Text: Romans 3:19-28 Reformation A
SN: 0033 10/29/23
Things Change…Things Stay the Same
I may have mentioned this a few times, but one of my passions is history. I love learning about the past: names, dates, places, famous battles…all of these fascinate me. My wife thinks I’m crazy, but I can spend hours watching a history documentary, listening to a 30-hour podcast on WWI, or reading one of my old history textbooks from college. There’s a famous quote from Winston Churchill, “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.” It’s important to understand what happened in the past to plan for the future. Because things change, but they also stay the same.
This congregation is different than it was three years ago. I’m different than I was three years ago. Three years ago, you were two different congregations, now you have merged into one congregation. Three years ago, I was two months into restarting my Seminary career as the second oldest man in my class. Change is often good because it shows growth and an ability to adapt. History teaches us that while some things change, other things stay the same. The festival of Reformation gives us a chance to look at the history of the Christian church and some of the errors it has fallen into. We need to understand these errors because they are nothing new. Believers have struggled with these same issues from the Garden of Eden right up to the present day.
In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul needed to correct a misunderstanding about salvation. Some were teaching that to be saved, you needed to keep God’s Law as it was revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The death of Christ ended the requirements of the Law and made known a righteousness from God apart from the Law. Almost 1500 years later, Martin Luther faced the same dilemma. The church of the Middle Ages had corrupted the message of the gospel. Christians were taught that they needed to earn their salvation by doing good works, works of the law. Through his study of Scripture, Luther learned that no one is declared righteous by doing works of the law; instead, through the law, we become conscious of sin. This has been an ongoing struggle throughout the history of God’s people. The church may grow and change, but the temptations of Satan stay the same.
Satan wants us to focus on our own works because he knows this is an easy way to undermine our faith. Reliance on works leads to one of two outcomes. Either we realize that there is no way we can ever keep God’s law perfectly and fall into despair, or we become filled with self-righteousness and think we can earn our own salvation. Paul reminds us that we cannot earn our righteousness by following God’s law. “For this reason, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by works of the law, for through the law we become aware of sin.”
The law does not save us; the law shows us our sin. God’s law reminds us that we have failed to live to the standard of perfection that he demands. We have sinned against God in our thoughts, words, and deeds. We have sinned against God when we have had unkind or lustful thoughts about another person. We have sinned against God when we have taken his name in vain in a moment of anger, and we have sinned against God in countless other ways each day of our lives. The law bluntly tells us, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
As Christians, we know this. We know our sin, and we know that our sin has been paid for by the blood of Christ. And yet, we still struggle with the same temptation that Paul and Luther had to address. We are tempted to think that we can do something to restore our relationship with God. When we sin, we have a natural tendency to want to make up for that sin. We want to do a good work to cancel out the bad. But dear friends, our good works cannot pay for our sins. Imagine the horror if that was how salvation worked. How could we ever pay for a lifetime of sin?
This is where the amazing message of the Gospel gives us comfort. We don’t need to restore our relationship with God because that relationship has been restored in Christ. We don’t need to pay for our sins because Christ has paid for them on the cross. This is the glorious message that Paul emphasizes that we are at the same time saint and sinner. We all stand condemned under the law and redeemed through Christ “because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
In this section of Romans, Paul gives us three beautiful pictures of what our forgiveness before God is like. The first picture is one of a courtroom. As sinners, we stand accused of all our sins before God as the
almighty and righteous judge. Satan accuses us; our own consciences accuse us; God’s Law accuses us. All the evidence is against us, and we should be declared guilty of all charges. But instead, we have one who intercedes for us. We have Christ as our defender who did what we could not. Christ kept God’s law perfectly. He then offered his holy life as a sacrifice for our sins. By faith, his holiness and sacrifice become ours. In that courtroom, God looks at the sacrifice of his own Son and declares us justified. We are not guilty, and no one can bring any charge against us.
The second picture that Paul uses is that of someone who has been enslaved. By nature, we are all born as slaves to sin. We can do nothing to free ourselves from our terrible bondage. But Christ paid the price to free us. He redeemed us by offering his life as a ransom to free us. Our sins deserved the punishment of death and hell. Christ took the punishment for us. He endured the agony of the cross and the torments of hell in our place. He offered his perfect life, the life of God, to make payment for the sins of the entire world. We are restored as God’s children through faith. The forgiveness of sins and the certainty of eternal life are ours through faith. We have been purchased with the holy blood of Christ.
The blood of Christ is Paul's final picture to describe our salvation. Our God is just and holy. He cannot allow sin to go unpunished. The debt of sin must be paid; blood is the only thing that can pay that debt. During the Old Testament, once a year on the Great Day of Atonement, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies before the Ark of the Covenant and offer the blood of animals to make atonement for the sins of the people. This ritual pointed to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ, whose blood would make atonement for the sins of the entire world. Paul says that God publicly displayed Christ on the cross as a sacrifice for the world's sins. Only the blood of God could pay for our sins. All of our sins have been washed away through the blood of Christ. He was our great High Priest who offered himself to save us.
This is the ultimate act of love and grace. God sent his own Son to suffer and die for the sins of the world. How foolish it is to think that any of our small deeds could compare with Christ's sacrifice. Dear friends, we do not need to do good works to make ourselves right in the eyes of God. We do not need to carry around a burden of guilt and shame because we have been forgiven. Christ has done it all. This is the freedom we have in Christ. This is the message of freedom that Luther and others restored to the church. As Paul says, “For we conclude that a person is justified by faith without the works of the law.”
Dear friends, through faith in Christ, we are righteous in the eyes of God. We are his beloved children and chosen people. We are free from all the burdens of the law because Christ has fulfilled the law for us. And because we are free from the law, we are now free to love others. We do this best by serving others in our various jobs and callings. We serve God by being good parents and loving our children. We serve God by faithfully working in our different jobs. We serve God in our freedom by uniting our ministries and carrying on the work of his kingdom. This is the freedom we have in our salvation. We don’t need to make up good works to please God because all of our works have been purified by the blood of Christ. Everything we do, from holding a door for someone to showing up to our jobs on Monday morning to giving our offerings at church, are good works that our God loves. We do all these in service to him.
Dear friends’ history is the study of how things change and how things stay the same. Satan’s tactics haven’t changed. His goal remains the same: to lead us away from Christ. The annual celebration of the Reformation reminds us of the joy and freedom we have in the Gospel. We are free from the burdens of the law, we are free in Christ, and we are free to serve. Let us rejoice as we celebrate our unified ministries, and let us pray that God will continue to bless the work of this congregation as we tell the world of the salvation that we have in Christ by grace alone through faith alone. Amen.