THE DEATH OF ME

 

SERMON FOR THE SEconD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

 

WThe Death of meW

“I am astonished that you are so quickly removed from him who called you in the grace of Christ and have been turned to a different gospel—not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let them be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:6-9).

Dearly Beloved: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

 

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here is nothing this old world finds more intolerable, more irritating, more repulsive than the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why? Because where the gospel is preached, there all grounds for human boasting are violently uprooted and overthrown. For once the gospel arrives, proclaiming as it does the free forgiveness of sins to the ungodly—while they are yet ungodly!—what else is there left to boast in? Nothing. Nothing at all. Not our spiritual prowess or pious deeds; not our devout religiosity or moral virtue; and no, not even God’s holy and righteous law! In the fierce wake of the gospel’s proclamation, there is nothing left in which to boast but Jesus Christ himself and alone. And this the world cannot abide.

            Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia testifies to this gospel-opposition. “I am astonished,” he writes, “that you are so soon removed from him who called you in the grace of Christ and have been turned to a different gospel” (v. 6). Paul can only marvel at the sight of sinners who, like dogs returning to their vomit, prefer the stench of their own sin to the gift of Christ’s own righteousness. How strange it is that sinners cannot help but feel cheated by grace. “I was doing just fine justifying myself,” Old Adam grumbles, “when all of a sudden this Jesus fellow comes along and takes all my sins away from me without so much as a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you.’ And then, to add insult to injury, he proceeds to turn around and just give me his righteousness, unconditionally, freely justifying me so that I can no longer justify myself. Truly, truly, I tell you, this Jesus is going to be the death of me!”

            And Old Adam is right! Because if Christ your Lord has already done everything, then you the sinner can do nothing—not then, not now, not ever. And what do you call a person who can’t do anything? Well, a corpse. And what is it that a corpse needs? To be resurrected from the dead. And how is this resurrection to be accomplished? Through the preaching of a word—and not just any old word—but the one new word of the gospel, which is none other than Jesus Christ. Everything—absolutely everything—hinges upon this word arriving to you in the form of a simple promise, an absolution: “I forgive you all your sins.” The difference between this promise and any other—no matter what holy pretense it might cloak itself in, or what angelic appearance it may hide itself behind—is the difference between Christ being given to you and Christ being taken from you; in short, it is the difference between blessing and curse, life and death, heaven and hell. And it is because everything depends upon this particular word of promise that every other word itching to replace it must be publicly, directly, and authoritatively damned. “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let them be accursed” (v. 9).

            But here we encounter yet another problem. For there is nothing this old world finds more fickle, more capricious, more ineffective than a promise. And if experience is our teacher, we will no doubt have to agree. After all, promises are routinely broken; they are, as the saying goes, “here today, gone tomorrow.” Yesterday’s I will becomes today’s I won’t. Today’s I do becomes tomorrow’s I don’t. It’s no wonder that we soon find ourselves speaking ill of promises, referring to them as “empty words” that don’t actually do anything. And so when the promise of the gospel is preached into our ears, proclaiming us righteous by faith alone apart from the works of the law, we become suspicious. It all seems a bit too easy; too good to be true. We think there must be a catch; a tiny condition embedded somewhere in the fine print. We presume there must be a mistake; the whole weight of eternity being made to rest on a thing so puny and weak as a promise. We conclude there must be a deficiency, a crack, a fault line in the foundation of the gospel that needs amending. And so the world declares in unison: “Something must be added to Christ!”

            But what can the world possibly add to Christ? What can it add to the gospel? Answer: the law. The world adds law to Christ in the hope of preserving something—anything—of its own to boast in: a work of love, an act of penance, a personal decision for Jesus, and, yes, even a foreskin—or the lack thereof! And so the false preachers in Galatia prattled on: “It’s not enough that you have been claimed by God in your baptism, that you have been fed with Christ’s own body and blood, that you believe in the promise of the forgiveness of sins. No! You must also do one more thing: you must be circumcised!” It is this “different gospel”—which is really no gospel at all—that Paul has in the crosshairs when he writes that, if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (2:21). Any addition to Christ is the negation of him. With its little added something, the world makes Christ into nothing, and so brings the curse he bore back upon itself.

Of course, Paul is privy to the sinner’s ploy; he knows what they are really after. Sinners don’t add to Christ because Christ is not enough. Sinners add to Christ because Christ is too much! It’s a matter of self-defense—of survival! For if it is in fact true that the word of the law kills you and the word of the gospel creates you anew; if it is actually the case that your righteousness does not come from within you, but from without you, by means of an external promise preached into your ear, then it is no longer you the sinner who lives but Christ the righteous who lives in you. You are dead, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). You are crucified, and the life you live in the flesh you now live by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you (Gal. 3:20).

This is why the faith of the centurion is so highly praised by Christ. It is a faith unknown to the world because it is a faith not of this world. It is a faith which clings to Christ’s promise and nothing else, yes, even against everything else! For what did the centurion see? The encroaching death of his servant. And what did the centurion feel? The manifest absence of the Lord. Nevertheless, the centurion believed and confessed: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my servant shall be healed.” Christ was astounded by the faith of the centurion for no other reason than that it trusted the word to do what it said. For the centurion, the word of Jesus does not require a deed to be added to it before it can be effective. Rather, the word is the deed itself! The word does what it says and says what it does. Therefore, when God says, “Let there be light,” there is light. When he says, “Come forth,” the dead are raised. When he says, “Your sins are forgiven,” so they are. And when he says, “It is finished,” so it is.

The faith of the centurion is not a lofty ideal of faith that we are to strive to achieve, but is rather an earthy reality that we, through preaching in water and word, bread and wine, receive. The church is not being the church when she, like Martha, is moving frantically about the kitchen, trying to make herself useful to Christ. The church is being the church when she, like Mary, is sitting at her Lord’s feet, hearing his word, and so finally finds something worth boasting about: Christ has arrived, he has arrived for you, and he has come to make you useful to him, by putting you to death and creating you anew. So hear now the word he gives and be healed: “As you believe, so you have. Your sins are forgiven.” AmenW