Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 19

Ephesians 4:22-28  +  Matthew 9:1-8

Forgiveness. What is it? What does it mean? How does it work? Today’s Gospel gives us a glance. And we do well to pay attention, because without the doctrine of forgiveness—and not just any doctrine but the true doctrine and the right understanding of it—there is no escape from eternal condemnation and the fires of hell, not to mention the hopelessness and guilt of living your earthly life, too, under God’s wrath, anger, and judgment. But where there is forgiveness, there are none of these things, only God’s grace and acceptance here and a sure place with Him in His Paradise forever. So turn your thoughts and attention to the account of the healing of the paralytic, and learn what it takes to be forgiven.

Forgiveness is needed wherever sins have been committed. God certainly calls on us to forgive one another for the sins we commit against one another. But today we’re not talking about you forgiving your neighbor or your brother or sister in Christ. Today we’re talking about God’s forgiveness for the sins committed against Him. We’re talking about being restored to a right relationship with God after a person has broken that relationship with sin. We’re talking about being reconciled to God after one has made him or herself God’s enemy by breaking His commandments, or by simply carrying around the ugliness of the sinful flesh that is always hostile to God.

Everyone needs God’s forgiveness, for all have sinned. As the Psalmist says, If You, LORD, kept a record of iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? The answer is no one, no one at all. But the Psalm goes on to say, But with You there is forgiveness, that You may be feared. So God does forgive sins. But not everyone realizes that he needs God’s forgiveness, and not everyone knows the right way—the only real way—to obtain God’s forgiveness.

But the paralytic in today’s Gospel did, as did his four friends who carried him on that stretcher up to the roof of the house where Jesus was teaching. We assume that his friends brought him to Jesus to be healed of the paralysis that kept him immobilized. And that was surely one reason they came. But the first words out of Jesus mouth were words of forgiveness, not physical healing, and we aren’t given the impression that the man or his friends were at all disappointed.

“Take heart, son! Your sins are forgiven you.” Take heart! Be of good cheer! That implies that he wasn’t of good cheer when he came, that his heart was troubled, that he knew his sins, that he shared King David’s sentiment in Psalm 51: For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. But with a few words, Jesus quickly removed the problem. Take heart, son! Your sins are forgiven you.

You know how the scribes, the experts in the Law, reacted when they heard Jesus say those words. This man blasphemes! This man in mocking God! Contradicting God! Giving God a bad name!

Why did they say that, these experts in the Law? Well, they had no right jumping to that conclusion, but they did have some reason to be confused. Because, as experts in the Law, they knew that God had established a pattern, a method of forgiveness in the Old Testament. It required several things, none of which seemed to be present when Jesus simply spoke those words of forgiveness to the paralytic. What were the Old Testament requirements?

We talked about it a little bit this past Wednesday as we considered the Second Article of the Creed. Through Moses, God set up a whole system, a pattern for forgiving sinners. In order to be reconciled to God, the penitent sinner was to bring a spotless animal to the priest. The priest, as the mediator between God and man, was to make atonement for the sin by killing the animal in the sinner’s place. As a result, the one who brought the sacrifice was given the assurance that God forgave him his sin.

So you had the penitent sinner bringing the sacrifice. You had the divinely appointed priest or mediator. And you had the blood sacrifice as the price of atonement. When those three things came together, the sinner was forgiven, according to the word and promise of God.

But none of those three things were present in that house with the newly made hole in the roof when Jesus forgave the paralytic. Or were they?

Unbeknownst to the scribes, Jesus was true God as well as true Man, and a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. In other words, as the book of Hebrews explains, He was a real priest of God, but not a Levitical priest, not born of the tribe of Levi. He was a priest whom God had anointed directly, whose origins were unknown to the people, just as the origins of Melchizedek, who ministered to Abraham, remain unknown in Scripture. As the divine-human high priest, Jesus is the perfect Mediator between God and Man, able to represent God perfectly as God, and able to represent man perfectly as Man.

As priest, Jesus was about to offer the once-for-all sacrifice of Himself on the altar of the cross, the one acceptable sacrifice to provide atonement for all the sins that the world has ever committed, from the sins of Adam and Eve to the sins of those who will be alive when Christ comes again at the end of the age.

So the Priest is there. The sacrificial Victim was there, and His sacrifice would take place soon enough. But what about the penitent sinner bringing the sacrifice? The paralytic didn’t bring Jesus to the cross to offer up to God, true. No one can offer up the sacrifice of Jesus. He had to offer Himself, and He did. Sinners are not to offer His sacrifice. Instead, sinners are to claim the sacrifice that Christ has now already offered. Sinners are to flee to Christ and His sacrifice, take refuge in Christ and His sacrifice, hold it up before God as the atoning price that has already been provided. You don’t provide it. You just hold it up as your “ticket” to forgiveness, as it were, your answer before the Judge. In other words, you are to have faith in Christ Jesus. And God, in His mercy, according to His promise, counts faith in Christ for righteousness, and pronounces the believer “forgiven.”

That faith was brought along that day by the paralytic and his four friends. The text clearly says that Jesus spoke the words of forgiveness when He saw their faith. Now, it’s not as though they deserve credit for believing in Him. That didn’t originate with them or from them. It was a gift of God through the word they had heard about Jesus, the same word that brought them there that day. Still, that faith was a necessary element in the forgiveness that Jesus pronounced.

But how could the scribes and the rest of the people know that Jesus had such authority to forgive, when they couldn’t see all the elements that the Old Testament required for forgiveness? Jesus offered the proof: Why do you think evil in your hearts? For is it easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—then he said to the paralytic, “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” So he arose and departed to his house. That miracle of healing was the divine seal and proof that Jesus, the Son of Man, had power on earth to forgive sins.

You can’t climb down through a hole in the roof to find Jesus anymore, as the five men in our Gospel did, in order to hear Him, as the true High Priest and the All-atoning Sacrifice, forgive you your sins. But what did He say to His apostles after He was crucified and risen from the dead? As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you…All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Go and preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations. Forgive sins to the penitent! Use the loosing key! You have My permission, My authority, and My command! Which is why, every Sunday, at the beginning of the service, after you confess your sins, claiming only the mercy of God and “the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Christ” as the reason for your request for forgiveness, I pronounce the absolution, proclaiming that I, “in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, forgive you all your sins…” Because God has given this authority and command to men.

So when you hear, “I forgive you your sins,” you should take heart! Be of good cheer! Because it means peace with God. It means heaven is yours. It means there is now no condemnation for you, that God will not hold your sins against you. It means that one day Jesus will stand beside your body, paralyzed with death, and will tell you to arise and go home to live with Him forever. And you will.

Even now, having been released from spiritual paralysis, from the paralysis of guilt and fear of God’s judgment, now able to flex your spiritual muscles and move your joints, your hands, and your feet, you’re free to serve God without fear. Forgiveness is what frees you to love God and to love your neighbor, and especially to love your fellow Christians. Through the forgiveness of sins, you have put aside the Old Man, as Paul wrote in today’s Epistle. Through the forgiveness of sins, you are being renewed in the spirit of your mind. Through the forgiveness of sins, you have put on the New Man, who was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness.

Before you go home to your eternal rest, use the healed limbs the Lord has given you to work, to do something or to make something good with your own hands, so that you may have something to share with the one who is in need.

But after working hard to serve the Lord, when you realize that even your best service was still marred by sin and impure motives, always come back to the place where Jesus is with His forgiveness, to His holy Church, to His Means of Grace. Come in humility and repentance. Come, not once, but over and over again, as long as you carry that Old Man, that sinful flesh, around with you. And remember what it takes to be forgiven: Christ the High Priest and Mediator, who has authorized ministers to forgive sins in His stead, through preaching and through the Sacraments; the atonement made by Christ; and the God-given faith to trust in Him as your Mediator and Redeemer. In the words of St. John: If we say that 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. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous One. He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 18

1 Corinthians 1:4-9  +  Matthew 22:34-46

What do you tell someone who asks you, “What is your religion all about? What is Christianity?” Some would say, “It’s about following Christ.” But what does that mean? Many, would explain, it’s about being like Jesus, being good, doing good, not harming anyone. It’s about keeping God’s commandments. It’s about charity. It’s about self-sacrifice. It’s about love (however “love” is defined). To many people, that’s what Christianity is.

But that’s like taking a picture and tearing it in half, and then pretending that you have the whole picture when, in reality, you only have half of it, and not even the most important half of it. Imagine taking your service folder today, with that picture on the front, tearing it in half and believing that either half, by itself, represented Christianity. That would be madness. To understand a picture, you need the whole picture. To understand Christianity, you need both the Law and the Gospel.

The Pharisees described in the Gospels were content to know the Law. To them, that’s who God is. He’s the One who makes demands on us, who tells us what to do and what not to do, who loves the obedient and who despises the disobedient. They loved the Law. Loved talking about it. Loved studying it. Loved teaching it. Loved obeying it. And they loved the feeling of accomplishment they got when they did what the Law required. They also loved the feeling of superiority they got from comparing their obedience to that of other men. They loved believing that they were God’s favorites, favored far above those who didn’t love the Law as much as they did.

So it’s no surprise that their question to Jesus was a question about the Law. Now, Jesus had just finished clarifying a question about the Law for the Sadducees, who had been utterly unable to catch Jesus in their trap. Since the Sadducees were rivals of the Pharisees, to some degree, the Pharisees were eager to take advantage of the situation and prove that they could succeed where the Sadducees had failed. They could successfully trap Jesus with their question about the Law.

Now, why did they want to trap Jesus in the first place? Well, because Jesus had been teaching this “awful” message, this other message that He was calling “the Gospel,” that God loved lawbreakers just as must as He loved law keepers. That God was, in fact, eager to spend eternity with those who had broken His Law, while He was unwilling to allow good and decent people like the Pharisees to enter His kingdom. That made no sense, because, if God is understood according to the Law, then a just God must love the Law keepers and despise the Law breakers. Obviously this Jesus had to be stopped, had to be exposed as a heretic for teaching this other doctrine that wasn’t the Law.

So they put this question to Him: Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? What would He say? Would He dare say that the Law is evil, that the Law doesn’t matter anymore, that the Law is no longer valid, that His Gospel is intended to erase the Law? If He does, then we have Him! But, no, that’s not at all what He replied. He had an answer ready for them, from the Law. First, from the book of Deuteronomy: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And then He had added an answer from the book of Leviticus: And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The whole Law depends on these two commandments, as do the Prophets.

The Law is good. The Law is just. The Law is valid. And the Law is essential. Jesus agrees with the Law. In fact, you can’t know God rightly without the Law, without that part of the picture.

Now, this wasn’t the first time Jesus had given (or approved) this answer that summarizes the Law. Earlier in His ministry another expert in the Law asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus asked him what the Law requires, and the man replied with essentially the same answer Jesus gives in today’s Gospel, and Jesus told him then, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” But then the man wanted to justify himself, so he asked, “And who is my neighbor?” That gave Jesus the chance to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan. And why did He tell that parable? He told it to illustrate that keeping the Law to love your neighbor as yourself requires the kind of love shown by the Samaritan to the beaten and dying man on the side of the road. And when He spoke those fateful words at the end, “Go and do likewise!”, it sounded like a thunderbolt in the man’s ears, because the kind of love that the Law requires is beyond what we, who are all born in sin, are able to supply. If you can’t love your neighbor as yourself, if you can’t always treat your neighbor with the love you would want your neighbor to show to you, then how can you possibly love God? You’re only commanded in the Law to love your neighbor as yourself. But you’re commanded to love God much more than that, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Jesus agreed that God is serious about His Law, which includes the Ten Commandments and all the other commandments, some of which were only for the Jews, some of which are for all people of all times, all summarized with this whole-self love for God, and with love for neighbor as a person loves himself.

Still, sadly, the Pharisees refused to accept that even they were Law breakers. They were content to know the Law, even as they lived under the delusion that they were actually keeping the Law. The fact is, no one keeps God’s Law, and so all are like that naked man on the left side of the picture on the service folder, who is being chased by death into the fires of hell.

For a moment, the Pharisees may have thought Jesus was on their side after all. But He wasn’t content to focus on the Law. He posed a question to the Pharisees that didn’t seem to be at all related to their discussion of the Law. What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is he?” They said to him, “The Son of David.” He said to them, “How then does David, by the Spirit, call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?”’ Now, if David calls him Lord, how is he David’s son?

Nowhere in the commands and threats of the Law is there any discussion of this “Christ.” The Law is very straightforward. Those who keep it will be rewarded with eternal life. Those who break it—ever, at all, even just a little—will die. There’s no talk there about the Christ. And yet every good Jew, including these Pharisees, knew that the Old Testament Scriptures talked quite a bit about the coming Christ. How did He fit into the doctrine of the Law? They hadn’t really thought about it, apparently.

But after Jesus talks about the Law, He wants to talk about the Christ, starting with who He is. The Son of David, of course, a descendant of King David, promised by God to King David to come from David’s lineage. And yet in Psalm 110, a Psalm written by David, David calls the Christ “my Lord.” Such a short, simple phrase. Someone might just pass right over it in reading the Psalm. The Pharisees can’t explain to Jesus how it can be or why it should be. And, tragically, probably the most tragic thing about Holy Week, they were content not to know. They left Jesus alone after that, and from that day on, no one dared to question Him further.

Don’t be content not to know this vital truth about the Christ. Don’t be content to know the Law. It’s only half the picture of who God is and of what the true religion is all about. Ask Jesus, ask the Scriptures about this teaching called the Gospel.

It’s the Gospel that teaches about the Christ. That, yes, He is the Son of David, born from a virgin mother of David’s lineage, as the prophet Nathan and the prophet Isaiah had said He would be. Born of the tribe of Judah, of the stock of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Born a Jew. Born a human.

But He would also be David’s Lord, the eternal Son of God who was with God in the beginning and who was God, who died and rose again and now sits at the right hand of God the Father and will come again at the end of the age to judge the living and the dead, when He will place all His enemies under His feet.

True God and true Man, the Christ came to be the Substitute for everyone, to fulfill the Law where every man had failed, to die for mankind’s sins against the Law, true Man that He might die for sin, true God that His death might be “for us,” might be sufficient to atone for the sins of the world. That already is Gospel, “good news,” that God loves the world, sent His Son for the world, and desires the salvation of every sinner on earth. But the Gospel is also more than that. It’s chiefly a promise and an invitation: Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved. Or, He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. The Gospel is the preacher standing next to the naked man on the right side of the picture on the service folder, pointing him to Christ crucified and risen from the dead, promising Him that the Holy Spirit will sprinkle him through faith with the atoning blood of Christ and will wash him clean through Holy Baptism of his sins against the Law.

And there it is: the whole picture of who God is and what Christianity teaches. Not the Law only or the Gospel only, but the Law and the Gospel. The Law commands us what to do or not do and condemns us for disobeying. But the Gospel teaches us what Christ has done for us and shows us poor sinners what we are to believe in order to be saved. Know the Law, but don’t be content to know the Law. Know the Gospel, and believe the Gospel. For it, not the Law, is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. Amen.