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Sermon for Trinity 6
Romans 6:3-11 + Matthew 5:20-26
What does it take to get to heaven? I still remember from my time in Mexico the contrast between the average person’s thinking in Mexico and the average person’s thinking here in the U.S when it comes to answering that question. In Mexico the average person (in my experience, at least) thought, “I deserve to go to hell. There’s no way God will accept me.” In the U.S., I’d say the average person (at least, the average person who still believes that there is a God and that heaven and hell are real places) thinks, “I deserve to go to heaven. Of course God will accept me!” Then you have the wicked Papist influence on people, offering a sort of middle path. “I may not deserve to go to heaven, but I don’t think I deserve to go to hell, either, so I’m shooting for purgatory. Maybe eventually God will accept me.” Some people work hard to get to heaven and think they might just make it. Other people don’t work hard at all to get to heaven, and still figure God must let them in. Still others mess up their lives so badly they think there’s no hope.
Where do people get all these different ideas about the requirements to enter the kingdom of heaven? From all over the place. Well-intentioned but misinformed family, popular culture, false religions, false teachers within the Christian Church. But most of all, from their own sinful hearts and imaginations. Our made-up ideas about God lead to made-up ideas about what it takes to get to heaven.
Doesn’t it make the most sense to ask the Lord of heaven what it takes to get there? In the Bible, God has revealed “only” one requirement to enter heaven. That requirement is righteousness, the perfect uprightness of the whole person: righteous thoughts, words and deeds that flow from a pure heart. And there are two paths of righteousness, two ways to be righteous. There’s the Law way, that is, that way where you provide the righteous thoughts, words and deeds, which means that you have to start out with a pure heart. And there’s the Gospel way, that is the way where Christ Jesus Himself, during His time on earth, provides the righteous thoughts, words and deeds flowing from a pure heart, which God offers to count toward sinners who believe in Him.
In our Gospel this morning, the Lord Jesus shows us very plainly what the way of the Law requires and why no one can be righteous by it. Today’s Epistle, on the other hand, highlights the way of the Gospel. And both texts teach us how serious God is about His requirement of righteousness.
First, hear the qualifications to be counted righteous according to the Law. Jesus told the crowds on in this portion of the Sermon on the Mount: I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. And the crowd’s reaction must have been, Are you kidding? The scribes and Pharisees seem like the most righteous people in Israel! They work very hard at it, all the time! How can we be more righteous that they? And how much more righteousness do we have to provide?
Well, Jesus goes on to give some examples. Take murder, for example. To take another person’s life without God’s permission is a sin against the Fifth Commandment, a failure to be righteous. You shall not murder! That’s a relatively easy commandment to keep…if you could keep it by simply not killing another person. But what if righteousness in God’s sight requires more than just not killing someone? What if there were a form of “murder” that could be committed in your heart or with your mouth? Being unjustly angry with your brother. Seething with hatred or bitterness. That puts you in danger of judgment, Jesus says. Or saying mean things to your brother. “You fool! Idiot! Jerk!” Or using other more “colorful” expressions. Jesus says that that puts you in danger of hell fire!
In the rest of the verses we read from Matthew 5, Jesus gives some examples of just how serious God is about how you treat your neighbor. If you’ve sinned against your brother, don’t bother trying to appease God by bringing an offering to Him, Jesus says. No, do right by your brother first. Be reconciled to him. Then bring your offering to God. And if you’ve injured someone, take care of it. Deal with it. Make amends for it with your neighbor. Don’t imagine that God will accept you in heaven while you refuse to do what’s right here on earth. Loving your neighbor is part of your duty to love God.
The same goes for the Sixth Commandment, as Jesus goes on to point out after our Gospel. Righteousness includes, not just chastity on the outside, but chastity on the inside—in your thoughts and in your speech. And so it is with all the commandments. The Law requires strict obedience and won’t be satisfied with anything less. Provide that obedience, on the outside and on the inside, and you could be declared righteous—justified—before God and enter the kingdom of heaven on the merits of your own works.
But the harder you try to provide that perfect righteousness, the more you will find that evil is right there with you. And even though you may get closer to righteousness, the words of St. James cut off that path completely: Whoever keeps the whole law, and yet stumbles in one point, he is guilty of all.
That’s why the way of the Gospel is the only way to be righteous before God. And it’s a good way, a pleasant way, a sure way. Jesus was righteous. And God is willing—in fact, God is eager to count sinners righteous, not for their own sake, but for Jesus’ sake, to unite sinners to Christ through Baptism and through faith, and so cover them with the righteousness of Christ. As Paul wrote in today’s Epistle, As many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Through Baptism and faith, you have been given the righteousness that God requires to enter His kingdom. He reckons you to be righteous, even though your thoughts, words, deeds, and your very heart are not righteous according to the strict judgment of the Law. As Paul wrote in Romans 10, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Let’s summarize with a couple of syllogisms: Everyone who disobeys the Law deserves to go to hell. All people have disobeyed the Law. Therefore all people deserve to go to hell. And all who are judged by the Law will surely end up there, and live even now under God’s wrath and judgment.
But! Everyone who believes in Christ Jesus and is baptized will escape the punishment of hell. You believe in Christ Jesus and have been baptized. Therefore you will escape the punishment of hell. You’ll end up in heaven. And even now you live under God’s grace and favor, as long as you continue steadfast in the faith.
But Jesus doesn’t only preach the Law to show His hearers that they can’t keep it and shouldn’t try to be judged by it. He also preaches the Law so that His disciples, who have received the forgiveness of sins through the Gospel, should work all the harder at keeping God’s commandments. It’s still God’s will. And it’s still God’s command. To believe in Christ implies a daily dying to sin and living to God, as Paul said in the Epistle. To believe in Christ is to reject the Law as a path to salvation, but to embrace the Law as the path you are determined nonetheless to follow. Reckon yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
And so, now that we’ve been saved through the Gospel, justified by faith, we have all the more reason to keep the commandments. We have all the more reason to stare temptation in the face and say, “No. I am baptized into Christ. I’ve died to sin. I live for Him who loved me and gave Himself for me.” And when you do that, and when you pray, you will have the Spirit’s help. So learn the commandments and keep them ever before your eyes. Think about how you are to put them into practice in everything you do. But do it, not as one who is trying to be judged by the Law, but as one who has already fulfilled God’s requirement of righteousness, through faith alone in Christ Jesus. And so your righteousness does exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. And you will enter—in fact, you have already entered—the kingdom of heaven. Amen.
