PROPER 8C 2007
SECOND IN A SERIES ON JUSTIFICATION BY Faith Episcopal Church
Today we are continuing our series on key teachings of the Christian church by taking a second look at the doctrine we call justification by faith. As I said last week, struggling with what we believe is important, for what we believe determines how we live. Just the simple act of showing up or not on a Sunday morning to worship is a reflection of our theology. And I believe that the struggle to understand our relationship to God is key to living a healthy Christian life. So here we go again.
This teaching on Justification by faith, at it core, deals with the problem of how a sinful, ungodly person can be reconciled to a holy and just God. It is the Apostle Paul who give us this way of understanding the solution to this problem. Using legal concepts drawn from his training and heritage, he teaches us in Romans and Galatians that the way that we can enter into a restored relationship with God is through faith in Jesus Christ.
Lets review the definitions of Justification that we looked at last week
The first definition was:
“just as if I had never sinned.”
The second is:
Justification is a judicial act of God, in which, God declares, on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that all the claims of the law are satisfied with respect to the sinner. (Berkhof, Systematic Theology pg 513)
The third, from John Calvin:
Therefore, we explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol 1, pg 727)
Now lets begin by addressing the Christian teaching that there is a big problem between God and us. In the book of Romans, Paul argues that all of humanity has fallen under that wrath of God. Our ungodly and sinful behavior deserves the anger and wrath of God.
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. Rom 1:18
And
5But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed Rom 2:5
But if our injustice serves to confirm the justice of God, what should we say? That God is unjust to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) Rom. 3:5
Now this concept that we, through our sinful behavior, deserve the wrath of God, is not one that sits well with many people. But I believe that if we step back for a moment, and think about it, we can see that if there is no wrath, or anger in God, then there is no justice with God either. There is not one person in this room who, at some point, has not felt deep anger at some injustice that they have seen, or experienced in the world. I don’t usually read long quotes, but let me read this quote from a theologian who lived in Yugoslavia during its terrible war.
I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God, but my resistance to the idea became a causality of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates 200,000 people were killed and over 3 million were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. Or think of Rwanda, in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How does God react to such carnage? By doting on the perpetrators as a grandparent? By affirming the perpetrators’ basic goodness? I began to understand that a loving God must be wrathful at the sight of the worlds evil. God is not wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.
Once the appropriateness of God’s wrath is discovered, we also discover we cannot draw the line between sins as if some deserve God’s wrath while others do not. We also discover, as wrongdoers ourselves, that we are the objects of God’s wrath. If I want God’s wrath to fall on evildoers, I discover it also falls on me. An offense is an offense and deserves condemnation. (Quote taken from Episcopal magazine Giving, from an article by Miroslav Volf )
Christians have always believed that God is just – perfectly just. Justice is an inherent part of God’s character. I believe that our sense of justice flows from the fact that human beings were created in the image of God, and thus we too have a sense of justice. The words: “its not fair” flow from the mouth of every child. Where does this sense of justice, or fairness come from. It comes from the fact that God created it in us. But as Miroslav Volf points out, once we admit that God is just, we will also then have to admit that we have done, and will do, things that require God’s just condemnation of our actions. In Paul’s words, we all break the law of God, and fall short of God’s glory. Paul points out that we often judge other people for their actions, but we need to look at our own behavior.
Rom 2:1 ( NRSV) 1Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.
So, the problem that the Gospel solves is: How is a just and holy God reconciled to people who live unjust and sinful lives.
So lets turn to the solution, or in Paul’s words, lets see how unjust human beings who deserve God’s wrath are reconciled to God.
The solution is found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul teaches us that Jesus lives the perfect and righteous life on our behalf. He calls Jesus the second Adam.
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. 19For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous Rom 5:18-19
Jesus lives the life that you and I should have lived, but haven’t. He lived a perfect and sinless life -- a righteous life. This is the first phase of the solution to our problem.
The next phase is his death on the cross. Again, Jesus dies on the cross as our representative. On the cross he absorbs the wrath of God that we deserve for our sins. He is the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. As we say in our Eucharistic prayer: “He stretched out his arms upon the cross and offered himself in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.” In the act of the cross we don’t just see mercy, but in the cross we see both justice and mercy. The death of Jesus shows us that sin is serious business in God’s eyes. Our sinful actions are not just something that can be ignored. Justice demands satisfaction. Paul argues in Romans chapter three that the death of Jesus on the cross shows Gods righteousness, or justice.
But there is more to the doctrine of Justification. Now that justice has been satisfied through the death of Jesus, Paul teaches us that when we put our faith in Jesus, God imputes the righteousness of Jesus to us. Another way of understanding this is that God credits our account with the righteousness of Jesus. When this happens, God from this time on reckons, or considers us as righteous. It is not that we are, in and of ourselves, righteous, but we are considered by God to be righteous on account of what Jesus has done for us. Again, it is not that we become perfect or righteous, but through faith we are reckoned, or accounted as righteous before God.
And as Paul over and over argues, we receive the righteousness of God not through anything that we have done, or will do, but only through faith in what Jesus has done for us. Paul writes:
Gal 3:11 (NRSV) 11Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”£
There are no good works, that we can do, or laws that we can keep, or sacrifices that we can make, which will satisfy the justice of God. The gospel message is one of grace and forgiveness that God gives to us as a gift. We don’t deserve it. If we receive what we deserve, we would receive the wrath and justice of God.
There is much more that we can say about this, and we will say more next week, but let me end this by saying that understanding this truth of the gospel is very liberating. I like to understand our restored relationship to God as that of a child to a loving parent. Paul uses the illustration of adoption to explain our restored relationship to God. We don’t have to earn our standing in God’s family. By faith we are brought into the family. From this point on, we don’t strive to earn God’s favor. Instead, we strive to live lives pleasing to our loving parent. This is a totally different ground for living. Many people live their religious lives striving to earn God’s favor, believing that if they live “good” lives, then God will be nice and good to them. But the gospel teaches us to quit striving and to put our faith in what Jesus has already done for us. As we do this, our motivation for serving God totally changes. Duty and obligation are replaced with thanksgiving. We live and serve and worship not to earn something, but simply to express our thanks for God’s great love and grace.
Remember that we post these sermons on our web site, and I would encourage you to spend some time thinking about what justification by faith is, and what it means to you. Read Romans and Galatians. Read these sermons and look up the verses in the Bible. We hope that everyone who comes here will understand the Gospel message that our standing before God is not based on us living a nice and good life, but instead is based upon the grace of God revealed to the world in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. AMEN!