Sermon: Martin Luther and the Faithfulness of Jesus
Today is Reformation Sunday, the day we remember Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, which began the day Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of his Wittenberg church, hoping to stop the sale of indulgences, but became a wide, sweeping reform of corrupt church practices and resulted in the formation of many Protestant denominations, including the Lutheran church, to which we all belong. This was so much more than Luther had in mind.
But the seeds of the Reformation were sown years before that. They grew from profound feelings of unworthiness that haunted him for years, beginning with his early years as an Augustinian monk. He called it his dark night of the soul. No matter how much he prayed, fasted, and punished his physical body, no matter how many good works he performed, he could never convince himself that he could ever be right with God—could ever be seen as righteous in God’s eyes. How could anyone ever fulfill the law perfectly? How could anyone ever accumulate enough grace and forgiveness to achieve peace? To earn a place in heaven? “How can any Christian, especially one as sinful as I am, achieve the righteousness of God?!” he asked. Luther often found himself in deep despair.
Until one day, after becoming a priest and a professor, while he was studying and preparing to lecture on Paul’s letter to the Romans, he finally found the answer to these questions, and his despair gave way to rapturous joy, profound peace, and overwhelming gratitude. The answer lies in our Romans text for today, and can also be found in various portions of Galatians. “apart from the law…righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” Grace is a gift we are given by God on behalf of Jesus. And grace justifies us in the eyes of God. We don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to earn grace. We don’t have to earn anything. Grace is God’s free gift…to everyone.
Eventually, after intensely studying the letters of Paul, both Galatians and Romans, Luther came to recognize that even our faith, the faith through which this Grace is promised to come to us, isn’t really ours, that faith is also a gift from God, a gift that comes through Jesus. The redemption, the salvation, the faith and the grace that set us right with God, are all gifts that God bestows on us through Jesus—every bit of it a free gift—nothing we need to earn for ourselves. Thank God! Because Luther was right, there is no way we human beings could ever earn it for ourselves. Grace that effects salvation and forgiveness comes to us free of charge, at no cost to us whatsoever.
No wonder the selling of indulgences was so offensive to Luther. The church was charging for something that God offers to everyone for free. The church was playing on people’s fears and consciences, and using the proceeds to build a great Cathedral. The people were being charged money for something they didn’t have to buy, because Christ had already paid for it, and God had already granted it to them. They just didn’t know it. They didn’t know it, because they couldn’t read it. The Bible was only available in Latin, but the people in Luther’s corner of the world didn’t know Latin. They spoke German. Luther would fix that in 1522, by printing his own German translation of the New Testament, and a complete German Bible, both Old and New Testaments, in 1534.
But I want to back up a little and take a closer look at the text of Romans. Two summers ago, I took a class on the Epistles, and I learned something about this verse, something that I swear made purple smoke come out of my head. It blew my mind, and made me get up and dance and shout, “Hallelujah! and Amen!” You see, there is a tiny translation error in the text that, when corrected, makes Martin Luther’s Good News even better. It’s just a little two-letter preposition. According to the grammatical structure of the Greek, the word “in” should actually be translated as “of”. “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ” should actually read, This righteousness is given through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.”
Why did this get me so excited, you wonder? Because I am a universalist. Romans 6:10 says that the death [Jesus] died, he died once for all. Jesus died For all—all time, all people, all creation, “for God so loved the cosmos, that he gave his only son…” That’s what John 3:16 actually says—the cosmos, all of creation. I believe God’s love is ubiquitous, universal, unlimited and uncompromising, like the love I feel for my children. There is absolutely nothing any of them could ever do that could cause me to reject them, to turn my back on them, to love them with less than my whole being. And that’s what this tiny little correction says about God. The same error exists in Galatians 2:16, which is where it was first pointed out to me. Fix it, and it reads, “6 yet we know that a person is justified, not by the works of the law, but through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.” Redeeming, saving, sanctifying, forgiving grace comes from Christ’s faithfulness—to God, and to God’s plan for saving all humanity and all the world. And maybe, just maybe, since our faith also comes as a gift from God, then maybe there is hope for those who don’t believe, for those who never hear the Gospel, for those who never get baptized, for those who can’t believe, or who stopped believing, because they were hurt, rejected, vilified by the church. In John 10:9, Jesus says, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.” So maybe Jesus is the gate to eternal life, the gate that stands perpetually open to everyone—the gate that turns no one away, that shuts no one out. At the very least, these are loopholes that leave room for possibility, for hope. They’re also good reminders that we need to be careful about the assumptions we make, the judgements we pass on others.
What is meant by “the faithfulness of Jesus Christ?” It means Jesus faithfully fulfilled God’s covenant with Abraham—a covenant for which God took on sole responsibility, fulfilling both Abraham’s promises to God and God’s promises to Abraham. By fulfilling the covenant, Jesus has redeemed sinful humanity, and brought us from a position of guilt to a position of grace. All God’s covenants were enacted in order to deal with human sin. In fulfilling the covenant, sin was removed as a barrier between humans and God. For “as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12). God no longer sees nor remembers our sins. In Jesus, God has erased our wrongs, and given us a clean slate.
The sacrifice of atonement is a reference to the cherubim on the cover of the arc of the covenant, in which the tablets containing the Ten Commandments were kept. This was the mercy seat on which God sat, where God appeared in a cloud to meet Israel at Sinai. It is the place where God meets God’s people. In the person of Jesus, God comes to meet us, and in covenant faithfulness, to do for us that which we cannot do ourselves. God makes us righteous by clothing us in God’s own righteousness.
But what about the law? What about works? If works of the law don’t get us anywhere, then what’s the point of upholding the law? Didn’t Luther caution against doing works?
Yes. Luther cautioned about doing works, but not because obeying the law is wrong. Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law. Like grace, the law, too, is a gift from God. The law is love. God’s laws are about relationships—our relationships with God, our relationships with each other, with all others. If we live according to the law, we will have healthy, harmonious relationships. If we could truly live by God’s laws of love, we could have peace…world peace. Luther’s cautions were about motives—our motives for doing works, not the works themselves. At the time of the reformation, the church taught that following the Commandments could earn you brownie points with God, and that God was keeping track. If you did enough “good works” theoretically you could earn your forgiveness and your salvation—you could essentially store up enough points to trade in for a ticket to heaven when you died. Of course, in spite of the church’s claims, it has never worked that way. Luther said that doing good works was wrong, but only if you did them for selfish reasons, in an effort to earn God’s favor.
As Christians, we are disciples of Christ, and as disciples, we should be imitating Jesus and following his teachings. Jesus taught us to love God and our neighbors. Jesus was faithful—to God’s will and to God’s laws. He obeyed the law out of love for God and God’s people and out of his desire for justice that would make it possible for all people, for the whole world, to flourish. So long as we follow Christ’s example, obeying and upholding the law out of love for God and others, rather than out of a selfish aims and desires, hoping to be rewarded, then following the law is a good thing. It’s what God wants. And that’s what Luther wanted Christians to do, too. The most faithful response to Christ’s faithfulness is to dive, heart first, into Gods laws of love, loving God and our neighbors with all our heart and soul and mind and strength in concrete ways, with joy and eagerness, but no ulterior motives. That’s what Christ redeemed us for—to free us to live boldly into the law, without fear or reservation. Christ freed us so that we could bravely follow him by loving others. Sure, we’ll make mistakes. We’re still human, still imperfect. But no matter how often or how badly we screw up, there’s grace enough for us through the faithfulness of Jesus, who is proof positive that God keeps God’s promises. Thank you, Lord Jesus! Hallelujah! And Amen!