“The payment for sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Such marvelous words, which leap from the page, abounding with God’s grace! Such full-strength Gospel that pierces our ears and hearts with God’s life-giving grace!
Eternal life is a gift of God. He gives it away free. From beginning to end, it’s all gift. We don’t start it. We don’t achieve it. We don’t even keep our salvation alive. For even the faith through which we receive eternal life is a God-given gift.
But grace is also something that eludes our fallen understanding. And because of that, it’s easy pickings for abuse. Here’s just one example. When some people finally realize that God saves them and that it’s all gift, they’ll say, “If it’s free, then why does it matter if I go to church? If it’s free, then what does it matter what I do?”
Such questions show a proper understanding–that salvation is all God’s doing, even a gift. But then it comes to a death-embracing conclusion that our sinful nature all-too-easily makes. The Apostle Paul speaks of this sin in the first part of Romans chapter 6. He says: “Should we go on sinning so grace may increase? That’s unthinkable! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-3) Faith responds to God’s grace by no longer wanting to sin. It’s our sinful nature that takes something good, God’s grace, and twists it to an evil end.
In Luther’s day, when many heard clearly for the first time that salvation is a gift from God, many began to take in God’s grace as an excuse to sin. Many responded to God’s grace–not with thankfulness and gratitude–but wallowing in sin all the more. When people realized that their eternity depended on God, not themselves, drunkenness increased. Some men even began to visit prostitutes.
It became so prevalent that the Roman-Catholic hierarchy became aware of this. They said, “If being saved by grace through faith alone is true, then why is sin increasing where the Lutheran Reformation has taken hold?” Luther once became so frustrated that he quit preaching all together. He said that gratitude was one of the shortest-lived of human emotions.
Now mind you, these were Lutherans who heard and “got” the Gospel. Yet, not only did many increase in their sinning, but they also stayed away from God’s means of grace. They no longer saw a compelling need to come to the Lord’s Supper. They stopped going to Private Confession. For if grace is a gift, then why even bother?
Proper understanding; improper conclusion: The answer is that the Lord’s Supper gives us the grace of God. The Absolution heard in private confession is the Gospel of Christ. Through those means of grace, we receive eternal life and the forgiveness of sins. We are not to separate God’s gift of grace from how He chooses to deliver that grace to us.
We Lutherans use the term “means of grace” a lot. It points to the truth that God has chosen to give us His gifts of grace. And the means of grace are how God has chosen to gift us with His grace. And faith’s response is that it can never get enough of God’s gifts of grace. It’s our sinful nature that says: “I’m full up, God. I don’t need You for a while.”
Luther, in his Small Catechism, helps us see our need for God’s grace. In the “Christian Questions with Their Answers,” we learn one reason, but not the only, to receive the Lord’s Supper. Luther says it’s “so we may learn to be horrified by our sins, and to regard them as very serious.”
God’s grace grates against our sinful human nature. Our sinful nature sees God’s grace as an excuse to sin. And when we reflect on our sins, our sinful nature won’t see them as serious or threatening. “After all,” we think, “it can’t matter that much because I’m forgiven.” That’s a proper understanding coming to a sinful, Satan-inspired conclusion.
Our sins are supposed to horrify us. That’s a part of living the Christian life as the Holy Spirit continues to teach us and bring us to repent. We are to turn away from our sins every day. Our sins should horrify us–if only because the payment for our sin was death, Jesus’ death.
Even after God the Holy Spirit has given us a clean conscience in the waters of holy baptism, sin still tries to snatch us away from eternal life and pull us back down into eternal death. Now, sin in itself doesn’t have the power to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. For no sin is more powerful than the blood of Jesus!
Yet, a danger is always present. It’s that we live in sin without any sorrow or anxiety over our sins. For if sin deludes us to live in unrepentance, then we’ve allowed our sinful nature to rob us of proper repentance. And when our sinful nature robs us of repentance, it also robs us of our faith.
“The payment for sin is death.” We are to see sin as the deadly toxin it is. With fear and trembling, while the fatal disease of sin still thrashes within us, we are to cling to Christ’s saving work, given to us in Word and Sacrament.
Right now, we are both saint and sinner. And so the tension between sin and grace never leaves us. Sin wants to lure us away from God’s grace. And this same sin is lurking in every son of Adam and daughter of Eve. It is a part of our falleness.
And so while we walk this earth, temptations will be part of our everyday lives. And we will continue to sin, as long as we are by nature sinful and unclean. But it isn’t merely the act of sinning itself that endangers us. It’s when we willingly live in sin–that’s when we turn away from God’s grace.
So, where does the danger lie? It’s when we become apathetic toward sin. If you don’t care whether you sin, then the danger is at your door–if not already a murderous menace within your house. But if you struggle against sin, even losing now and again, and that troubles you, then you know the Holy Spirit is working in your life. The real danger is pitching your tent in sin’s backyard and staying there.
That’s why God calls us into a community. As Christians, we want our brothers to have our back. We want them to hold us accountable, so another will warn us in Christian love–but also embrace us with the love of Christ as we turn away from our sin. We want our brothers and sisters to pull us away from our excuses, even thinking God’s truths for our lives are negotiable and don’t matter all that much.
While we roam this present earth, the lethal and ghastly disease of sin remains within us. That’s why we never outgrow the need for the medicine of immortality, which is God’s grace made real to us by the blood of Christ, even coming to us physically in the Lord’s Supper.
The Holy Spirit revives our flagging and damaged souls as we feed on Christ. He lifts us up when we falter and stumble. He teaches us to fear sin, yet to love the blood of Christ, and the life within it, even more.
Eternal life is the gift of God. As thirsting saints and sinners, we are to continue to receive His life, today, tomorrow, and until the day we die. For we aren’t only saints, we are also sinners. And because we are sinners, God, day in and day out, is here to shower us with His grace. He does so to strengthen and confirm us in our salvation. All this is so the Holy Spirit may firmly build us on the Foundation of our faith and the Rock of our salvation, Jesus Christ.
That’s why the church service and even the hymns we sing are to point us to Jesus. A cross (and even better yet, a crucifix) shows us that sin brings only death, for there Jesus died as He took into Himself all our sin. That was what, in the end, killed Jesus–our sins. Yet, at the cross, when we see Jesus there, we also see God’s gift, which “is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God has given to you the gift of eternal life. That gift is all Christ’s doing. From the cross, Jesus has given you life, forgiveness, and salvation. He has rescued you from death, hell, sin, and Satan. He has given you life in all its fullness–that’s the life you have in Christ Jesus. His life is your life. You have the life of the immortal Son of God who once died, but now lives victorious over the grave, never more to die.
At the cross, both Law and Gospel converge. There, God’s justice wrestled against His mercy. And in that struggle, where the fate of all eternity teetered in the balance, Jesus fulfilled and satisfied God’s justice. Sin was fully punished. For sin’s only payment is death–and Jesus died that death of sin, so you could have His life. And that life, that eternal life, is a gift of God in Christ Jesus, your Lord. God has, and continues to give His eternal life to you as a gift, by grace, through faith, because of Jesus.
Live now in that grace, by being where God promises to give you His grace: In His Word and Sacraments. Yes, sorrow over your sin, for sin is a horrifying, dangerous, and even fatal condition. But rejoice, all the more, in the gift of God that He gives to you–“eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Amen.
What do we say to someone looking at the Parable of the Good Samaritan when Jesus was asked “what does a man need to do to receive eternal life?” The answer “appears” to say that eternal life comes through some action to “do the same” (as though he can earn his way by showing love to his neighbor). Is the answer to this question that Jesus said, “love the Lord you God” and love your neighbor?
DJ,
The lawyer, an expert in the Law, asked Jesus a law question–and Jesus gave him a law answer! This lawyer was looking for how he could justify himself, that is, climb his way up to God. Jesus replied that all he had to do was obey God’s Law in all its fullness. Jesus then told the lawyer the Parable of the Good Samaritan to drive that point home.
Like the expert in the Law, to inherit eternal life you must live a perfect life of love–for God and neighbor. No slip ups, no failures, just pure, unadulterated burning love for God and neighbor. God’s Law cuts no deals. That’s what the Parable shows us.
Only after that does the Parable of the Good Samaritan change and flower to bring forth the Gospel. Jesus then asks the lawyer: “So, who was a neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?” “The one who showed mercy” the lawyer answered. Jesus had driven him to confess the true purpose of God’s Law: to unmask the need for mercy. It was as the Prophet Hosea summarized: “For I delight in mercy and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6).
The Parable is a double-bladed text. If you want anything that you do to contribute to your standing with God, Jesus’ words send you away sliced, diced, and condemned to die. But if you see yourself as someone who can contribute nothing–because the Law has already sliced, condemned, and left you for dead–only then do you have hope. For the Law is the killing Word of God–but the Gospel, that’s the healing, merciful Word of God!
And so you find that you are the one whom thieves have beaten and robbed. Satan and his demons have left you bleeding and bruised, robbing us of the beautiful Image of God. Satan left you for dead in the dust from which you had been taken. And the Law of God, shown by the Priest and the Levite, is no help.
It’s then that we realize that Jesus is the Good Samaritan who binds up your wounds. He pours into them the oil of the Spirit, who was lavished on you in your baptism. He pours on the wine, which He makes to be His own blood, the blood that brought you His forgiveness. He picks you up and lays you on His own donkey, and carries you to the Inn, the Church. For that’s where He sees to it that you will be healed and restored to life.
It’s then that we begin to understand the source of the love we are to live out in the world. It doesn’t emerge from the Law, of trying to be good enough to please God. No, such love grows forth from the Good Samaritan’s love for you.
Hope this helps in some way.
Pr. Rich Futrell
This sermon was so meaningful and helpful to me and your explanation really spoke to me, especially the part that we are not to separate the gift of grace from how He chooses to deliver that grace to us. Thank you for providing these postings each week.