has purchased and won me with the holy precious blood and innocent
suffering and death of his beloved Son. God has called me by the Gospel,
enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. On the
last day he will raise me and all the dead and give eternal life to me and all
believers in Christ. This is most certainly true.
Note that what is important in this history is not mass
movements. It is the individual who is important, and, more important still,
what God does for individuals. God has made me. God has redeemed me. God has
sanctified me. There is no higher activity that we could be engaged in than
thanking God. Thank you, God, for making me and all creatures. Thank you, God,
for purchasing and winning me from sin, death, and from the power of the devil.
Thank you, God, for calling me out of darkness and giving me your Holy Spirit.
God’s gracious actions towards me are the highest and best things in life.
If God’s gracious actions towards me are the highest and
best things in life, then that means that other things can’t be the highest and
best. Other things in life are somewhat glorious as well. The way that people
have been steered this way or that way, wealth, progress, power, and the other
kinds of things that get written into history books are great. Laws and
regulations are usually the drivers behind these forces.
Laws and regulations, although they are somewhat great, do
not alter or even relate to God’s gracious actions towards us. There is no law
or regulation that has had any impact on what God has decided to do with us
human beings in Jesus Christ. It was God’s grace alone that made him do what he
has done.
This means that those things that are somewhat glorious have
lost their glory. The exploits of history, the mass movements, the laws and
regulations by which things get done on this earth—these are taken for granted
as being the highest and the best. However, there is a higher glory in God’s
actions towards us in Christ. We are created, redeemed and sanctified. We are
made into children of God. This is a greater glory.
This greater glory is such that the old glory—the best that
can be accomplished on this earth—comes to have no glory at all. The old,
earthly-accomplishments-glory is like the moon shining. A full moon certainly
has a wonderful glory. The new glory of the Gospel—God’s gracious actions
toward us—however, is like the sun. The glory of the sun is such that once the
sun has risen the old glory of the moon is no longer visible.
Not everyone is going to see the greater glory of being a
child of God. Most people, in fact, are going to believe that the Gospel is a
myth, a fairy tale. The only things that matter, so they believe, are dollars
and cents, laws and regulations, getting what’s mine. The best that we can hope
for in our lives is that we be healthy, wealthy, and wise. While this stuff is
fine and good, it isn’t nearly glorious enough.
Something that is already more serious and real than these
things has already happened to you. You have been baptized. Paul says in our
epistle reading that as many of you as have been baptized have been clothed
with Christ. You have been clothed with Christ. Through faith all of you have
become sons of God.
That admittedly might sound strange to those of you who are
women or girls. It is certainly not the case that Paul is some kind of sexist
bigot as some foolish and lazy people judge him as being. Paul is very
deliberately saying that all people—men and women, boys and girls—become sons
of God by baptism in Christ. They all become sons of God because Jesus Christ
is the only Son of God. Jesus
Christ’s sonship is given to those who are baptized, and who hold to what is
given to them in baptism by faith.
This is our history. This is our salvation and our glory.
The way that we are saved is by God becoming one of us in Jesus. Jesus makes us
one with him by baptism and thus we become one with God. Despite our sins,
despite being male or female, Jewish or Greek, slave or free, we are altogether
and all alike drawn near to God. We are drawn so near to God that the Holy
Spirit in us can cry out, “Abba, Father.” We can pray, “Our Father
who art in heaven,” having been tenderly invited to believe that he is our
true Father and that we are his true children, so that we may ask him with all
boldness and confidence as dear children ask their dear father.
This is a heavenly glory. We are raised up beyond this earth
to our Creator. This earth will not go on forever. Jesus says, “Heaven and
earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” It is widely assumed
that the history books will go on with their validity and importance forever. That’s
why ambitious people are so eager to be included in them—it’s a kind of immortality.
On the other hand, it is widely assumed that an individual being baptized is of
little importance and believing in Christ is nothing more than a quirky hobby.
What is really important, however, is not whether you have managed to be
wealthy or not, powerful or not, slave or free, male or female. In Christ we
are all made one. This oneness in Christ, brought about by God’s gracious
actions towards us, is eternal.
This greater, heavenly, eternal glory has one downside, so
to speak. It’s not really a downside, but it seems like it’s a downside to us.
And that is that this glory is only known by faith. We haven’t died yet. Christ
has not yet come to judge the living and the dead. If either of these things
should happen the glory that we have known by faith will be replaced by sight.
In the meantime we have to be content with God’s promise. The Christian Church
is built on God’s promises, but since this is so contrary to our nature, we are
prone to turn towards things of this earth and therefore to laws and
regulations.
This seems to be what happened to the Christians in Galatia to
whom Paul was writing in our epistle reading. Some new teachers had come and
had told these Christians that what is really important is the changing of
people’s behavior by laws and regulations. It seems as though they took the
truths of the Gospel somewhat for granted. The advanced stuff, the glorious
stuff, is going to come about by laws and regulations.
Paul speaks against that throughout the whole letter to the
Galatians, including the portion that was read for today. Paul argues the
opposite of these other teachers. The Law does not have the glory that they
were claiming. The Law is like a guardian or a chaperone. Chaperones are adults
who accompany young people, and why? Chaperones are there to lay down the law.
Young people are not allowed to do what they otherwise might do because the
chaperone is there.
And what are the attitudes of the young people towards those
chaperones? Do they like chaperones? If there are young people who are good,
then they probably don’t care if the chaperone is there or not, because the
chaperone is not changing their behavior. In that case, though, the chaperone
is really nothing and extraneous—pointless.
If the young people are bad, then they have no love for that
chaperone. If they had their way the chaperone would go away so that they could
do what they want. Again, the chaperone isn’t able to do that much. The
chaperone doesn’t change them internally. The chaperone doesn’t actually make them
good. The chaperone just makes them behave outwardly, while inwardly they are
filled with lawlessness.
Although laws and regulations are powerful, they cannot make
anyone good. They do not have the power to make anyone acceptable to God. A
church that is filled with laws and regulations for every last facet of life is
not going to make anyone better. True goodness comes only from God’s gracious
actions. Being clothed in God’s Son by baptism, believing God’s promises more
fully, is the way that people are set free internally from their evil
compulsions. The best that laws can ever accomplish is to create people who are
whitewashed tombs. Outwardly they might look alright. Inwardly they are filled
with death and uncleanness. No law has the ability to make anyone truly love.
Love must come from God.
God makes a beginning in us with his love by our baptism
into Christ, making us one in Christ, and giving us his Holy Spirit. This is only
a beginning because we still carry with us our sinful flesh that the Holy
Spirit fights against in Christians. The Holy Spirit fights against our sinful
flesh, sanctifying us throughout our earthly life, until our sinful flesh is
killed with death. Then, when we are resurrected on the last day, we will have
bodies that have been purified from sin. While we live this earthly Christian
life we continue to have both our sinful flesh and the Holy Spirit.
Since we have our sinful flesh we will always need that old
chaperone in this life. Christians throwing themselves into situations where
they know that they will be tempted is like putting fire and straw together and
expecting them not to burn. The old chaperone is going to say, “Don’t do that!”
The old chaperone won’t have any thanks for it. Our sinful flesh resents being
told what to do.
But our true substance as Christians is not in laws and
regulations. Laws and regulations have their place in this old world, but they
are not that great. What is truly great is God’s gracious, saving actions
toward us. Our Christian hope is not that we have or will be able to reform
ourselves. Our Christian hope is that God has chosen us for salvation in Jesus
Christ. In order to set us free from the Law’s condemnation God sent his Son,
born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem us who are under the Law, so
that we would receive adoption as sons. This is what we set our heart upon.
This is what gives us hope—God’s gracious actions toward us.
True progress as a Christian can come only from this Gospel.
Changes in our behavior might be impressive to other people, but what really
matters is a change of heart, which only God can really see. Our change of
heart comes from embracing God’s forgiveness, embracing his accepting of us for
Jesus’s sake, of his promising to be with us no matter how dark things might
get. We are simply to be glad at God’s promises. He is faithful. He will surely
do what he has promised.
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