(audio only for this sermon)
Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 13
Leviticus 18:1-5 + 1 Timothy 1:5-17 + Matthew 20:20-28
That hymn we just sang reflects the same truth we learned on Sunday in the parable of the Good Samaritan. It was written, incidentally, by John Newton, the author of a much more familiar hymn: Amazing Grace. Newton rightly understood the parable, that God’s Law, at its very heart, requires hearts that are full of mercy and deeds that reflect that mercy; that all men descended from Adam and Eve are sinners who do not do what God’s Law requires; and that it’s Christ Jesus who has shown us mercy in coming to help us poor sinners by His death, by His Baptism, and by the continual help that’s found in His Church, where His Word is continually preached and His Sacraments are continually administered.
If only Israel had understood that the Law was given for the very purpose of leading mankind to see just how much we need a Savior, just how short we fall of God’s mercy. Because the Law itself thundered with the strict requirement you heard in the first Lesson: You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD. If you do all these things, then you will live by them. Then you will be rewarded with life. If you do. If you are righteous by doing.
St. Paul affirmed that meaning in Romans 10: Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, “The man who does those things shall live by them.” The only way to get eternal life from the Law is by doing it, all the time.
But God knew all along that “there is no one righteous” by doing. No one can be, born as we are with the spiritual disease of sin that infects every part of us. And so the Law was given, not to turn us into righteous people, but to show us that we were unavoidably unrighteous people. As Paul said in the second Lesson this evening: the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, etc. In other words, if we were truly righteous people who had no inclination to do evil, then we wouldn’t need any law to tell us, “Now, don’t do evil!” But we do need God to spell it out for us, because, by nature, we are not godly or righteous.
And so the Law points us away from the Law to Christ Jesus. As St. Paul so concisely put it: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And we are among the sinners whom He came into the world to save. He saved us in a two-step process: By taking our sins upon Himself and dying for them, and by applying His atoning death to us through Baptism and faith. Now we are counted righteous by faith in Christ Jesus. We are healed with the balm of God’s forgiveness for Jesus’ sake. The selfish behavior of our past, the self-centered condition of our flesh, is wiped away in God’s sight. We’re given a clean slate.
And then the Law takes on a new purpose for us, not to show us how to gain eternal life, not to show us what we have to do to become worthy of God’s favor, but to guide us in holy living. Our Good Samaritan has left us with a pattern to follow in the ways we care for and show kindness to our neighbor. So study God’s commandments. Let them show you what our God considers good and bad, right and wrong. And let them guide you to walk in the way of Christ, to walk in the way of love. Amen.
