Romans 3:19–28
St. John 8:31–36
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Scripture Alone! Faith Alone! Grace Alone! You’ve probably heard those Reformation mottos before, but what do they mean? Whenever something big like the Reformation comes along, we can’t help but making a motto, a cliché—something short and easy that we can wrap our minds around. We want something simple so we can easily remember the big message. But there’s always a danger for clichés to go bad. If we just repeat them without thinking, they can be emptied of their meaning. And then you’ve lost what you were trying to hold onto. As another example, last year, for the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation, our Synod rolled out a new motto or theme: “Reformation 500—It’s still all about Jesus.” That’s not a bad slogan, but it could raise questions like: What about Jesus? Who is He? What did He do? Slogans, mottos, themes, battle cries—they’re not bad, but we can’t forget what they really mean.
Here’s another phrase you’ve probably heard a lot in Lutheran churches: Law and Gospel. You’ve probably heard these words a lot from me, and hopefully I’ve given them the meaning they deserve. But in many cases, Law and Gospel can be boiled down to an oversimplification that ends up missing the entire point. The simple Sunday School meaning for Law and Gospel is usually abbreviated with three letters: S.O.S. The Law Shows Our Sin. The Gospel Shows Our Savior. Now, that’s NOT a bad understanding to have, but what IS bad is if we try to boil it down even more, like this: “The Law shows our sin, and sin is bad, and having my sin pointed out makes me feel bad, so the Law is bad. And the Gospel shows our Savior, and the Savior is good, and hearing about the Savior makes me feel good, so the Gospel is good. Law—bad. Gospel—good.” No. This twists the cliché to mean something it was not supposed to mean.
This kind of thinking can even twist the meaning of our Lord’s words in our Reformation Gospel Reading: The truth will set you free. If you just think that the Law is bad and the Gospel is good, then you can take Jesus’ words to mean that the Gospel will set you free from the Law completely. So, you’re free from doing good works at all, even free to sin! This bad understanding of Law and Gospel can lead you to suppose: “God loves to forgive, and I love to sin! What a perfect arrangement!” But this thinking destroys both the real Law and the real Gospel. And we’ll come back to those in a little bit.
But how about another cliché or saying, one that you hear from all kinds of people: “God is love.” In fact, it’s a direct quote from the Bible (just don’t look too closely at what else the Bible says right around those three little words). God is love. Sounds so nice. And that’s exactly what many people want it to mean. They don’t really want to say “God is love.” They want to say, “God is nice. He is nice, so you should be nice too.” This is the idea you get when people say, “Can’t we all just get along?” Well, sure, except they don’t really want to get along. They really mean, “Can’t we all just get along without each other and be left alone, so I can do what I want?” Real nice, huh. With this “God is nice” thinking, the Gospel is no longer the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16), but just a nice example for us to follow. It ends up giving you a God with no Law, no anger over sin, no sin at all, and so also no forgiveness, and no Savior.
God is not nice. He will not leave us alone to go our merry way to hell. He comes after sinners, and He rebukes, He punishes, He gets angry. Because He loves you. Rather than nicely letting us be, God paid us the intolerable compliment of actually loving us. He dealt with our sins, condemning them, punishing them in Christ. Listen to what else comes right after those three little words: God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His one and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:8–10, CSB). This is the cross of Jesus kind of love. Real, self–sacrificial, heart–wrenching, bleeding, dying Love. You can say “God is love” as much as you want, but if you never mention the cross on Mount Calvary, a dead Jesus and a Jesus risen from the dead, then you’ve got no true love, and you’ve got no true God either.
This is what we’ve got to learn when it comes to Law and Gospel also. Keep the S.O.S. idea: the Law Shows Our Sin and the Gospel Shows Our Savior. But get rid of that “Law—bad. Gospel—good” idea. The Law should make you feel bad, or I should say, God’s Law should make you feel convicted, guilty, you should feel judged—that’s its job. But the Law is not bad—it is holy and perfect because it comes from God. You are bad—you are a sinner and through the law comes knowledge of sin. So, where do we go for help? Not “Where do we go to get a good feeling?” but where do we go for rescue? To the Gospel, which shows and delivers to us the Savior. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.
Once again, we’ve got to get deeper than the clichés, behind the words “Law and Gospel.” We’ve got to get to the cross of Jesus, where the Son of God Himself bled and died in our place. Jesus was the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice that took all of God’s anger so that we would be spared. Jesus suffering on the cross—that’s the Law, that’s what should happen to you. Jesus crucified for you and you go free—that’s the Gospel.
And the same goes with those other slogans. Grace Alone. Grace because of what? Is salvation God’s free gift to us just because He happens to feel generous sometimes? No. Is there any cost for salvation at all? Yes, but God Himself paid the price and so it is free for us. And Faith Alone. Faith in what? Will faith in anything work? Faith in any god? Faith in yourself? No, only faith in the God who became a man, was crucified, and rose again. We are saved by Grace Alone through Faith Alone because of what Jesus did in His death and resurrection. When we talk, when we sing, we need to keep Jesus and His cross front and center. Notice how our hymns also keep driving this point home:
Since Christ has full atonement made
And brought to us salvation,
Each Christian therefore may be glad
And build on this foundation.
Your grace alone, dear Lord, I plead,
Your death is now my life indeed,
For You have paid my ransom (LSB 555:6)
And last but not least, there’s that other Reformation slogan, Scripture Alone. The Holy Bible gives us Christ crucified. Those Spirit–inspired words give us knowledge of the salvation that He won for us on Calvary. But does this mean you can get along fine just you and your Bible? No, it’s never “just” with Jesus. The Scripture also gives you the Words of Baptism, so that you are joined to the death and resurrection of Christ; the Words of the Lord’s Supper, so you are fed with His real crucified and risen body and blood; the Words that are preached to you and spoken in the Absolution, so that you hear His declaration from the cross and the empty tomb, “It is finished. Peace be with you. Your sins are forgiven.”
More than any one cliché can explain, the Reformation is focused on the atonement Jesus made for sin. The Reformation still calls us to set our eyes on Christ the Crucified. For that reason, we set the cross before our eyes—a reminder of God’s bleeding, dying love—a reminder of what our faith is all about.
Today, you followed the processional cross with your eyes. This lovely simple cross was made many years ago by Curtis Heil and it will continue to have a special place in our church. Our congregation has also been gifted with a new processional cross which we will dedicate next Sunday in memory of Carole Eberhart. This cross will include an image of our Savior and the work He suffered for us—simply a more detailed reminder of God’s love. While our crosses may all look slightly different, they all mark this place where the Reformation message is still heard—where the Word of the cross is made known and the Sacraments are given—always leading us on in our faith until, in Jesus’ eternal Kingdom, we bow before that Lamb who was slain and now sits upon the throne of God.
In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.
