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Sermon for the week of Trinity 19
Isaiah 44:21-23 + Ephesians 4:22-28
“Take heart, son. Your sins are forgiven you!” The paralytic from Sunday’s Gospel heard those very words from Jesus. And then he heard other words: Rise, pick up your bed and go home. And, healed by the powerful word of Jesus, he did. He arose, picked up his bed, and went home. But imagine if, instead, the paralytic had not risen, had not picked up his bed, and had not gone home, responding instead to Jesus, “You don’t get to tell me what to do!” That would be, unthinkable, outrageous, scandalous. Could a person really receive forgiveness from Jesus, and then turn around and defy Him like that, refusing such a simple instruction, which was meant to be a blessing to the man, on top of it?
Sadly, many do, and they wrongly think they’ll hold onto that “forgiven” status before God, even as they go on to defy His word and commandments. But that’s not what we Christians have been taught to do. On Sunday, we emphasized the Gospel of Jesus forgiving and healing the paralytic. This evening, let’s turn back to the Epistle you heard on Sunday, and again tonight, and reflect on what God has to say about the new life of the forgiven.
You Christians—which is the same thing as to say, “you sinners who have been forgiven through faith in Christ”—were taught to put off the old man, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. The first thing you were taught was to recognize and repent of your sins. The second thing you were taught was to flee in faith in Christ Jesus, who made satisfaction for your sins on the cross and in whom alone God the Father offers a place of refuge from His wrath and condemnation. As Paul writes to the Romans, There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Which is the same thing as to say, There is now only forgiveness of sins and justification for those who are in Christ Jesus.
But you were not taught to stop there and pay attention to nothing further. You were taught, as Paul says, to put off the old man, which belongs to your former manner of life. How does he describe the old man here? He is “corrupt through deceitful desires.” The old man, also known as the sinful flesh, or the sinful nature, is the nature we’re all born with—the only nature we’re born with, the flesh or the nature we inherited from our parents, and they from theirs, back to Adam and Eve after they fell into sin. It’s corrupt, twisted, mangled, and ugly. It’s characterized by deceitful desires, like Eve’s deceitful desire to disobey God in order to gain knowledge for herself and become God-like. Those desires were something new for Eve, but for us, we’ve lived with them our whole lives, thinking we can be happy if we just follow those desires where they lead. But they’re “deceitful” desires. Because they don’t actually lead to happiness. Look at the state of the world, the state of our country, of our own community, where mankind has pursued every twisted, wicked desire imaginable. Has it made the world a better place or a worse place? Are people happier now than ever before? Just the opposite.
Paul describes those fleshly desires in other places: The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh…Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like. Those are the very things we witness all around us in the world, everywhere, as if such things were normal. And they are normal for the unbeliever. They used to be normal for the believer, in our “former manner of life.” But that must no longer be the case.
Put off the old man, like a filthy robe that has been dragged through the mud and the muck. Take it off and don’t walk through the sewage any longer.
Instead, Paul writes, you were taught to be renewed in the spirit of your minds. That’s a continual, ongoing renewal he’s talking about. It has to be. Because your old man is always there trying to climb up into your mind and point you in the way he wants to go. That’s why you need to be made new continually by the Holy Spirit, working with your spirit, to point you in a different direction, every day.
You were taught to put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Remember, Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God in the beginning. But they lost that image and likeness. Their own image became twisted and corrupt. That’s the image and likeness that now passes down to us and to our children. But now a new man has been created in each and every Christian, one that resembles the likeness of Adam before the fall, one that resembles God Himself. There is no filth in that image, only purity, only goodness, only selflessness, only love, and the desire to obey God and to please Him. Put on that new man every day, that is, set your mind to living that new and godly life. Make decisions based on the likeness of the new man, not the old man. Put to death the deeds of the flesh, and live the life God gave you for God.
Paul gives just a few examples of this in the verses that follow. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Everything that has to do with falsehood, and deception, and lies must be put away, put aside, taken off and left to lie in the dust. Instead, speak the truth at all times. But don’t be satisfied with that. Make sure that, when you speak the truth, it is done out of love for the hearer, not out of condescension or mockery, not carelessly, or with a desire to harm.
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Anger is not necessarily sinful, but it can easily become sinful if it leads one to abandon love, to forsake mercy. Anger can be like food that feeds the old man and keeps him stewing on how he’s been offended or neglected. Instead, do not let the sun go down on your anger. That is, deal with whatever or whoever it was that offended you that same day. Forgive wherever possible, and where not possible, give the offense to God. Because when the Christian lets anger take root and grow in his heart, he’s giving the devil an opportunity to hack away at his faith until there’s nothing left but bitterness and unbelief.
Finally, here in our Lesson, Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Christians may be former thieves. They may be former lots of things. As Paul writes to the Corinthian Christians, Some of you were fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, and extortioners. But, he adds, you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. In other words, you have been forgiven. And that means that you have been called to a live a new kind of life, one that is no longer characterized by sin, but by the righteousness of God, with which you have been clothed, and to which you have been called.
Put off the old man. Put on the new. That is the daily task of those who have been forgiven, of those who have been baptized, because, Paul writes, we were buried with Christ 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. Amen.
