Our text for the Festival of the Reformation include
the propers you have just heard and this verse from the alternate Gospel
lesson, St. Matthew chapter 11: “From the days of John the Baptist until now
the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.”
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the
Holy Spirit.
The purpose of the Law of
the LORD is to shut your mouth, to silence you. It does that quite effectively,
don’tcha think? Well, truth be told, often you do not see it that way. In fact,
your response to the uncompromising Law of the LORD is to, well, compromise it.
You attempt to lower the bar of the Law, so to speak, to make it more do-able. You
actually convince yourself that you can do the Law on your own, if only you
understand in the right way. You see, the way it reads, the way the LORD gave the
Law to you, simply terrifies you. You think to yourself, “Surely the command
‘Do not murder’ means only that I am not to physically kill someone in anger or
rage. Surely it doesn’t mean things like terminating an inconvenient pregnancy,
or assisting an elderly or suffering person out of their misery, or being
angry, mean, spiteful, and unforgiving towards another person.” Same goes with
the command “Do not commit adultery.” You think to yourself, “Surely this
command does not prohibit looking without touching, viewing pictures and videos
in magazines, on the internet, or on television. After all, who have I harmed
if I haven’t touched?” In these ways you attempt to lower the bar of the LORD’s
Law and make it more do-able. But, the Law of the LORD cannot be lowered; it
cannot be bent, or revoked. The Law does not apply only at one time or another,
but it is unchanging and it is uncompromising. The Law does not pass away.
The Law must be fulfilled.
And, you cannot fulfill it. Therefore, if you will attempt to live by the Law,
then the Law will crush you. No, you cannot fulfill the Law, therefore, I say
to you, let it crush you. Let that weight fall upon you and break you into
pieces. For, then, the Lord Jesus can raise you up. Jesus will raise you up
from your failing to keep the Law. Jesus will raise you up from sin and death.
Jesus will raise you up when you trust in Him, because He has fulfilled the Law
of the LORD perfectly for you, and He has suffered and died for you, and He is
raised from death victorious for you. The bar of the Law has never been lowered.
It can never be lowered. But, better than that, the Law of the LORD has been
fulfilled for you. Now your Lord Jesus invites you to share in the freedom and
life that flows from the fulfilled Law of the LORD – His freedom and life which
He graciously pours out for you, received by you in faith and trust without
cost, without works, and without merit.
That is the Gospel, and
that is what we are celebrating today on this Festival of the Reformation. We
are not celebrating an historical event, a socio-political uprising with
religious overtones, or the bravery of a medieval priest-monk-professor. And,
we are certainly not celebrating the fracturing of Christ’s body, the Church.
But, we are celebrating the restoration of the free proclamation of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ that had become obscured, distorted, and compromised by men
attempting to lower the bar of Law and justify themselves by their obedience,
works, merit, and cooperation with God. This is the violence of which our Lord
speaks, violence committed by men against the kingdom of heaven.
Men try to take the kingdom
by force, that is, by works and by merit. But the kingdom does not come that
way. The kingdom comes by grace alone. It cannot be taken by force, by works or
by merit. But, now it has been manifested, revealed, uncovered, which means, it
was there all along, but men couldn’t see it because their eyes were blinded by
sin, their ears were stopped, and their hearts were hard. Some received the Law
of the LORD in joy, deceiving themselves that they were righteous and kept it
faithfully. Some received the Law of the LORD like a funeral dirge, yet they
did not mourn and weep for their lost condition, but they hardened their hearts
in pride against a God who set the bar so exceedingly high. They refused to
fear the LORD and receive His Law as He gave it, for the purpose He gave it. It
was to crush them and turn them to the LORD’s grace and mercy in repentance.
That was precisely the
message that John the Baptist came preaching and teaching: “Repent and be
baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.” Our Lord Jesus preached the same
message, and so did the Apostles after him. That same message is preached to
you still today: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the
Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who
are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” This is the
Gospel, even the eternal Gospel proclaimed by the angel of Revelation “to those
who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.” “Fear
God and give Him glory,” the angel cried, “because the hour of His judgment has
come, and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of
water.” What hour was that? It was the hour of Jesus’ death upon the cross, the
hour in which the Law of the LORD was fulfilled for you, the hour in which
Jesus spoke “It is finished,” and it really, truly, completely, and forever
was.
This is the Gospel, the
eternal Gospel. This is what had become obscured, distorted, and compromised in
Luther’s day. The Gospel was so obscured, distorted, and compromised that
Luther himself was enslaved to the Law and could find no escape, no comfort, and
no peace. For that is what happens to those who believe that they must fulfill
the Law of the LORD in order to make peace with God, they are either pumped up
with pride, convincing themselves that they are doing just fine, or they find
themselves drowning in a pit of despair believing that, no matter how hard they
try to keep the Law they still fall short and can never find peace with God.
Again, the Law was not given that you might do it and justify yourself by it,
but the Law of the LORD was given to shut your mouth, to silence you. God has
given the Law that the whole world may be held accountable to Him. The Law
serves only to reveal your sins to you; no man is justified by works of the
Law. Therefore, be still, shut up, stop striving, and know that the LORD is
God. God has manifested His righteousness, the righteousness that makes you
righteous, apart from the Law – “the righteousness of God through faith in
Jesus Christ for all who believe.”
In Luther’s day it was
believed that faith in Christ was not enough. Guess what, people still believe
that today! The Roman Church sold indulgences, and still sells them today –
pieces of paper that you can buy with money that forgive sins now and after
death in purgatory (another unbiblical doctrine). Yet, no better are
contemporary so-called Evangelical churches that preach to you the Gospel out
of one side of their mouth and then shackle you under the Law again from the
other. Their grace-talk is followed immediately by works-talk. They say
contradictory things like, “Jesus saves you by grace alone, all you have to do
is this, that, and the other thing. And once you’re saved, Jesus expects you to
change, to be better, to make your salvation sure or maybe you weren’t really
truly Christian in the first place after all.” Hogwash! “Salvation unto us has
come by God’s free grace and favor; good works cannot avert our doom, they help
and save us never. Faith looks to Jesus Christ alone, who did for all the world
atone; He is our one Redeemer.”
While Luther and the Reformers
affected many reforms within the Church, it all started with works and
indulgences, attempts to do the Law of the LORD or to lower the bar of the Law
to make it more do-able. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed the
Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Saxony. Each
of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses dealt with the single topic indulgences, the
idea that man’s work, merit, or money could pay for sins for oneself or for
others. In nailing the Ninety-Five Theses to the church door, Luther did what
was customary in his late-medieval college town in order to engage in a
theological discourse and debate over this central aspect of our Christian
faith and doctrine. However, due to the work of reformers like Wycliffe and Hus,
who had preceded Luther, and the advent of the Guttenberg printing press,
Luther’s theses were translated into the common tongue and were copied and
spread throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Now, one could say that it was merely
chance, or one could believe that the LORD had raised up Luther at the right
time and the right place to manifest, reveal, and uncover the Gospel once again
that those walking in the darkness of sin and death, held captive by legalistic
teaching and preaching and false doctrine, could hear the pure, unadulterated,
eternal Gospel proclaimed once again and find comfort and peace in the truth
that “the righteous shall live by faith (alone).” We are justified by grace
alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone whom God has put forward as a
propitiation by His blood, passing over our former sins.
“The righteous shall live
by faith.” Luther claims that it was this passage, Romans 1:17, that cast the
scales from his eyes and released the shackles from his soul, freeing him to
live, not in a continual and losing battle to acquire righteousness by works,
but in the righteousness bestowed upon Him by God through faith in the
propitiation that God Himself has put forward, Jesus Christ. Indeed, Luther was
so struck and convicted by this Gospel proclamation that he added the Latin
word sola, meaning alone: “The righteous shall live by faith
(alone).” From this we derive the classic Lutheran solas: sola gratia,
sola fide, and sola Christus – grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone. And,
there is yet a fourth, and appropriate, sola: sola scriptura – scripture
alone is the sole source, norm, and rule of our faith, confession, and
doctrine. And also a fifth: Soli Deo Gloria – to God alone be the glory.
The purpose of the Law of
the LORD is to shut your mouth, to silence you. What bliss, peace, and comfort
there is in silence! Close your mouth, and have your ears opened. Listen to the
Word of your LORD and God, and the Word made flesh Jesus Christ. Receive Him
and trust in Him alone in all the ways He comes to you: Word and water, body
and blood, for the forgiveness of your sins, salvation, and eternal life. You
cannot take the kingdom by force, therefore, stop trying. But, “Fear not,
little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Grace alone. Grace upon grace. The righteous shall live by faith.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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