Reformation Sunday 10/29/06 Text: Romans 3:19-28 Title: Grace Alone
Reformation Sunday
10/29/06
Text: Romans 3:19-28
Title: Grace alone
Grace mercy and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
I love Reformation Sunday. It is one of my most favorite church festival days, right after Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.
Christmas is on the top of the list, for that is when we celebrate God coming to be one of us in the birth of Jesus. Without his birth his life of obedience, his sacrificial death for our sake, and of course his resurrection would not have happened.
Easter is my next favorite, for, as I mentioned earlier without his resurrection, which not only proved that Jesus is God and that he has defeated Satan and death, but shows us that when he comes back on that final judgment day, our bodies will come up from the ground, or wherever they are, be reunited with our souls to spend eternity with him in the new heaven and earth.
Pentecost, now that is a festival day to be celebrated, for that is when God sent the Holy Spirit, to in a sense replace Jesus on earth, for Jesus in his glorified earthly body had ascended into heaven. The Holy Spirit came to teach, to sanctify, and keep us in the saving grace of God earned for us by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
As I thought about the reformation the more it became apparent to me, that this is what Reformation Sunday is really all about. It is not about Martin Luther, as important as he is to the reformation, it is about Jesus’ birth, his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, plus the sending of the Holy Spirit to the world.
That is what God did for us, but at some time the visible Christian church lost its way. The church was not teaching the grace of God anymore. They told people, “Yes, Jesus died for you, but you must do something more to have your daily sins forgiven.”
That the church had lost its way should come as no surprise to anyone who has read the Bible. The Bible is full of references that tell us that people of Jesus and the Apostle’s day, did not always understand God’s grace, the free gift of forgiveness.
It is not any different today, for many denominations still teach that Christians still must do something to help God in their salvation. Oh, they teach that it is only by grace alone that we are saved. The problem is that they do not stop there.
You see, they teach that Jesus only died for the original sin that the human race has inherited from Adam and Eve. They believe that after a child is baptized there must be a working together with Jesus to receive forgiveness of daily sins.
They say that this working together with Jesus concerning one’s salvation can only be done by God’s grace, so it is still God’s grace that saves a person. Now at first glance that might sound just like Grace alone that we believe in, but it is not. The type of grace they are talking about involves human work, and intellect.
Now you might be wondering why I have told you about this. The problem is that anytime you get human reasoning and will involved in God’s grace, it cannot be the free gift of God anymore. In other words, it is not grace alone. That kind of grace is a false grace. Martin Luther, had a lot of trouble with that type of thinking in his day, and I am sure, that if he were alive today he would still have trouble with it.
Luther loved the book of Romans, for to him it laid out in straightforward manner the problem humans have before God gives us faith, that is slaves to sin. I really think that the modern translators did a great disservice to the meaning of the Greek word doulas, which means slave when they translate it as a more politically correct word servant. You see a servant is a person that works more or less according to his own will and desire. A servant has rights and privileges.
A slave is a person that is owned, as they say, lock, stock, and barrel, by another. A slave has no rights, and can be killed or sold if his owner wants to do so. According to Roman law a slave cannot inherit anything.
Paul and Luther both saw who we are before God gives us saving faith, slaves to sin, unable to free ourselves from its grasp. In our Epistle lesson for today, Paul writes, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, (That is all humans) so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. (In other words, the Law and our knowledge of it tells us without a doubt that we cannot meet God’s demands, and that we are incapable of meeting them because we are slaves to sin.
Oh, there are those who think they can become righteous before God on their own, but they are wrong, for no one can become righteous by observing the law as we are told in verse 20) “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. (You see, the purpose of the law is to make us aware that we are slaves to sin. It sounds pretty hopeless does it not, and it would be if our righteousness was left up to us, but it is not, for verse 21 tells us), “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. (Now that does not mean that your faith is the cause of righteousness, only that your faith which is given to you by God is the means through which you become righteous.)
Again Paul restates it, “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” We might not like to think that we have nothing to do with our salvation, but we do not. Our salvation comes only from God, who accepted Jesus’ death as a substitute for our death, a death that we all deserve.
Now that is good news. We who deserve death, permanent death, do not permanently die. It looks like permanent death to us, as we conduct George’s funeral on Wednesday, but in God’s eyes, it is not permanent death, for the body is just waiting for the final resurrection when all who have died will be raised from the grave.
So what does this Good News, the grace of God mean to us today, we who are here today celebration Reformation Sunday? Well, first of all, it means that all who believe in Jesus as their Savior are no longer slaves to Satan. We are now slaves to God. I know that sounds kind of weird, but we are as Paul tells us slaves to God, bound to him in our baptism.
As slaves of God nothing can take us away from God, for when we became slaves our status changed. Remember that I told you earlier that slaves under Roman law could not inherit anything from their owner. Well in our slavery to God things are not the same, for God does not work by earthly standards, he works by his standards, his perfect standards, and thus as his slaves we are also his sons and daughters. And because of that we are given eternal life.
Let us see what else the Good News of God’s grace toward us means for us today. It means freedom. Now I know that that sounds like nonsense if we are slaves to God, but it does mean freedom. It means freedom from fear, for we no longer have to fear punishment from God. You say, “What about God’s Law, are we not going to be punished for breaking them?”
All I can say is, we will not be punished, for that is totally wrong thinking. If that were true, Jesus’ death and resurrection would have been for nothing. You are either free of the punishment or you are not. It really is that simple. As a slave, slash, son or daughter of God you will not be punished by God.
God wants to bless us as only he can. Yet I believe that there are many times when he cannot, for none of us live our lives as we should.
We do not spend time in prayer and Bible study and so we are not blessed. We do not help those who need help, and we are not blessed. We do not forgive those who God has forgiven and we are not blessed. We who are part of the body of Christ, so many times, do not see ourselves as belonging to the body and thus we are not blessed.
We miss many of God’s blessings, so that is why we are having “New Consecration Sunday”. Your congregation leadership wants you to be blessed by God. They want you to feel the joy of giving and being blessed.. It is not just to meet the budget, although that needs to be done. New Consecration Sunday is for your spiritual growth, so that you will be blessed.
He gives you everything. He gave up his own Son for you and in doing so freed you from slavery to Satan. He did all of that, not because he had to, or because you deserved it, but because he simply wanted too. And because of that you are blessed. You no longer have to give ten-percent. You are free to give more, not to God, goodness gracious he does not need it, but to his church on earth so that it can continue his work.
If you have not been giving for the Lord’s work here at Saint John start with a little, and be blessed. If you have been giving, see if you can give a little more and be blessed. Blessed, not because God says you have to do this or I will not bless you, as so many believe, but blessed through your giving, which shows your gratitude and joy at being a forgiven child of God. Amen
10/29/06
Text: Romans 3:19-28
Title: Grace alone
Grace mercy and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
I love Reformation Sunday. It is one of my most favorite church festival days, right after Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.
Christmas is on the top of the list, for that is when we celebrate God coming to be one of us in the birth of Jesus. Without his birth his life of obedience, his sacrificial death for our sake, and of course his resurrection would not have happened.
Easter is my next favorite, for, as I mentioned earlier without his resurrection, which not only proved that Jesus is God and that he has defeated Satan and death, but shows us that when he comes back on that final judgment day, our bodies will come up from the ground, or wherever they are, be reunited with our souls to spend eternity with him in the new heaven and earth.
Pentecost, now that is a festival day to be celebrated, for that is when God sent the Holy Spirit, to in a sense replace Jesus on earth, for Jesus in his glorified earthly body had ascended into heaven. The Holy Spirit came to teach, to sanctify, and keep us in the saving grace of God earned for us by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
As I thought about the reformation the more it became apparent to me, that this is what Reformation Sunday is really all about. It is not about Martin Luther, as important as he is to the reformation, it is about Jesus’ birth, his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, plus the sending of the Holy Spirit to the world.
That is what God did for us, but at some time the visible Christian church lost its way. The church was not teaching the grace of God anymore. They told people, “Yes, Jesus died for you, but you must do something more to have your daily sins forgiven.”
That the church had lost its way should come as no surprise to anyone who has read the Bible. The Bible is full of references that tell us that people of Jesus and the Apostle’s day, did not always understand God’s grace, the free gift of forgiveness.
It is not any different today, for many denominations still teach that Christians still must do something to help God in their salvation. Oh, they teach that it is only by grace alone that we are saved. The problem is that they do not stop there.
You see, they teach that Jesus only died for the original sin that the human race has inherited from Adam and Eve. They believe that after a child is baptized there must be a working together with Jesus to receive forgiveness of daily sins.
They say that this working together with Jesus concerning one’s salvation can only be done by God’s grace, so it is still God’s grace that saves a person. Now at first glance that might sound just like Grace alone that we believe in, but it is not. The type of grace they are talking about involves human work, and intellect.
Now you might be wondering why I have told you about this. The problem is that anytime you get human reasoning and will involved in God’s grace, it cannot be the free gift of God anymore. In other words, it is not grace alone. That kind of grace is a false grace. Martin Luther, had a lot of trouble with that type of thinking in his day, and I am sure, that if he were alive today he would still have trouble with it.
Luther loved the book of Romans, for to him it laid out in straightforward manner the problem humans have before God gives us faith, that is slaves to sin. I really think that the modern translators did a great disservice to the meaning of the Greek word doulas, which means slave when they translate it as a more politically correct word servant. You see a servant is a person that works more or less according to his own will and desire. A servant has rights and privileges.
A slave is a person that is owned, as they say, lock, stock, and barrel, by another. A slave has no rights, and can be killed or sold if his owner wants to do so. According to Roman law a slave cannot inherit anything.
Paul and Luther both saw who we are before God gives us saving faith, slaves to sin, unable to free ourselves from its grasp. In our Epistle lesson for today, Paul writes, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, (That is all humans) so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. (In other words, the Law and our knowledge of it tells us without a doubt that we cannot meet God’s demands, and that we are incapable of meeting them because we are slaves to sin.
Oh, there are those who think they can become righteous before God on their own, but they are wrong, for no one can become righteous by observing the law as we are told in verse 20) “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. (You see, the purpose of the law is to make us aware that we are slaves to sin. It sounds pretty hopeless does it not, and it would be if our righteousness was left up to us, but it is not, for verse 21 tells us), “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. (Now that does not mean that your faith is the cause of righteousness, only that your faith which is given to you by God is the means through which you become righteous.)
Again Paul restates it, “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” We might not like to think that we have nothing to do with our salvation, but we do not. Our salvation comes only from God, who accepted Jesus’ death as a substitute for our death, a death that we all deserve.
Now that is good news. We who deserve death, permanent death, do not permanently die. It looks like permanent death to us, as we conduct George’s funeral on Wednesday, but in God’s eyes, it is not permanent death, for the body is just waiting for the final resurrection when all who have died will be raised from the grave.
So what does this Good News, the grace of God mean to us today, we who are here today celebration Reformation Sunday? Well, first of all, it means that all who believe in Jesus as their Savior are no longer slaves to Satan. We are now slaves to God. I know that sounds kind of weird, but we are as Paul tells us slaves to God, bound to him in our baptism.
As slaves of God nothing can take us away from God, for when we became slaves our status changed. Remember that I told you earlier that slaves under Roman law could not inherit anything from their owner. Well in our slavery to God things are not the same, for God does not work by earthly standards, he works by his standards, his perfect standards, and thus as his slaves we are also his sons and daughters. And because of that we are given eternal life.
Let us see what else the Good News of God’s grace toward us means for us today. It means freedom. Now I know that that sounds like nonsense if we are slaves to God, but it does mean freedom. It means freedom from fear, for we no longer have to fear punishment from God. You say, “What about God’s Law, are we not going to be punished for breaking them?”
All I can say is, we will not be punished, for that is totally wrong thinking. If that were true, Jesus’ death and resurrection would have been for nothing. You are either free of the punishment or you are not. It really is that simple. As a slave, slash, son or daughter of God you will not be punished by God.
God wants to bless us as only he can. Yet I believe that there are many times when he cannot, for none of us live our lives as we should.
We do not spend time in prayer and Bible study and so we are not blessed. We do not help those who need help, and we are not blessed. We do not forgive those who God has forgiven and we are not blessed. We who are part of the body of Christ, so many times, do not see ourselves as belonging to the body and thus we are not blessed.
We miss many of God’s blessings, so that is why we are having “New Consecration Sunday”. Your congregation leadership wants you to be blessed by God. They want you to feel the joy of giving and being blessed.. It is not just to meet the budget, although that needs to be done. New Consecration Sunday is for your spiritual growth, so that you will be blessed.
He gives you everything. He gave up his own Son for you and in doing so freed you from slavery to Satan. He did all of that, not because he had to, or because you deserved it, but because he simply wanted too. And because of that you are blessed. You no longer have to give ten-percent. You are free to give more, not to God, goodness gracious he does not need it, but to his church on earth so that it can continue his work.
If you have not been giving for the Lord’s work here at Saint John start with a little, and be blessed. If you have been giving, see if you can give a little more and be blessed. Blessed, not because God says you have to do this or I will not bless you, as so many believe, but blessed through your giving, which shows your gratitude and joy at being a forgiven child of God. Amen
posted by Pastor Rhoads | 1:52 PM
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