Trinity 7

Romans 6:19-23 - Trinity VII - July 14, 2014
The Wages of Sin & the Free Gift of God

Romans 6 is a wonderful chapter of Scripture.  After having established in the clearest words possible the doctrine of justification in the preceding three chapters, St. Paul here in chapter 6, addresses the new life that the Christian lives here on earth.   This is an important thing to do, and for two main reasons.  First of all, because it pleases God that we live holy lives to the praise and honor of His holy Name.  That’s what He called us to do.  He called us to live in righteousness, not to die in soul-destroying sin.  We should consider the new life of the Christian for a second reason too: because if we are to stand on the doctrine that we are justified by grace alone through faith apart from any works we do, we had better learn how to defend ourselves against those who falsely accuse us of forbidding good works.  We don’t.  We uphold good works.  We teach that they are necessary. But we put them in their proper place, as fruits that necessarily flow from true faith.  

Just as St. Paul was decried for his godly message of free grace in Christ because he preached the forgiveness of sins by faith alone, so also we Lutherans have run into the same trouble.  “Cheap grace,” they call it.  “If it’s free, people will abuse it.  You make it too easy.”  Well, if you look at how difficult it is for people to accept this doctrine as Scripture plainly teaches it, it is apparently not so easy at all.  People are always trying to add their own good deeds into the mix.  No; grace alone is not easy to believe at all.  Only the Holy Spirit can work such faith in our hearts.  Only the Holy Spirit can produce good works too. 

In order to defend the life of good works to which God has graciously called us, we must first learn how to defend the grace by which we are called.  It is not cheap.  It is precious.  But it is a price that Jesus has paid.  This means that in order to uphold good works, we must first learn well the doctrine of justification.  To justify means to forgive.  To forgive says it negatively: to take your sins away from you, because Jesus died for them.  To justify says it positively: to credit to you the righteous life of Jesus in the place of your sin.  Listen to how we Lutherans confess this doctrine of justification in the Augsburg Confession from the year 1530:

Our churches teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ's sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight.

And then Romans 3 and 4 – the whole chapters – are sited for reference.  Let’s consider some of the verses we find here.  Paul writes in 3:20, “By the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”  What further commentary is needed?  But a few verses later he writes:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith. 

This means that Christ’s sacrifice, and not what we do, sets aside God’s anger and makes Him happy to forgive. “Therefore we conclude,” as Paul continues in verse 28, “that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.” 

In chapter 4:5, Paul writes that “to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.”  So when it comes to God justifying us – forgiving us, our works play no role at all!  That’s what the Bible says. 

In verse 16 he writes, “Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed,” that is, to all who believe.  This means that if our salvation is not completely by faith alone, then there’s no sense talking about grace at all. 

Paul closes this chapter by writing that: 

“[Righteousness] shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.” 

I could do this all morning.  This is great stuff.  Holy Scripture is crystal clear concerning this doctrine of justification upon which the Church of Christ either stands or falls, and it is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the words you just heard.  In preparing this sermon I was going to continue to quote from chapter 5 as well, but I couldn’t decide where to stop quoting, and I want eventually to focus on chapter 6 like I said I would.  But we learn there in chapter 5 of the peace we have with God who is angry at sin.  We learn of Christ taking the place of all sinners who had merited death by their sin.  We learn of reconciliation.  In Adam, we his physical and spiritual descendants are doomed to die.  But in Christ, we find life.  In His crystal clear and unconditioned promises, we possess by faith the righteousness He earned that avails for us before God.  And we possess this peace both here where true peace is scarcely found and in heaven when true joy will fill us in and out. 

May we never forget the true treasure we have in this heavenly doctrine.  May we never grow tired of hearing it and meditating on it.  This is my prayer for you and for myself, because you know as well as I do that we never stop needing it.  It alone frees us from our sin here where we remain sinners in this life.  We live our lives and without fail put ourselves and our own desires at the front of our thoughts and actions.  We get caught up in gossip, because our flesh would rather enjoy the righteousness we have in comparison to that guy than the righteousness we have freely offered through faith.  We get carried away with lusts and greed, because our sinful eyes do not by nature agree with what God calls beautiful, namely, modesty, self-control, mercy.  Our sinful hearts would rather covet what God has declined to give us rather than relish the eternal treasures of His holy word. 

How do we deal with this sickness called sin – this slavery?  How do we keep our members from taking advantage of grace?  We see such a lack of righteousness even in our lives as Christians, and we even see Christians fall from saving faith because of the sin they learn to love.  How do we avoid this?  Shall we lay aside at times our preoccupation with the doctrine of free and full forgiveness – at least enough to make sure our lives are conforming to God’s good pleasure?  Should we, instead of being so absorbed with this doctrine of justification, maybe focus instead on our own personal commitment to God and how we may strengthen this commitment by holy living?  No.  We shouldn’t.  We must lay at the center of our lives God’s commitment to us. 

It is important to teach good works – that is, which good works please God, and how we are to accomplish them.  This is God’s will.  But we cannot lay aside even for a minute the grace by which we have been called.  Because the grace by which we have been called to be saved from our sin is the same grace by which we have been called to a life of good works.  Only this grace gives us the power as new creatures to hate, lament, repent of, and avoid our sin.  A hymn verse comes to mind that I learned as a little boy:

Grant me grace O blessed Savior,
And Thy Holy Spirit send,
That my walk and my behavior
May be pleasing to the end,
That I may not fall again
Into death’s grim pit and pain,
Whence by grace Thou has retrieved me,
And from which Thou hast relieved me. 

The sin that we are graciously saved from is the sin that God graciously keeps us from.  When we pray that God keep us from committing sin, it is important that we do this by first asking for forgiveness.  

Contrary to those who ridiculed St. Paul and contrary to the claims of those who mocked the Lutheran Reformation, the doctrine that we should do good works is not only perfectly compatible with the doctrine of free salvation apart from works, but it is inextricably bound to it and dependent upon it.  This is because apart from the sinner being justified by faith alone, there is no such thing as a work that pleases God.  And this is because apart from being justified by faith alone, there is no will to please God.  But when the sinner is justified by faith alone, the Christian who emerges not only wants to do good works, but delights in them because they please God who saved him. 

In order to know God’s grace, God’s full grace, the grace that does everything for us, we must know not only our sin, but our complete inability to free ourselves from it.  That is why St. Paul tells us in the very beginning of Romans chapter 6, as we heard last week, that in Baptism we were buried with Christ.  This means that we must regard all our natural powers as mortal sin.  The best thing we can do with our life, when it comes to making good with God, is good for nothing but to be buried where Jesus buried our sin.  ‘Cause that’s what it is.  This is powerful language.  But how else can it be expressed?  We must know what our best efforts are capable of. 

Paul teaches us also that in Baptism we were raised with Christ.  This is just as powerful.  More so!  Much more so!  To say that we who still struggle with sin every day have been raised to a life that cannot be marred by sin or destroyed by death is a lot to attribute to water.  But that’s what God does.  Because that’s what God says.  In Baptism He joins us to His own best efforts, accomplished for us on the cross and at the empty tomb, and so He gives us a life that lasts forever.  In the midst of our life of failed commitments and broken promises, and fleshly desires to do what we know is wrong, yet in the promise of our Baptism we find God’s firmest commitment of all. 

So that is where we flee when we see that sin wants to enslave us.  We don’t flee to our efforts.   We flee to God’s efforts.  We flee to where we were buried and raised with Him who destroyed both the guilt and power of sin in one act. 

If Baptism is nothing more than the commitment of the Christian to God, then look at what St. Paul does.  It means he opens up Romans chapter 6, his grand defense of the Christian life of good works, by directing struggling Christians to a mere symbol^? of their own broken promise.^?  God forbid.  No, Paul does no such thing.  And neither can we.  The reason Paul gives for why sin shall not have dominion over us is because we are not under law but under grace.  And so we flee to grace.  We flee to grace by fleeing to Baptism, where God made us His children by washing away all our sin. 

If we want to live in sin, it is because we do not know what grace really is.  It means that we want to be slaves working for a reward – weather it be the reward of temporary pleasures as the flesh imagines or eternal death as God declares. 

But if we want to be free from our sin, if we want a reward that we cannot earn.  If we want to see in our lives the holiness that God is pleased to see.  And we do.  If we want help to fight against the weakness of our flesh, then we listen to where God in His grace, speaks to us in human terms in a way that we weaklings can understand.  We are not slaves of sin.  We are not slaves of him whose work is hard, whose fruit is shameful, and whose reward is death.  No, we are slaves of righteousness.  We are slaves of Him whose work has been accomplished already.  The fruit of our labor is holiness, worked in us by the Holy Spirit.  The end of our labor is eternal life, earned by Him who labored in our place so that we might enjoy the free gift. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.