✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Galatians 2,16-21 4118
11. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 056
Clara of Assisi, Italy, Abbess, ✠ 1253
12. August 2018
1. О Christ, our Risen Savior, create trust and hope in the gospel of Your resurrection, so that in believing unbelief is conquered by faith and in this victory we have received the seal and assurance of the gracious forgiveness of sins and peace with God. Amen. (Starck 88)
2. »We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because no one will be justified by works of the law. But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.«
3. The Apostle Paul had received a classical education and a traditional Pharasaic education. He was well-versed in logic, rhetoric and the Holy Scriptures. Yet, in his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul’s eloquence is both simple and profound, where he writes: »A person is not justified by the works of the law but is justified through faith in Jesus Christ.« Paul clearly teaches that we cannot earn justification by obeying the law. This was the exact opposite of what the Pharisees taught, for they believed one can and must earn justification by obeying the law. Thus, Paul, and Jesus before him, clashed with the Pharisees over the Scriptures, the law and how one merits justification.
4. The rich young man prided himself in perfectly keeping the law (Luke 18,18-30); he was either a Pharisee or one who follows the Pharisaic teaching about the law and justification. So Jesus exhorted him to an even higher legal standard: well and good, now sell all your wealth, give it to the poor and follow Me (Luke 18,22). The apostles reasoned that forgiving someone 7 times a day must satisfy the righteousness of the law, but Jesus raised that legal requirement significantly higher: no, not 7 times but forgive him 490 times in a day. The Pharisees taught the Jews to love their neighbors; that’s a good start, Jesus affirmed, now love your enemies as well. If we, like the Pharisees, believe we can earn our justification before God by doing the works of the law, then Jesus will raise the legal standard even higher, yes to such heights that we can never achieve justification by the law.
5. There is a way to merit justification. The way of justification is the way of the cross where upon Jesus merited our justification; He justified us by suffering and dying on the cross. We receive this justification by believing that Jesus has died to justify us.
6. Jesus on the cross is where the law and gospel beautifully intersect and interact. Jesus was on the cross because of the law. The person who sins shall die (Ezekiel 18,20). Jesus took our place upon the cross as a sinner, bearing our sin and receiving the punishment the law exacts upon guilty sinners. J. S. Bach majestically set to music Paul Gerhardt’s hymn, where he writes of this mercy:
What Thou, my Lord has suffered
Was all for sinners gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior!
’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor,
And grant to me Thy grace. (LSB 449,2).
Jesus on the cross is also an outpouring of Divine grace. Jesus was punished for our sin and in being punished He purchased the full forgiveness of our sins. He has redeemed us back to His Father and has paid the ransom price the law demands.
7. The Crucified Christ reveals God in all His wonderful, merciful love. God the Father is no longer angry at us, for His anger has been poured out in full upon His Son, and Jesus shows us the friendly heart of our Heavenly Father. Jesus merited this by doing what the law demands and now gives us the benefit of that merit by grace, and we receive this gift of salvation through faith in Him. Again Gerhardt:
Christ brings me to the portal
That leads to bless untold
Whereon this rhyme immortal
Is found in script of gold:
„Who there My cross has shared
Finds here a crown prepared;
Who there with Me has died
Shall here be glorified“ (LSB 467,7).
8. God has justified us. The law teaches „do this, and live“, but that same law cannot justify us. The gospel points us to Christ and creates faith in Him unto life everlasting. The Apostle Paul proclaims: »No one will be justified in God’s sight through the works of the law, since the knowledge of sin is revealed through the law. But the gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, for the justification of God is revealed in the gospel beginning and ending in faith, as it has been written: The justified will live by faith [Habakuk 2,4]« (Romans 3,20; 1,16-17). We hear the absolution of God, I forgive you, and believe that the forgiveness purchased on the cross is for us. Amen.
9. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, our Justification; make known Your saving work of the cross and the empty tomb, so that we may call upon Your Name and give thanks to You, our Righteousness. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28. Revised Edition © 2012 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
Gerhardt, Paul. „O Sacred Head, Now Wounded“. Lutheran Service Book. Copyright © 2006 Concordia Publishing House.
Gerhardt, Paul. „Awake, My Heart, with Gladness“. Lutheran Service Book. Copyright © 2006 Concordia Publishing House.
Starck, Johann Friedrich. Starck’s Prayer Book. Copyright © 2009 Concordia Publishing House.
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