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The Reverend Harold A. Linn, Pastor |
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Strengths of the Lutheran Faith - Romans 5:1-5 |
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Text: Romans 5:1-5 Date: April 24, 2005 Fifth Sunday of Easter The Strengths of our Lutheran Faith ESV
Lutherans Stress the Importance of Justification by Faith for All of Life At the heart of the Evangelical Lutheran Faith is just this: having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through Him we have gained access into this grace in which we stand; and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory. The Lutheran Church is the church of justification by faith. That is how we are known and want to be known. Roman Catholics are known for their emphasis on the Pope, the saints, and Mary. Methodists are known for their emphasis on perfection and social action. Calvinists are known for their emphasis on predestination. Pentecostals are known for their emphasis on the baptism in the Spirit and speaking in tongues. Episcopalians are known for their emphasis on apostolic succession; the Orthodox are known for their emphasis on liturgy; Lutherans have always been known for their emphasis on justification by faith alone. What does the teaching that we are justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ mean? To be justified means to be declared “righteous” in God’s sight. To “be righteous” in God’s sight means that he considers you to be “innocent” or “sinless.” God views you as one who has kept his commandments perfectly. To be justified means that you have become right with Him, that he who was going to condemn you for your sins, has now forgiven and accepted you, and that he loves you perfectly and unconditionally (Read Romans 3:21-31; Galatians 2:16; Philippians 3:1-9; Romans 10:1-10). Martin Luther’s Letter to Spenlein. Now I should like to know whether your soul, tired of its own righteousness, is learning to be revived by and to trust in the righteousness of Christ. For in our age the temptation to presumption besets many, especially those who try with all their might to be just and good without knowing the righteousness of God, which is most bountifully and freely given us in Christ. They try to do good of themselves in order that they might stand before God clothed in their own virtues and merits. But this is impossible. While you were here, you were one who held this opinion, or rather, error. So was I, and I am still fighting against the error without having conquered it as yet. Therefore, my dear Friar, learn Christ and him crucified. Learn to praise him and, despairing of yourself, say, “Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, just as I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and have given to me what is yours. You have taken upon yourself what you were not and have given to me what I was not.”ā Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be looked upon as a sinner, or to be one.āā For Christ dwells only in sinners. On this account he descended from heaven, where he dwelt among the righteous, to dwell among sinners. Meditate on this love of his and you will see his sweet consolation. For why was it necessary for him to die if we can obtain a good conscience by our works and afflictions? Accordingly you will find peace only in him and only when you despair of yourself and your own works. Besides, you will learn from him that just as he has received you, so he has made your sins his own and has made his righteousness yours (LW 48:12-13). To stress justification is to stress Jesus Christ. We stress justification because it rightly gives glory to Jesus and his righteousness. God has not forgiven or accepted us because of anything we have done or ever will do, he has accepted us because of what Christ has done for us (Read 1 Peter 3:18; 1 John 2:1-2). Justification was the basis of Luther’s reformation. There have been many “reformations” in church history that sought to reform immorality in the church. There have been many movements in church history where Christians sought to return to the Bible. Many of these movements, however, viewed all church tradition and history as evil. Luther, on the other hand, only rejected and purged the church of those things that contradicted the teaching of justification by faith. Many churches teach justification by grace through faith alone, but in a very limited way. They talk about justification when they are talking about conversion or when they are talking how to get into heaven. But the teaching of justification has little or no relevance for their Christian life. If you go into their churches you will find sanctification, how to live a victorious and successful Christian life, being talked about. The Gospel is rarely heard unless the topic is how to be saved or how to get into heaven. The rest of the time, the Law is preached: God wants you to be joyful, God wants you to be holy, God wants to you to evangelistic, God wants your money, God wants you to get active in the community, God wants you have a better marriage. People flock to churches that claim to be able to impart to them “principles” from God’s Word that will show them how to be better Christians, to be successful and victorious. But often the principles are nothing but Law passages. Lutherans apply justification to all of life. For it has everything to do with Christian living. It is the power for Christian living. (Read 1 John 4:19; Acts 20:32, Gal. 2:20; Luke 7:36-50). The Lutheran Church teaches the true role of suffering in the life of the Christian. Lutherans teach that the normal way that God works in the world is by hiding himself in suffering and weakness. The normal Christian’s life involves suffering, and lots of it. And that suffering often bewilders the Christian, and fills them with doubts and fear and disappointment with God. God not only allows suffering as a test. He works through it to accomplish great things and this is his most common way of working in our lives. Luther called this “The Theology of the Cross” and contrasted it with the “Theology of Glory” (Read Isaiah 45:15; Psalm 13:1; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Romans 5:3-5; James 1:2-4; John 15:1-5; Psalm 119:71). Suffering - Theology of the Cross - pain, sickness, loss, persecution, mishaps, accidents, disappointments, rejection, unanswered prayers in the midst of it all On Good Friday God hid himself. By all appearances there was nothing good about the suffering of Jesus on the cross; it was a horrible and brutal miscarriage of justice. But behind, no, through that suffering, God was taking away the sins of the world, and justifying the world. In the midst of suffering God was accomplishing an amazing miracle. Through the weakness of Jesus God was performing a mighty deed. He still works the same way today. And this is his normal method of working in our lives. The Lutheran Church gives a Biblically realistic picture of what the normal Christian life is really like. The Lutheran Church comforts those who are doubting their salvation because of a disappointing spiritual life. It comforts and encourages spiritual “failures,” those who have seen little or no improvement in their spiritual lives, even after years of trying--those who have failed to achieve a victorious spiritual life, to be “Spirit-filled,” Christ-like, holy, loving, in the Word, active in prayer, serious about outreach, etc. This “failure” is a very real kind of suffering. The teaching of the Bible, however, is that such failure is completely normal (Read Romans 7:15-8:1; Galatians 5:17). Lutherans have a realistic view of the Christian. We are simultaneously saints and sinners (Simul iustus et peccator). Our sinful nature is very real and often gets the best of us. The normal Christian life is a constant struggle against the devil, world, and flesh. Victorious living does not occur apart form suffering and sin; victorious living comes through suffering and sin. You know you are growing as a Christian not when you need the Savior less, but when you need him more. (Read Romans 8:35-37). Luther’s Letter to Melancthon If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness, but, as Peter says, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner. (LW 48:281-282). The Lutheran Church gives certainty to the Christian who at times doubts God’s love and his salvation Christians need constant assurance precisely because they do fall and fail so often. They begin to wonder whether God will forgive someone who sins so often. We need constant assurance that we are forgiven, that God still loves us. That is why Lutherans stress forgiveness, comfort, and assurance so much in our worship services. We don’t teach, “Yea, yea, I’m forgiven through Christ; let’s move on to Christian living!” In Romans 5, Paul writes that Christians rejoice in suffering, and that such suffering produces endurance, that endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not fail us. Hope is the Biblical word for “certainty.” Suffering and spiritual failures of all kinds bring certainty because they throw us back upon Christ; they increasingly shows us how much we need him. Our hope doesn’t fail us because the Holy Spirit has and continues to pour into our hearts the fact that God loves us, whenever the gospel of justification is preached, or whenever forgiveness is given us in the Gospel (Bible, sermon, sacraments, absolution, liturgy, hymnody). Lutheran faith directs us to look, not at ourselves or within ourselves for certainty and assurance, but outside of ourselves. Luther: Let us thank God, therefore, that we have been delivered from this monster of uncertainty and that now we can believe for a certainty that the Holy Spirit is crying and issuing that sight too deep for words in our hearts. And this is our foundation: The Gospel commands us to look, not at our own good deeds or perfection but at God Himself as He promises, and at Christ Himself, the Mediator. . . . And this is the reason why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works, but depend on that which is outside of ourselves, that is, on the promises, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive. (LW 26:387). Dr. Richard P. Bucher, Pastor
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