Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: Romans 7,14-25. 23. Trinity; Reformationfest

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

Romans 7,14-25a 5218

22. Trinitatis 067; Gedenktag der Reformation

28 Simon Martyr in 1^st c. & Jude/Thaddaeus Martyr in Edessa, Greece/Persia 1^st c., Apostles

28. Oktober 2018

1. О Merciful God and Everlasting Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who in the fullness of the times did send forth Your only begotten Son, who has declared unto us what He saw and heard in Your presence: most heartily do we praise and thank You, that You have rekindled among us the light of Your Holy Word, and graciously delivered us from the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy, and maintained that work done years ago by Your elect servant Martin Luther. In spite of the wrath and temptations of the devil You have preserved Church and School, given power to Your Word, and granted faithful teachers and pastors to Your congregations. We acknowledge and confess that we are not worthy to receive such manifestation of Your mercy and goodness, but rather deserve Your judgment and condemnation and on account of our indifference, sins, and hypocrisies to be left without the light of Your Holy Word. But we beseech You of Your mercy, deal not with us after our sins nor reward us according to our iniquities. Abide with us, O Lord, for it is toward evening. Keep us and our posterity in the faith of Your Word and in the right use of the Holy Sacraments. Sanctify Your Church in our midst; further and advance Your Reign; glorify Your Name; put down Satan under our feet, and destroy the Son of Perdition by the brightness of Your appearance. Preserve us from all false teachers, hypocrites, and enemies of Your Word who seek to overthrow Your Church purchased at so great a cost by Your dear Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; but at all times send us faithful pastors and teachers who shall lead us into the knowledge and confession of the heavenly mysteries, and finally into the glorious righteousness of Your everlasting Reign. Amen. (Löhe 149-150).

2. »For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 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. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!«

3. In 1520, 3 years after he had posted his 95 Theses in Wittenberg, Martin Luther wrote 3 major treatises: Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and On the Freedom of a Christian. In that 2. treatise Luther harshly condemned the papacy, writing that the Catholic Church is holding Christians in exile by propagating false teachings on the Sacraments; particularly the Lord’s Supper:

The 1. captivity is Rome’s withholding the communion cup from the laity;
The 2. captivity is Rome’s philosophical language that implies it is not Christ’s work but the priest’s work that changes the substance of bread and wine (transubstantiation); and
The 3. captivity is Rome’s making the Lord’s Supper into a sacrifice rather than what it properly is, a Sacrament.

These Babylonian captivities changed the Scriptural understanding of the Lord’s Supper, so that Christians failed to see the Sacrament for the gift it is: forgiveness is promised and given in the Lord’s Supper.

4. The preached Word, Holy Baptism, Absolution and the Lord’s Supper all give us the forgiveness that Christ purchased on the cross. Speaking of the Lord’s Supper, the Apostle Paul tells the Corinthian Christians: »For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed to bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said: This is My body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me. In the same way also He took the cup, after supper, saying: This cup is the new testament in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until His advent« (1. Corinthians 11,23-26).

5. Why was Luther so determined to right the direction the Medieval Church had taken? Luther knew from personal experience the Anfechtung that Christians experience, a spiritual struggle that St. Paul writes about in Romans 7: »I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?« Our fallen human nature is quite adept at corrupting 2 particular Biblical truths: God is a Judge who condemns, and God is a Father who loves. This sinful extremes are: God is the Judge who has not been appeased; God loves me so I can do anything I want, even if it is expressly opposed to His Commandments. With the Reformation, Luther wanted to restore a proper understanding of God’s dealings with His people.

6. Luther developed the dual concept: the God who hides and the God who reveals Himself (Deus absconditus; Deus revelatus). He writes: „Wherever God hides Himself, and wills to be unknown to us, there we have no concern“ (Luther 170). God has simply chosen to hide many things from us: He does so out of His majesty and is under no obligation to tell us as to why He hides something from us. We may have many questions that God has not answered or answered to our satisfaction, and God is not concerned at providing us answers; therefore we must simply respect His will and be satisfied that He hides certain things from our knowledge and understanding. Luther continues: „We have to do with God as clothed and displayed in His Word, by which He presents Himself to us“ (Luther 170). God has revealed many things about Himself and His will in the Holy Scriptures. Throughout 66 books, God’s prophets and apostles teach us many good and salutary things about God. His Word tells us that He created us in His Image and Likeness, that we fell into sin and are in need of redemption.

7. His Word also tells us that now in these last days He has spoken to us through His Son (Hebrews 1,2). Jesus is the Word of God who became man and dwelt among us (John 1,14). Jesus is God revealed in the flesh. He began His public ministry as the Christ by declaring in a Nazarene synagogue from the Prophet Isaiah: »The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He has anointed Me to proclaim the gospel to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to recover the sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor [Isaiah 61,1-2]. Then Jesus said to them: „Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.“ (Luke 4,17-19.21). Jesus reveals God to be merciful and gracious.

8. The preached Word, Holy Baptism, Absolution and of Lord’s Supper all point to and give us the revealed God in Jesus Christ who has purchased our forgiveness and freely given it to us through faith as a gift of grace. God is the Judge. He declares us to be guilty sinners who have transgressed His law. The punishment for sin is death and condemnation. In the Old Testament, God told His people that an animal sacrifice appeases His wrath. In the New Testament, Jesus became that sacrificial lamb who has taken away the sin of the world (John 1,29). God would have us righteous. The law teaches a righteousness of „do this, and live“, but that same law brutally reveals that we cannot do these good and holy commandments, therefore we shall not live eternally. The gospel reveals the very same righteousness of the law, but the gospel tells us to believe in Jesus the Righteous One and you will live eternally. The Apostle Paul said it this way: »The Son of God loved us and gave Himself for us«. And again: »The gospel is the power of salvation to everyone who believes. For the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel beginning and ending in faith, as it has been writteyn: The righteous will live by faith.« (Romans 1,16-17). This faith hears the absolution of God, I forgive you, and believes that the forgiveness purchased on the cross is for us.

9. Again, Luther writes in his treatise The Bondage of the Will: „We have to do with [God] as clothed and displayed in His Word, by which He [reveals] Himself to us. That is His glory and beauty, in which the Psalmist proclaims Him to be clothed (cf. Psalm 21,5) …. God preached works to the end that sin and death may be taken away, and we may be saved. He sent His Word and healed them (Psalm 107,20)“ (Luther 170). The way of righteousness, the way of justification, is the way of the cross. Jesus merits our righteousness. Jesus justifies us, and He does so by suffering and dying on the cross. We stand upon Jesus and we will not fall for He has saved us and promises to be with us always. This is one of the great truths Luther restored in the Reformation; may we always hold it dear and trust in Christ Jesus. Amen.

10. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, the Shepherd of Your Church; take away our fear and give us peace, so that we are certain and assured that on account of You and Your merit alone that it is Your Father’s good pleasure to give us the reign of heaven and that we enter into this blessed reign solely on account of the fact that You, O Christ, have opened heaven for us. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

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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.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Romans 7,14-25. 23. Trinity; Reformationfest

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