INI February 17, 2010

Sermon preached by Pastor Stephen Kurtzahn at Cross of Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church (WELS), 9931 Foley Blvd. NW, Coon Rapids, MN 55433. Please share this with someone else when you have finished. Thank you!

Our Ash Wednesday meditation is based on Romans 3:21-26, But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

As we begin our Lenten journey to the cross this evening, and as we make our way from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, the question of the hymn writer rings in our ears:

O dearest Jesus, what law have you broken

That such sharp sentence should on you be spoken?

Of what great crime have you to make confession—

What dark transgression? (CW 117:1)

You won’t find the answer to the hymn writer’s question from the high priest or the Jewish ruling council. Who needs evidence? Without finding a single fault in him, they pressed on to have Jesus executed for blasphemy. You won’t find the answer from the Jews who called for the blood of him who healed their people. They insisted that a murderer go free instead of Jesus.

“What law have you broken?” God reserved the answer to this disturbing question for the lips of the Roman Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate. Pilate declared: “I find no basis for a charge against [this man]” (Jn 19:6). And in the hopes of satisfying the bloodlust of the crowd, he added, “I will have him punished and then release him” (Lk 23:22). “But,” we rightfully ask, “why should Jesus be punished at all?”

Of what great crime have you to make confession—what dark transgression? God also answered this burning question through the lips of a dying thief: “We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong” (Lk 23:41).

We also have a rather detailed answer to the hymn writer’s question in the first two and a half chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans. First the apostle turns to those who do not have God’s Word. He says they have no excuse for their condemnation. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Ro 1:18-20).

Even unbelievers know some things about God. But in their stubborn minds, they don’t allow their natural knowledge of God and his laws to govern their lives. Much less do they look for a way out of their eternally desperate situation. “God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. . . . God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. . . . Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion” (Ro 1:24,26,27).

Already during their time of grace on earth, people in their natural state of sinful unbelief display God’s judgment by their words and actions. See if this description doesn’t describe the eternal future of all who reject God and his wisdom:

“They did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God. He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (Ro 1:28-32).

You don’t need to imagine the reaction of the Jewish people to God’s judgment on the unbelieving Gentiles. It probably wasn’t any different from the reaction we have when we see powerful politicians or influential clergy fall. In our sinful pride, we might be tempted to say like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable: “I thank you, God, that I am not like other men” (Lu 18:11).

If we’re under the mistaken impression that we’re better than other people and that God should treat us differently because of who we are or how we live, let’s listen to God’s recipe for those who want to save themselves:

“All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous” (Ro 2:12,13).

To be declared righteous by obeying God’s law, answer these simple questions:

1. So you have not bowed down to idols. Do you spend your life hoarding up material goods which rust destroys and thieves break in and steal?

2. So you have not cursed by God’s name. Do you use it in prayer? in giving thanks?

3. So you have been in church. Do you take to heart God’s Word or do you leave as empty as you arrived?

4. So you have honored God’s authorities to their faces. Are you like the son in Jesus’ parable who says, “Yes, father!” and does what he pleases anyway?

5. No murder on your criminal background check? But is there enough anger in your heart to choke your brother to death? or to walk by on the other side of the road when he needs your help?

6. “I haven’t cheated on my spouse!” Maybe not physically, but if we would play out your thoughts and desires on a movie screen, what would we see?

7. You’ve never stolen anything? Would you repeat that with a lie detector?

8. I would never tell a lie about another person. No? But do you gossip and delight when others lie for you?

And, perhaps, most disturbing of all, does any of this matter as much to you as it does to God who demands perfection? Where’s our boasting now?

This is where the apostle Paul locks Jew and Gentile, you and me, and the whole world into the dungeon of hell with the words, “What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin” (Ro 3:9). Then what purpose does the law serve if none of us can be saved by it? The apostle answers, “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (Ro 3:20).

Written in large letters over the doorway of trying to save ourselves by our own goodness are the words: “Despair of hope, all you who enter here!”

And it’s precisely when we are in this valley of despair that our God takes us to the hill of the Skull, points to his beloved Son hanging there on the cross, and he shouts to us, “Nevertheless! . . .”

“Nevertheless, a righteousness from God, . . .” This righteousness does not come from within us, from our efforts to keep laws we have broken beyond recognition. It comes from outside of us. It comes from another—from God, wrapped in the flesh of man, hung in our place upon the cross of Calvary! Why then do we still search our empty hearts for hope? Look up! Look up at the cross. This holiness that God gives us satisfies his judgment against us.

“Nevertheless, a righteousness from God apart from law, . . .” “Of what great crime have you to make confession?” In two words, My crime. Our crimes. Here is a righteousness that has nothing to do with keeping the Ten Commandments. Rather, it comes from the spotless Lamb of God who kept his own unbendable demands in our place. By his death, he made our debt with God right. His cross released us from the guilt of sin.

“Nevertheless, a righteousness from God apart from law has been made known, . . .” The greatest minds of human thinking would never have been able to discover this righteousness. It had to be revealed to us by the One whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts. If God had not told us who that Man on the middle cross was, we never would have discovered it or figured it out. He is God-our-brother. 

 “Nevertheless, a righteousness from God apart from law has been made known to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” The messengers through whom God has revealed the answer to our question are Moses and the prophets. God did not let a single generation die out without the answer. In the hearing of the first sinners, Adam and Eve, God said: “I will put enmity between you, Satan, and the woman; and between her offspring and yours” (Ge 3:15). “The woman’s offspring will deal you a fatal wound, Satan. He will crush your head.” But not without being injured himself. “You will strike his heel.”

Our hymn writer puts the apostles’ words into our mouths and hearts this way:

Whence come these sorrows, whence this mortal anguish?

It is my sins for which you, Lord, must languish;

Yes, all the wrath, the woe that you inherit,

This I do merit. (CW 117:3)

Sin is always joined at the hip with death. They never come separately. Never. Not even in Jesus’ case. He too died for sin. Our sin, not his. And it’s this very message—wondrous to speak of—that moves despairing hearts to faith in him by the power of the Holy Spirit. “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”

So once again we stand with the Roman soldier and marvel at divine love in the person of Jesus Christ:

What punishment so strange is suffered yonder!

The Shepherd dies for sheep that loved to wander;

The Master pays the debt his servants owe him,

Who would not know him (CW 117:4).

In the name of our suffering Shepherd, Amen.