Law and Gospel, Part 5

[This is video of part five of our adult Sunday School class study of 'God's Law and Gospel.']

Living Shrewdly

[Below, you'll find the live stream video from both of the morning worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as the text of the message shared at each service. I hope you find it helpful. Have a good week!]





Luke 16:1-15

The parable that Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson has caused Christians untold confusion through the centuries. So, let’s dispel the confusion right off the top!

Through this piece of fiction created by our Lord, Jesus is NOT approving stealing or dishonesty. God never contradicts Himself. So, Jesus, God the Son, isn’t using this parable to abolish the seventh commandment–”You shall not steal”--or the eighth commandment–”You shall not bear false witness.”

The rich man in Jesus’ parable does NOT compliment the dishonest manager for lying and stealing. The text itself tells us exactly what impressed the rich man in Jesus’ story. Verse 8: “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly…” (Luke 16:8) The word “shrewdly” translates the Greek word Luke uses here, φρονίμως, which can also be translated as wisely or prudently. The rich man praised his manager’s wisdom.

All of this raises a question. What made the dishonest manager in Jesus’ story wise? And, since Jesus told this particular parable to His disciples–believers in Him, like you and me–what does it mean for disciples to be wise?

First, being wise means hearing and understanding the implication of God’s Law. After the rich man fires the manager, he tells the manager that he must give an account of all he had wasted of the manager’s possessions. God’s Law tells us that we, like the dishonest manager, must give God an account of how we have managed or stewarded the gift of life He has given to us.

Folks, every minute we breathe is a gift from God Who formed us in our mothers’ wombs. The average American will live 40,498,088 God-given minutes on this earth. God’s Law demands, as Lutheran theologian Bo Giertz once noted, that we are accountable to God for our “thoughts, words, and deeds…[our] invisible desires and hidden prideful thoughts.” Every adulterous thought, every piece of gossip, every time we have spoken God’s name in vain, any time we’ve craved the possessions, successes, or blessings enjoyed by others, whenever we have been disrespectful of our parents or others in authority, are all instances of you and I squandering and mismanaging the minutes of life God gives to us.

In another of His parables, Jesus tells the story of a rich fool who wastes the minutes of his life by building bigger barns to hold all his wealth so that he can, in complete selfishness, tell himself to eat, drink, and be merry. But, Jesus says, before the fool can finish building his new barns, God steps in and tells him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.” (Luke 12:20)

Only a fool would think that they can live a life of unrepentant sin, misusing the gift of life God has given to each of us, and not have death, the rightful punishment for sin, catch up with us. And for those tempted to think they can manage their lives in a way pleasing to God in their own power and goodness, God’s Law disabuses us of such notions. Jesus says in Matthew 5:20, “I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” And, in Matthew 5:48, he tells us, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

How many perfect people do we have here this morning? I know I’m not one.

Being wise means hearing and understanding the implication of God’s Law.

But being wise also means understanding that there’s a deeper truth God has set loose in the universe. Being wise means receiving this truth with faith acting on the basis of that truth while we still have time.

What do I mean?

In Jesus’ parable, the manager was fired one day and told by the master that he needed to bring the books to the rich man the next. What he did was not in itself commendable: He called in his master’s debtors and forgave them massively. Of the two debtors Jesus mentions in the parable, the manager took it upon himself to forgive each of these men who probably farmed on the rich man’s land, an amount equal to more than 500-days wages a piece! The manager was using his boss’ wealth to win welcoming friends for himself.

Now, this would seem to be a risky ploy by the manager! If the rich man gets wind of this scheme, he could end up not just fired, but in prison!

Of course, it turns out that the rich man does find out. And this brings the unexpected plot twist of Jesus’ story. The rich man overlooks the dishonest manager’s crimes. That’s because, even if the manager is being unscrupulous, he’s finally, maybe for the first time since the rich man hired him, actually managing the rich man’s possessions. 

There appears to be a good reason the manager knew he could take such a chance. It’s this: The manager knew the heart, the character, and the kindness of his master.

Just like the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) in the parable Jesus tells just before this one in Luke’s gospel, the manager knew that his master, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, wanted to forgive him.

And, friends, the crucified and risen Jesus, God the Son, Who died and rose for our sins, demonstrates how much God wants to forgive us our sins and give us life with God as free and gracious gifts for all who believe in Jesus! God wants to do that for us even though none of us has ever consistently managed the gift of life God has granted to us with faithfulness or wisdom.

Jesus isn’t telling us that if we lie and steal, we’ll be acting wisely. He IS telling us to wise up and understand that, even more than was true of the manager in today’s parable, we can trust in the kindness and grace of the God we meet in Jesus Himself to cover our sins! The God revealed to us in Jesus is effectively telling us again today: “The time has come…The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

The good news, or the gospel, tells us that while we have all failed to be good or sinless managers of our lives, God sent Jesus into the world and, according 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus bears the weight of our sin so that we can receive His righteousness!

In light of such love and grace and in light of our failure to measure up to the righteousness of God, the only action that makes any sense for us is to turn in repentance and faith to Jesus each day, to trust in Jesus for God’s charitable forgiveness of our sin, that is, for grace, and for life with God that begins now in this crumbling universe and continues into eternal perfection that death cannot destroy!

Those made wise by God’s Word know that when we daily–even moment by moment–throw ourselves on the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, all our misuse of this life is forgiven and we are made eternally clean and new!

God’s Word tells us: “..all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [but] all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-24)

The one who daily turns to Jesus in trust is leading a life of God-given wisdom. Amen!

The Cost of Following Jesus

[Below is the message shared yesterday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, as well as the live stream video of our two worship services. Have a blessed week!]

Luke 14:25-35

Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 14:25-35, are hard to hear.

If we’re to follow Jesus–in other words, if we’re going to receive forgiveness of sin and everlasting life with God, is Jesus telling us we have to hate our parents, spouses, kids, siblings, and our very own lives?

Is He abrogating the Fourth Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother”? (Exodus 20:12)

Is He telling us that He was only kidding when He summarized God’s Law–”Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…[and] Love your neighbor as yourself”? (Matthew 22:37, 39)

Or, is the God we know in Jesus Christ spouting one of those alleged inconsistencies that the uninformed and disbelieving claim to detect in Scripture?

As to this last question, let’s be clear. Both the Old and New Testaments say that God is consistent and unchangeable. God is the one, Psalm 55:19 affirms, “...with Whom there is no change.” And in the book of James in the New Testament, we’re told that in God, “...there is no variation or shifting shadow…” (James 1:17) So, when we encounter what we think is an inconsistency from God, shrugging our shoulders or deciding to follow the God of our imaginative preferences or give up on God altogether are not options.

Assuming it’s our desire to follow Jesus, let’s unflinchingly consider what He tells us this morning.

The context in which Jesus speaks His words is, as always, important. Jesus is heading to Jerusalem. He knows that this journey He’s taking to Jerusalem won’t be a walk in the park. Jesus didn’t come to bring the human race a Hallmark Channel coziness that, at most, can keep us comfortable until we die. The wages of sin is still death and our sin–yours and mine–must be dealt with if we’re to be the people God intends for us to be or if we are to have eternity with God. (Romans 6:23) That’s what Jesus has come to do. The crowd, like us maybe, sees Jesus as a messianic hero, someone who can make hard lives easy. But Jesus wants much more for us than to make us happy in this condemned universe. Jesus has come “to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) He’s come to find and eternally restore to God, lost people who are in bondage to sin and incapable of freeing themselves. To save us, Jesus’ journey will lead Him to a cross. There, Jesus, sinless and pure, will take the punishment of death we deserve.

Just before today’s lesson, Jesus told His parable of the great banquet. In it, He said that God invites all people, even those deemed unworthy by the world, to come to His banquet. (Luke 14:12-24) God wants everyone to hear and believe the good news that through Jesus, anyone who repents of sin and believes in Jesus will have everlasting life with God.

And right after speaking the words in our lesson, Jesus tells three parables about God seeking and saving the lost: the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost (or prodigal) son. (Luke 15:1-32) God loves and wants to save all people. And at the cross, Jesus will do everything necessary to save us from sin, death, and condemnation.

But now, in today’s lesson, Jesus speaks hard truths. He says: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27)

It’s important to understand that the word translated here as hate is, in the original Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, μισεῖ (misei). It’s a comparative term reflective of the Aramaic and Hebrew languages native to Jesus and His fellow first century Jews. It means, “love less, esteem less, value less.”

Jesus is not saying that we should dishonor our parents, be contemptuous of our families, or mistreat the bodies He’s given to us.

He’s telling us that we cannot let the love that we have for our spouses, families, children, or our own well being prevent us from doing what He told us to do earlier in Luke’s gospel: deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him. (Luke 9:23)

Now, knowing that the word translated as hate is comparative doesn’t make what Jesus says any less challenging! And what He says is far more practical than we may realize.

There are people in marriages to spouses who want to go out to brunch on Sunday mornings rather than worship God.

There are parents who daily face the easy path of submitting to the culture and the demands of sports and music and activities rather than seeing that their children are in worship, Sunday School, or Catechism whenever possible.

There are family members who tell us that if we don’t endorse their sinful lifestyle, they don’t want to have anything to do with us anymore.

Now, believe me, I am not insulting anyone here. Nor am I making light of the challenges people face. I’ve faced some of these same challenges in my own life.

I’m simply pointing out that our daily lives can bring home the issue Jesus addresses this morning. Daily, we’re confronted with life and death questions. Like, who do we value most: Jesus or our spouses? Jesus or our significant others? Jesus or our kids? Jesus or our parents? Jesus or our comfort? Jesus or our careers? Jesus or our acceptance by others? Jesus or our lives?

Friends, I confess that when I read Jesus’ words, I am convicted. I look into the mirror of God’s Law and I see that while I have never been guilty of hating Jesus, I have been guilty of putting other things ahead of Him and His will for my life. Usually without noticing it. God, forgive me!

“When Christ calls a man,” Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted, “He bids Him come and die.” If we are to rise with Jesus and live with God eternally, we must also die to ourselves and turn to Jesus: our only hope, our only Lord.

Now let’s be clear. Jesus offers us the free gift of God’s forgiveness of our sin and eternal life with God. There is nothing we must do and nothing we can do to earn this gift.

Jesus has already earned it at the cross.

He’s already destroyed the devil’s dominion over God’s creation, already conquered the power of sin to condemn us to life without God, already torn down the dividing wall between God and us, already earned the righteousness–the rightness with God–necessary for us to be acceptable to heaven. Jesus already has done everything necessary to save the lost and bring them–to bring us–into God’s everlasting kingdom.

In Jesus Christ, we really are free from all condemnation! “There is nothing for me to do,” notes one Lutheran theologian, “but to appropriate this [victory won by Jesus] to myself.”

This appropriation is what Jesus means when He tells us to believe in Him. And the Bible says that even our belief, our faith, in Jesus comes to us as a free gift of the Holy Spirit working in the Word and Sacraments. 

So, Jesus is telling us today to listen for His voice when the devil, the world, our sinful selves, and even the people we love, may seek to drown Him out.

Listen when Jesus says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:2)

Listen when He says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” (John 3:36)

Listen when His Word tells you, “[baptism] saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21)

Listen when Jesus says, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me…This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:20)

By these and all the words of God we have in Scripture, God empowers us to appropriate–to receive and to believe–all that Jesus has earned for us and all Jesus has promised to us through His cross and resurrection!

An old saying tells us, “Buyer, beware.” Jesus isn’t selling us anything, of course. He’s come to give us life with God freely.

But today, He is telling us, “Believers and prospective believers, beware.” That’s what He means by His parables telling us to count the cost of being His disciple.

Jesus hasn’t come to accessorize your life. He’s not like a new haircut, handbag, car, grill, or, for that matter, political philosophy.

He’s come to be your life. That’s what He means when He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) There is no such thing as life or eternal life apart from Jesus. Without Jesus, we’re eternally dead. Jesus has come to give you a whole new and different life, a life that will not end.

And that will entail killing off your old sinful self. He starts doing that at the moment you are baptized. And, as He calls you to daily repentance and renewal, He’ll keep doing it until the day you leave this earth. He will kill off your old self so that your new self, the person God made you to be, can daily rise until that day, this old creation’s last day, when, Jesus says, “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live…” (John 5:25)

There’s a cost to life with Jesus. It means accepting the conviction and death of our old selves, our old ways, our sinful nature.

But to those who listen and follow, it will also mean life and resurrection with God!

This past Tuesday, at Donna’s funeral, we remembered the words of Jesus to the grieving Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

Whatever the cost to our egos, our comfort, or our relationships, may we daily hear and trust in Jesus and so live with Him forever. Amen

The Law and the Gospel

[Below you can find live stream video of this past Sunday's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, AND the prepared text for the message.]





Galatians 3:23-4:7

The categories of Law and Gospel are well known to most Lutheran Christians.

God’s Law, we say, can’t make us righteous, because none of us can obey God’s Law. That Law can only show us that we have no hope of receiving God’s blessings in this life or the next based on our own goodness or good deeds. Romans 3:22 puts it simply: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The righteousness that allows human beings the privilege of calling the God of the universe, “our God, our Lord, or our Father,” isn’t something we can earn by human effort. Or even by human effort assisted by God. We’ll never make ourselves righteous, acceptable in God’s kingdom, by resolving to be righteous. We all fall short. That’s what God’s Law, succinctly listed in the Ten Commandments, tells us. 

Our only hope for righteousness is the Gospel, the good news. A Lutheran theologian of the last century described the Gospel like this: “​​The Gospel is the forgiveness of sins, nothing else. It is not a theory about the possibility of forgiveness, not a [mere] religious message... The Gospel of Jesus Christ is something quite different. [It tells us, ‘Your sins are forgiven you.’ (Luke 7:48)] That is His Gospel.” [Hermann Sasse]

The Gospel then is that Jesus, God the Son, has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. He has perfectly obeyed God’s Law for human beings, then, sinless Himself, bore condemnation and death for our sin that we deserve so that our separation from God is ended eternally!

Forgiveness, reconciliation, and all the other benefits of the Gospel happen to us when the Holy Spirit, through the Gospel Word about Jesus, gives us faith in Jesus.

The Gospel declares that Jesus has already died and risen to make you righteous.

Faith is the gift of God that allows us to say, “Jesus is Lord!” And, “Jesus is my Lord!” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

So if we can’t be made righteous in the eyes of God by our performance of God’s Law, what purpose does the Law serve?

The apostle Paul talks about that question as well as the power of the Gospel in today’s second lesson, Galatians 3:23-4:7.

He starts our lesson with a one-verse history of the whole human race before the coming of faith: “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”

Before anyone knew it was possible to believe in the God Who reveals Himself to us in the crucified and risen Jesus, the whole human race was held in check by God’s law.

This was true even of people who had never heard of God’s law, which the Bible says, is written on every human heart [Romans 2:15]. 

C.S. Lewis explains how this is so in Mere Christianity. Some cultures may say that you should only have one wife and others say you can have many, Lewis notes. But the moral code of no culture says that you can have your neighbor’s wife. And while different cultures may have different ideas of what constitutes murder, no culture says that murder is OK.

Who taught us that these were the right values?

No one needs to be taught God’s law; we know it from birth. 

This law, Paul says, had an important role before saving faith was made available to any of us. Before God gave the gift of faith in God to Abraham, who anticipated the coming of Jesus, and Israel, who also awaited the coming of Jesus, or to the rest of us in Jesus, God the Son, God’s Law was our guardian. That word, in the original Greek, is paidagogos, or pedagogue, a word that means leader of a child.

In the first-century Roman world, a pedagogue was a household slave whose job it was to oversee the life and upbringing of wealthy men’s children. The pedagogue was there to keep the heirs safe and out of trouble, to preserve and prepare them for adulthood and their inheritance. 

That, Paul says, is like the function of God’s Law in the lives of those who don’t yet have faith in Jesus. The law paints a picture of what righteousness that is pleasing to God is like. The Law says that the righteousness that makes someone fit for life with God is one in which idolatry, murder, lying, adultery, sexual promiscuity, false witness, gossiping, and covetousness are absent. A righteous life is one of absolute selflessness and love for God and love for others. The Law then lays out a way of life that’s impossible for we sinners to live. But because all of us, more or less, know what’s right and wrong, even though we don’t always like to acknowledge it, the Law does give us lessons on how best to live. It’s our teacher, our pedagogue and it constrains most people most of the time from being total selfish thugs.

When I was growing up, my dad had to teach me to do the right thing. He was the law for me, my pedagogue. I obeyed him because I didn’t like the consequences when I didn’t. Once I reached adulthood, knowing that I could trust my dad and his love for me (I had a kind of faith in my dad), I did things he asked me to do, not out of fear of punishment, but out of gratitude for and trust his love for me. Dad didn’t need to act as my pedagogue any longer.

Once the gift of faith in Jesus has come to us, we no longer need the pedagogy of the Law. We’re spiritual grown-ups, no matter our age, baptized believers who have claimed our inheritance in Jesus. By faith in Christ, we live in the kingdom of God.

Following Jesus then, isn’t about adding another item to your to-do list. It’s about believing in Him and His undying love for us.

As I visited one of our shut-ins this past week, she mentioned how great it was knowing, as Romans 8 says, nothing can separate the believer in Jesus from the love of God. 

So, Paul says in Galatians 3:26-29: “...in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” When this happens, Paul goes on to say, God sends “the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” 

These are important words. They show that after Jesus, everything has changed!

In only a handful of verses in the Old Testament is God called Father. But faith in Jesus entitles us to know God as precisely that. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father, Who art in heaven…”

Paul says that when we are set free by the Gospel to approach God in this way,  the Holy Spirit is telling us that we no longer live under the Law, but are heirs who have an eternal inheritance in God’s Kingdom!

To be sure, God’s Law will still call the person saved by God’s grace in Christ to seek to live in accordance with the will of God. That law will keep calling us to love God and love neighbor, to be kind to those hated by others, to keep sexual intimacy within the bounds of marriage between a man and woman, to make disciples, to refrain from covetousness and stealing, and so on. We will be called to daily take up our crosses and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23), meaning living a lifestyle of daily repentance and renewal.

But the Gospel completely changes our motivation for seeking to do God’s will on earth as it’s done in heaven.

In Jesus’ famous parable of the Prodigal Son, you remember, we meet two sons.

One son thinks he must earn his inheritance from his dad and is sure that he’s behaved so well that he deserves that inheritance. This older son doesn’t really trust his father–or believe in him–despite outward appearances of being a good son. This is the son who lives under the Law because he views his relationship with his dad as a deal: He’ll be good, however begrudgingly, and his dad will have to give him the inheritance.

The other son, at the end of the story, realizes that he’s done nothing and can do nothing to earn  his inheritance. But, unlike his older brother, he trusts his dad to be gracious to him even when, after many sins, he returns. And, of course, when he does return, the father welcomes the prodigal home with greater love than he could ever have imagined. This is what it’s like to be given the gift of faith in Jesus that assures us our eternal inheritance! This is what life is like when we live under the gracious forgiveness and new life God gives to us in the Gospel.

Dear friends, turn to Jesus and embrace the faith in Him the Holy Spirit has given to you. Turn to Jesus, knowing that He has already done everything necessary to make you right with God, to let you live in the freedom of the Gospel. That’s the way to everlasting life with God. Amen