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The Spirit of the Law

9/26/2021

Jacob Jordaens, "Jesus and the Pharisees," 1593-1678.

Trinity 17
Luke 14:1-11
Pastor James Preus
Trinity Lutheran Church
September 26, 2021

There’s the letter of the law and then there’s the spirit of the law. The letter of the law uses words to command outward obedience. The spirit of the law is the meaning behind the words, the true intent of the commandment. If a mother tells her teenager to go to bed, and the teen sits in her bed until two o’clock in the morning talking to friends on the phone, she may have kept the letter of the law by going to bed, but she has broken the spirit of the law by staying up late. And so too, these Pharisees and lawyers are very good at keeping the letter of the law, but they prove that they have no intention of keeping the spirit of the law.

The letter of the law for the Third Commandment states, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11). The Pharisees and lawyers kept this commandment to the letter. The letter of the law is easy. But they failed to keep the spirit of the law.

What is the spirit of the Third Commandment? It is the spirit of every commandment: love. (Romans 13:9) The first table of the Law commands you to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” And the second table of the Law commands you to “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39) And the Apostle Paul states, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:10) This is why Martin Luther in the Small Catechism begins his explanation to every commandment, “We should fear and love God, so that…” If you do not love, then you have not kept the commandment, even if you have followed the command to the letter.

And Jesus, who himself is the author of the entire law, demonstrates this perfectly by showing mercy on the man suffering from dropsy. Dropsy is an illness where a person retains fluids, so that his body swells. Jesus asked the Pharisees and lawyers whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath. What Jesus was asking was whether it is lawful to love on the Sabbath. His opponents were silent, because they did not know the spirit of the law. Jesus broke the letter of the law by healing the poor man, so that he could keep the spirit of the law.

Sometimes the letter of the law needs to be broken in order for the spirit of the law to be kept. Jesus demonstrated this when he would heal people on the Sabbath day. The priest Ahimelech demonstrated this, when he took the show bread, which is only lawful for the priests to eat, and gave it to David and his men, because they were hungry and in distress (1 Samuel 21). Love and necessity may bring a Christian to break the letter of the law in order to keep the spirit. However, people will try to abuse this. Neither love nor necessity permits you to commit adultery or fornication, despite the abuse of the word love. It is not loving to serve a false god to avoid offending a non-Christian friend. Rather, love means to put God first and your neighbor’s needs before your own.

The purpose of the Third Commandment was two-fold. First, for the body. God commanded that the people of Israel observe the day of rest for themselves and for their servants and animals. It is neither healthy nor virtuous to work all day every day. Everyone should take a moment of rest for the sake of their body, mind, and soul. The second purpose of the commandment is for the soul. The Sabbath was a day to rest from your labors, so that you could hear and learn God’s holy Word. As Luther wrote in his hymn on the Commandment, “And put aside the work you do, So that God may work in you.” This commandment taught the people of Israel to love the LORD their God.

Because Jesus has fulfilled the Law by coming in the flesh, suffering and dying for our sins, and rising from the dead, we are no longer obligated to keep the letter of the Third Commandment by refraining from work on a particular day. St. Paul writes in Colossians chapter 2, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in question of food and drink, or with regard to festival or new moon or Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” This is why we are not forbidden from eating pork or shell fish, neither are we obligated to celebrate the Passover or the Feast of Booths. And we are not forbidden from working on Saturday. These were all a shadow. Christ is the substance.

Yet, the spirit of the law remains. We are still required to love God. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15) Jesus commands us to listen to his word and to believe in him. This is why Martin Luther explains the meaning of the Third Commandment like this, “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”

Why do Christians go to church? Because they love Jesus. Jesus promises us that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, there is he in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20). After commanding that his disciples baptize and teach, he promises, “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) Jesus promises to be where his Word is taught and preached. He promises to be in the Sacraments, even feeding us his very body and blood every Sunday. Christians go to church, because they love Jesus. They want to be with him. The want to learn from him. They want to pray to him and praise him. They want to love those who love him. They want to be comforted by him.

Christians love Jesus, because they have faith in him. Jesus again invites us, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) Of course, the word Sabbath means rest. Jesus is our Sabbath rest. We love Jesus, because he gives us rest from our burden of sin. Jesus labored like no man has ever labored before. And he did it for us. He took our sin from us, so that all who come to him in faith are released of their burdens. We go to church out of faith and love toward Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Through faith the spirit of the law is fulfilled in us, because through faith we love our Lord.

Christians go to church on Sunday, because Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday and from that week on, Christians have been gathering on the first day of the week to hear the teaching of Jesus, to pray, and to receive the Sacrament. In the year 303 AD, the Roman Emperor Diocletian declared an edict forbidding Christians from gathering to worship and commanded that they hand over their Sacred Writings. In February of 304 AD, 49 Christians in Abitinae, North Africa were caught gathering for worship on Sunday despite the prohibition. Although they were tortured, none of them denied their Lord. When the man who hosted the church service, Emeritus, was asked why he lent his home for this illegal activity, he answered, “Sine Dominico non possumus.”, which means, “Without Sunday (literally: the things of the Lord), we cannot live.” They loved the Lord Jesus. They could not live without going to church on Sunday to receive from him the rest Jesus’ promises in his word and Sacraments. These saints of Abitinae kept the Spirit of the Sabbath and each earned a martyr’s death.

After Jesus healed the man with dropsy, he told a parable about being humble. He concluded, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Jesus is not simply giving instructions on banquet etiquette. By teaching us to be humble, he is teaching us about faith and love.

The Proverb says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18) Would you trust an art critic, who was blind? Would you be flattered if a deaf person told you that you had a beautiful singing voice? Of course not! Then why do you listen to your pride, which is blind to your faults and deaf to all constructive rebuke and criticism? Pride prevents you from having a repentant heart. It lies to you and justifies all your sins, so that you don’t feel bad. And pride does not trust in Christ. Why would someone sit in the place of honor, when he has not deserved it? Because he does not trust that he will be given a place of honor if he sits in a lower seat. People justify themselves, because they do not believe that God will justify them if they come to him in humility with their sins.

But the humble have faith. The humble confess their sins, that they are poor miserable sinners. The humble trust that God will raise them up based on his own mercy. This is what the man with dropsy did. He no doubt heard that Jesus had compassion on the afflicted, so he found Jesus and came to the banquet, despite the disgust others would have over him, because he trusted that Jesus would heal him. To be humble means to have faith that Christ will exalt you.

Pride is antithetical to love. A person who is proud loves himself. A person who is humble loves others instead of himself. We humble ourselves before God out of love for him. When we go to church to hear his word and to praise him, we are humbling ourselves to say that God is more important than anything else we have going on in our life. We humble ourselves before Jesus and acknowledge him as our Lord, because we love him instead of ourselves. And this love draws us to humble ourselves before our neighbors as well. St. Paul tells us in humility to count others more significant than ourselves (Philippians 2:3). Humility is the outward exercise of love, which is the spirit of all the commandments.

Jesus does not only demonstrate perfect love for us to imitate. Jesus perfectly loved us to save us from the disease of our sin. Through faith, we humbly receive Jesus’ love and are counted perfect by our heavenly Father. Faith in Christ’s love exalts us to the heavenly places, where we have been called to live with God for eternity. And this faith in Christ’s love also produces love in us, so that we seek to fulfill the commandments, not out of selfish ambition, but out of love for God who loves us and out of love for our neighbors, who are loved by God.

May Christ dwell in each of your hearts through faith, so that you may be forever grounded and rooted in love. Amen.

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Forgiveness of Sins Raises the Dead

9/20/2021

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Jan Verhas, "The Raising of the Widow's Son at Nain," 1860. Public Domain

Trinity 16
Luke 7:11-17
Pastor James Preus
Trinity Lutheran Church
September 19, 2021

“What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!”, cried the bereaved widow to Elijah (1 Kings 17:18). With these words, this woman displayed an astute knowledge of the Law and a troubled conscience. “The wages of sin is death,” Scripture declares (Romans 6:23). And the LORD made clear to Adam when he forbade him from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, saying, “In the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” Death is the result of sin. Where there is sin, there is death. Where there is death, there is the corruption of sin. Where sin is hidden, death exposes it. You can’t hide from the reality of sin, because you cannot hide from the reality of death. Death is God’s judgment against sin.

Romans 5 states, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” Death spread to all. This means that all are under God’s judgment, because all have sinned. There are three types of death: Spiritual death, physical death, and eternal death. All three of these deaths are a result of sin.

The first type of death is spiritual death. Spiritual death is the loss of the image of God and of original righteousness. A person who is spiritually dead cannot truly fear, love, or trust in God nor can he do anything to please God. It is impossible for a spiritually dead person to have faith in Christ or believe that God loves him. To be spiritually dead is to be under the power of Satan. St. Paul describes spiritual death in Ephesians chapter 2, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (vss. 1-3)

To be spiritually dead is to be a living dead man. Your body is alive, but you are dead to spiritual matters. It means to be sold under the flesh and to not be able to understand the things of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:14). Everyone descended from Adam is born spiritually dead. If you remain spiritually dead, you will eventually succumb to eternal death.

The second type of death is physical death. Physical death is the death of the body, when the soul departs and the body begins to decompose. We are very aware of this type of death. The young mother experiences it when she miscarries her unborn child. The old woman faces it when her husband of decades is taken away from her. Children bury their parents. Fathers and mothers bury their sons and daughters. A widow loses her only son. Car accidents, murders, war, suicide, cancer, stroke, still birth, physical death comes in many forms and at every age. Even the aches and pains that increase with age are a reminder that each of us will eventually die.

And if the spiritual death is not reversed, that is, if you do not become spiritually alive before your physical death, then you will experience the third type: eternal death. Eternal death is not annihilation where you cease to exist or no longer have consciousness. Eternal death is eternal punishment (Matthew 35:46). Jesus describes eternal death as the outer darkness (Matthew 8:2) and to experience the worm that never dies and the fire that is never quenched (Mark 9:48). As awful as that sounds, the worst part of eternal death is to be separated from Christ Jesus. Jesus is the life of all mankind. If you are separated from Jesus, you are separated from life. So, to experience eternal death is to be forever separated from Christ Jesus, from God’s love and forgiveness.

All three of these types of death are caused by sin. Therefore, the only way to overcome death in all its forms is to take away sin. The only one who can take away sin is Jesus Christ. After the Lord Jesus raised the young man from the dead and gave him back to his mother, the crowd glorified God and declared that a prophet had arisen among them and that God had visited his people (Luke 7:16). They didn’t know how right they were. Jesus is the prophet promised in Deuteronomy 18, whom God said he would raise up from among the people of Israel, who would speak God’s words. And Jesus is indeed God in the flesh. Unlike the Prophet Elijah, who cried out and pleaded to God that he would raise the dead son of the widow, Jesus declared, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” Jesus is God almighty. He alone creates life.

Jesus raises the dead, because he forgives sins. Jesus forgives sins, because he took our sin away through his obedience to the Law and his innocent suffering and death. Scripture says that in Jesus we have redemption in his blood, the forgiveness of our sins (Ephesians 1:7). Jesus is the only man who never sinned, the only man against whom death had no claim. And yet, Jesus bore the sin of the whole world and washed it away in his own blood. There is forgiveness only in Jesus. This means that there is life in Jesus alone. This means that if you are to be raised from spiritual death, from physical death, and from eternal death, you must be raised by Jesus alone.

Yet, how does Jesus raise you personally from the dead? The same way he raised that young man in Nain. Through the power of his word. Jesus spoke. He told the woman not to weep. He touched the bier, so that the bearers stood still. And then he spoke again, commanding the young man to rise. In Jesus’ word is the power to raise the dead, because in Jesus’ word is the power to forgive. Jesus has already defeated sin and death for us through his death and resurrection. He gives us that victory as a gift through his word.

Everyone is born spiritually dead, incapable of choosing God, incapable of loving or pleasing God, incapable of faith and good works. And you will remain spiritually dead until Christ makes you alive. Scripture states in Colossians 2, “In [Christ] also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” Jesus touched the bier and commanded the dead young man to live. In Baptism, Jesus touches you with water and with his word washes you clean of your sins, so that you can believe in him. To be baptized into Christ is to die and rise with Christ (Romans 6). The power of Baptism is the power of Jesus’ word, which forgives sins. Again, it says in Colossians 2, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.”

In Baptism, we have the promise of the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38). In Baptism we have the promise of the resurrection from the dead. And in Baptism, through faith we receive a resurrection from spiritual death to spiritual life. That is, we receive faith in the forgiveness of sins and a willing spirit, who loves God.

And you experience this spiritual resurrection every day. We still sin. We must repent of our sins. But it is not the acknowledging that sin is bad that makes us alive again. It is not the shame for what we have done that brings us back to life. It is the promise of forgiveness from Christ. This is why we need the Gospel every day. When you hear the good news that your sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, you hear your Savior Jesus shout, “Young man, young woman, I say to you, arise!” And through faith in our forgiveness, we do!

Jesus’ word overcomes our physical death as well. As the fear of death overwhelms you, what can you do? When you are on your deathbed, and Satan brings into your memory all of the sins you are ashamed of to accuse you, how will you be comforted? Will you recount all your good deeds like a child trying to hold back the ocean tide from destroying his sand castle, by building a wall of sand? That won’t do you any good. But the Gospel that Jesus forgives you will fight back Satan. The Gospel is the message that Christ has borne your sin, so that your sins cannot harm you. The forgiveness of sins makes your death temporary. The forgiveness of sins turns your physical death from a portal into eternal death into a portal into eternal life!

Jesus told the mother not to weep. Scripture promises that at last Jesus will wipe the tears out of our eyes (Isaiah 25:8; Revelation 21:4). Why don’t we mourn as others do? Because we have hope! (1 Thessalonians 4:13) How does Jesus tell you not to weep? By preaching the Gospel to you! By declaring the forgiveness of sins that turns death into sleep. Do you weep and moan when you lay your child down to sleep and kiss her goodnight? Do you fret and cry when you kiss your beloved goodnight? Of course not! You’ll see them again in the morning after just a short rest! This is what Christ has done to physical death by forgiving your sins! He has turned our weeping into laughter. Granted this sleep of death will last a bit longer than a night’s sleep. Yet, the waking that follows will never have an end!

Jesus’ forgiveness rescues us from eternal death. As a Christian forgiven of your sins, you have no need to fear that you will be cast out into the outer darkness or that you will experience the anguish of the worm or fire. God will not cast you out of his presence! Rather, the light of Christ will shine on you. He will be your life for ever and ever.

Finally, our eternal life will put an end to our temporary physical death. Jesus will again speak his word of forgiveness when he calls to us in the grave to rise. Yet, unlike the young man from Nain, we will not rise to live a few more decades. We will rise to eternal life. The death of the body will be gone forever. Spiritual death will no longer hinder our love for God. Sin will be no more. The day will most certainly come, my dear brothers and sisters, when Jesus will declare his final and eternal absolution and raise us to live with him in righteousness and purity forever. This is most certainly true. Amen.

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Seek First the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness

9/14/2021

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Trinity 15
Matthew 6:24-34
Pastor James Preus
Trinity Lutheran Church
September 12, 2021

When Jesus tells us not to be anxious, he is warning us against idolatry. Idolatry is the worship of a false god. A god is whatever you fear, love, and trust in most. So, if you fear, love, and trust in the Lord, then your God is true. But if you fear, love, and trust in anything else, money, job, friends, power, leisure, then you have a false god. That makes you an idolater.

Jesus tells us that we cannot serve both God and mammon. Mammon is earthly wealth, like money and property. Mammon is a false god, because people fear, love, and trust in it. They fear not having enough money or stuff and will monopolize their time serving the purpose of securing money and stuff. They love money and prove their love by their constant devotion. And they trust in money. It is commonly believed, even if not stated out loud, that if you have enough money, then you are secure.

But mammon isn’t a kind and loving god. It’s cold and heartless. It’ll help the thief and cheat just as well as the honest laborer. Mammon doesn’t satisfy, but rather, the more you get, the more you want. Like saltwater, it never quenches your thirst, but rather poisons you the more you drink. Mammon perishes. Everything money can buy will pass away with time. And the religion of mammon is a religion of works, leaving its followers in the constant pursuit of obtaining it. Mammon makes no promises of continued grace or providence. And for these reasons, mammon causes all its followers to be anxious. When Jesus says, “Do not be anxious,” he is telling you to stop serving and worshiping mammon.

Instead of worshipping a false god, which will fail you and will only make you more and more anxious, worship the one true God who provides for all your needs. We learn to confess in our Small Catechism, “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life. He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true.”

Mammon does not promise any of that. God may use money to provide you with some of these things, but the promise is not dependent on the money, but God.

To prove that God will provide, Jesus bids us to look at the birds. They neither toil nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet our heavenly Father feeds them. And this certainly is true. I put a bird feeder near our kitchen window, because we like to watch the sparrows, cardinals, and blue jays. Yet, when we returned from vacation, the feeder was empty and I didn’t immediately refill it. When I did refill it, I found that the birds didn’t quickly come back. And even now, they don’t come around as they did before. They’d rather rely on a more dependable benefactor, our heavenly Father, who never fails to provide enough insects and seeds in the field.

And Jesus then adds, “Are you not of more value than they?” Well, aren’t you? Isn’t this self-evident? Sadly, no. For those who believe that we evolved from the sludge and that we share with all living things a common single-celled ancestor, they can’t conclude that we are more valuable than the birds, or that God or nature is more concerned about your welfare than the sparrows. Our government operates on this assumption. Today the federal government is fighting to overturn a law in Texas, which seeks to protect the life of unborn babies with heart beats. It is the belief of our rulers that these babies with beating hearts are not more valuable than the birds of the air. These rulers were elected by mammon worshipers, who value the pursuit of money and stuff over the lives of children.

But our rulers in government are wrong as well as the mammon worshipers, who elected them. You are indeed more valuable than many sparrows and so are each of these little babies in danger of the abortionist’s forceps and scissors. God desires to feed them and clothe them, as he does you. But how can we know this? How do you know that God cares for you, so that you don’t need to go and serve another god?

Because God sent his own Son, Jesus Christ to die for your sins. Jesus became a little baby. Jesus’ little heart started beating around six weeks after his miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, because he came to save little babies. The iniquities of all of us were laid upon our brother Jesus, who knows our sorrows and anxieties even more intimately than we know them. Our God and brother was crucified and his beating heart was silenced, because he loves us so much and desired to save us from sin and hell. St. Paul sums it up most beautifully, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

God did not become a bird or a flower. He didn’t die for the plants and animals. Yet, he still provides for them every day, as he has from the beginning of creation and will until he makes the world new. How much more will God provide for you, for whom he has sent his Son to join your race and to die for you! How much more valuable does God find you than these countless birds and animals he faithfully feeds and cares for? Can you measure the value of God’s own blood? (Acts 20:28)

This is why Jesus tells us to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness with the promise that all the rest will also be added unto you.

This weekend we remember the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people were killed when nineteen Muslim extremists crashed commercial airplanes into the Twin Towers in NYC, the Pentagon in Washington D. C., and, because of the efforts of brave passengers on Flight 93, who fought the terrorists, in a field in Pennsylvania. An entire country that tries to hide from the reality of death was exposed to it on that awful day. What we watched on TV was not the illusions of Hollywood. Those were real people who died. Were they worse sinners than we? (Luke 13:4) No. But this was a message for each of us that death comes to us all, and at a time we cannot know. Our mammon will not be able to help us when death comes. After that comes judgment. We must seek the Kingdom of God now, while we can.

But how do we find the Kingdom of God? God’s Kingdom is not something that we must travel distant lands to find, nor can we find it by being anxious or toiling after wealth. Rather, as our Small Catechism says, “God’s Kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.” God’s Kingdom comes to you when he reigns as King in your heart. He does this through the power of the Gospel, that good message that God forgives all your sins and gives you eternal life for Christ’s sake. It is through the Gospel that the Holy Spirit comes to you, so that you live in God’s Kingdom of Grace through faith. You find God’s Kingdom in your Baptism, where Scripture promises that the Holy Spirit washed you in a new birth (Titus 3:5). You find God’s Kingdom where Christ feeds you his very body and blood in the Holy Sacrament, which was given up for you on the cross. You find God’s Kingdom wherever this Gospel is preached in its truth and purity.

And his righteousness. What is God’s righteousness and how can we find it? Romans 1:16-17 answers us, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” You find God’s righteousness in the Gospel of Christ. And you receive this righteousness and make it your own when you believe in the Gospel. God is telling us to seek him in the Gospel of Jesus, so that we know that he is our God who takes care of us today and forever.

To live in God’s Kingdom of Grace is to be freed from the tyranny of the false god mammon, which burdens its followers with anxiety. Yet, we behave as if living in God’s Kingdom is a burden that we scarcely have time for. We have started Catechism Class for the children and with it the memorizing of Luther’s Small Catechism. Sadly, learning the Catechism by heart is a source of anxiety to some students. Why is this? Because we treat Catechism class like it is math, science, or history class. Instead of the children seeing this as seeking the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, they see learning God’s Word by heart as just another deadline to repeat what the teacher says, before promptly forgetting and moving on to the next subject. Our school system teaches children to be anxious mammon worshipers, toiling at a desk with hopes that they’ll get paid to toil at a desk someday. And we catechize our children to be anxious mammon worshipers at home, by how we behave, by what we talk about, and how we spend our time. This teaches our kids to toil for mammon, to be anxious about tomorrow, and to devalue God’s Word as something not profitable to the aim of gaining wealth.

But we should not treat the Catechism as a textbook or going to church as a burden to be weighed against the mammon and pleasures of this life. The Catechism should be our book of prayer and the subject of our conversations at dinner. We go to church to be relieved from the load mammon seeks to lay on us. God’s word gives us peace. Jesus’ forgiveness gives us confidence in eternal life, let alone our daily care. And will God cause his Christians to starve or go naked? Will God cause you to lose your job and livelihood if you go to church every Sunday without excuses and have devotions each day? And even if God does permit such a thing, Scripture teaches us that if we have food and clothing, with these we should be content (1 Timothy 6:8). Why? Because we know that for us who wait for the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is a crown of righteousness waiting for us (2 Timothy 4:8).

Christ invites us today to throw off the burden laid on us by the false god mammon, and to take comfort in his promise of grace and forgiveness. He promises that if you seek his grace, he will care for every other want you may have as well. Amen.

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Walk by the Spirit

9/7/2021

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William Brassey Hole, "Jesus with the One Leper Who Returned to Give Thanks" 1846-1917. Public Domain

Trinity 14
Galatians 5:16-24
Pastor James Preus
Trinity Lutheran Church
September 5, 2021

You have been baptized into Christ. Your sins are washed away. You are forgiven. Through faith you are clothed in Christ’s own righteousness, so that you can stand before God without shame and confident in your eternal salvation. And yet, there is a war raging inside you! St. Paul tells us that the flesh wars against the Spirit and the Spirit wars against the flesh. This is why St. Paul exhorts us to “walk by the Spirit” so that we do not gratify the desires of the flesh. Yet, even without St. Paul telling you this, you’re aware of this war. The works of the flesh are evident. Although you are a Christian, you still are tempted to sin. The lusts you have renounced rise up within you. While you try to be loving, peaceful, kind, faithful, and self-controlled, a power within you incites you to hatred, enmity, fits of anger, and divisions.

This war is present in every Christian. St. Paul himself laments, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ... For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:15, 18-19) What is this strange phenomenon of which Scripture speaks, and of which each of us has experienced? What is this war between the Spirit and the flesh?

Despite what some think, this is not a battle between your body and your soul, or between the material world and the immaterial world. Rather, by flesh Scripture means your fallen sinful nature. This includes your body, soul, mind, and will: everything that was born from your mother. Jesus says, “That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:6) According to your first birth of flesh, you are a sinner. You have inherited original sin from your father. That means that from your conception, you have been a sinner. Your body, soul, and will are corrupted by sin. By Spirit Scripture means everything that has been redeemed by Jesus’ blood and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, that is, your entire regenerated self. When you were baptized, your entire self was born again. That is why Christ joined water to the word. The water touches your body to indicate that your body is born again to holiness and righteousness. Yet, until you die, your sinful nature clings to you.

This means that your entire self, your body, soul, mind and will, your reason and all your senses are completely holy, righteous, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit with Christ’s blood; and that your entire self, your body, soul, mind and will, your reason and all your senses are corrupted by your original sin. You have been declared righteous by God through faith in Christ’s blood and the Holy Spirit has enlivened your will to desire and pursue what is good and righteous. The works of your hands, feet, and mouth are also looked at by God through Jesus, so that he is pleased with you. Yet, in this same body, you have the desire to do evil, to turn from God, to pursue unholy desires. Yet, on account of Christ Jesus God overlooks this sin. Christians live by faith and walk by grace. St. Paul goes so far as to say in Romans chapter 7, “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

This means that although Christians still sin, they are regarded as holy through faith on account of Christ. Yet, this does not mean that it doesn’t matter if Christians sin, or that Christians can go on sinning so that grace may abound (Romans 6:1). St. Paul declared, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warned you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God!” (Galatians 5:19-21)

This passage cannot be overlooked. While indeed there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), a person cannot claim to be in Christ Jesus while he willfully persists in sin without repenting. We are saved through faith apart from our sins, but it is impossible for true faith and the Holy Spirit to abide with mortal sin. Hebrews 10 states, “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.” (vss. 26-27)

It is false that Christians can continue in sin without repenting and remain Christians. True faith does not continue in willful sin. A wise man once said, “You cannot keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair!” You cannot keep temptation from coming or completely extinguish the desires of the sinful flesh, but you can keep them from ruling over you. We must make a distinction between sins of weakness, which all Christians must battle each and every day, and ruling sins, in which case, the battle is lost and sin has full control.

It is indeed a false teaching that Christians can live without sin. There are some who claim that Christians can reach a point of perfection, so that they no longer sin. They’ll use passages such as 1 John 3:9 to support this claim, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.” Yet, this passage does not claim that Christians no longer sin, but rather, Christians do not persist in sin. In this same Epistle St. John writes, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:8-9) When people deny that Christians sin, they do great harm to the soul. They either drive some to despair, because of their own sins, or they create self-righteous hypocrites, who refuse to repent of their real sins.

Yet, it is equally a false teaching that Christians can continue in sin, while remaining in the saving faith. This false teaching causes people to be recalcitrant, confirmed sinners, who refuse to repent or seek forgiveness from Christ. While Scripture does not teach that Christians can live without sin, it certainly teaches that Christians do not persist in sin without repenting.

This is why the Church must be firm on what is a sin. People are offended that the Church condemns fornication, adultery, homosexuality, unionism with other religions, abortion, and other common sins. But Christians must know that those who persist in these sins will not inherit the kingdom of God! (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21). A person can claim to have faith in Christ, but if he rejects Jesus’ teaching and clings to his sin, then he is not following the true Jesus.

This is why it is necessary for Christians to repent of their sins every day, as our Lord teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer. Temptation seeks to become sin and sin seeks to rule you and produce unbelief. Sin is like yeast. It seeks to grow and spread. And Luther reminds us that sin is like a snake, if it can fit its head in, so can it fit its entire body. So, we must constantly be on guard. Furthermore, consider how closely sin clings to us! Our entire body, soul, and mind is corrupted by sin. Jesus says that out of the heart come sinful desires (Matthew 15:19)! So, Christians must be wise to the danger of besetting sins and crucify their flesh with its desires daily through repentance.

And so, you’ll learn that the Law is a helpful tool for the Christian to curb his sinful actions and to aid in daily reflection and repentance. Yet, you must be careful that you do not fall into legalism. St. Paul does not say, “Walk by the Law and you will not satisfy the desires of the flesh,” but rather, “Walk by the Spirit.” Legalism teaches that you can be righteous by strictly following the Law. Yet, Scripture has already made clear that we are declared righteous by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We do not then remain righteous by works, otherwise the Bible would not say that you are justified apart from works of the Law.

In this very Epistle to the Galatians, St. Paul has already made this argument. He writes, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you! It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the Law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—Just as Abraham ‘believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness’?” (3:1-6) In Chapter 5, St. Paul goes so far as to say, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” (vs. 4)

The point is this: The Law kills the sinner, but not the sin; the Gospel kills the sin, but not the sinner. The Law tells you what is right, and condemns you when you fail to do it. While you might be able to curb some outward sins with the Law, the Law cannot make you love God or your neighbor. The Law does not give you the Holy Spirit, who enlivens your new self. But the Gospel kills the sin, while keeping the sinner alive. It is the Gospel that gives you the Holy Spirit, so that your whole self seeks to do what is right. It is the Gospel that Jesus Christ died for all your sins and that God forgives you for Christ’s sake that creates faith in your hearts and makes you alive to produce good fruit.

To walk by the Spirit means to walk through faith in the Gospel. You can and should use the Law to rebuke your sinful flesh, but the Law cannot give you the desire to do what is right. Only the Gospel can create love in your heart. St. Paul writes, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.” This is fruit, not works done by coercion. The Spirit sows the Gospel, and reaps fruits of love. This is why he writes, “And those who are in Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” The only way to conquer the sinful flesh, so that it does not subdue you, is to place your sins on the cross of Christ. Do not only repent by acknowledging that you are bad and the Law is good. Repent by turning to Jesus for forgiveness and the power to live in love and purity.

It is by the grace of God through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit that you are justified in his sight. And it is by that same grace of God through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit that you produce good fruits of love and war against your sinful flesh. He who began the good work in you will complete the good work in you. Through faith in Christ Jesus, you are not a slave to your sinful flesh nor to the Law, but you are a legitimate child of God with the Holy Spirit himself living in you. Amen.

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"For faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." ~ Romans 10:17

The Spirit of the Law

Forgiveness of Sins Raises the Dead

Seek First the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness

Walk by the Spirit

Rev. James Preus

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