Lent 2—Reminiscere
Dear friends in Christ. We often hear in the Gospel Jesus telling the people He healed [Mt. 15.28; Mk. 5.34], Great is your faith or Your faith has saved you. Is that because He saw their great faith they had in Him and because their faith was so great that’s why He healed them or granted their request, as if only those whose faith is at a certain level or strength are “worthy” of being healed? Hardly! Jesus praises faith because it is through faith that we can receive His gifts and blessings. It was faith that led these people to Jesus to be healed. It was faith that received what Jesus wanted to give them.
The same thing applies to our salvation. We are not saved because of our faith—as if faith is a good work we do that somehow makes us worthy before God; we have faith while others don’t so we are more deserving of heaven. The simple fact of the matter is that we are saved not because of faith but rather we are saved through faith. Do you notice the subtle but huge difference? If we are saved because of faith, then faith is a feather in our cap, making us better than others. But if we are saved through faith than faith becomes the instrument through which God saves us. Faith is an instrument when it receives the gifts and blessings God gives us in Jesus—the gifts of forgiveness of sin, eternal life, peace, joy, etc. Luther described faith as the beggar’s hand that receives the gifts and graces of God. Where there is no faith, how can we receive what God wants to give us in Jesus through His word and sacrament? Where is that beggar’s hand that happily seizes that gift that the generous benefactor wants to put in it? But where there is faith, it grasps and holds firmly the gifts of God’s grace.
Here we come to the very heart and core of our holy Christian faith. How is it that we are saved? Is it by our works, what we do? We answer: No! We are saved because of what Jesus has done for us. He came to this earth; He placed Himself under God’s holy law and obeyed every bit of it for us, as our Substitute; He took our sins upon Himself and went to the cross and there suffered for us all of God’s wrath and punishment for our sins and by that reconciled the whole sinful world to God. And with Jesus’ resurrection the Father declared the world forgiven and reconciled to Him. That’s how/why we are saved—Jesus and His saving work.
So how do we receive this gift of forgiveness and reconciliation, this gift of God declaring us righteous? —Through faith. Faith, that beggar’s hand, receives the gifts of the forgiveness of sin, of Jesus’ holiness and His perfect keeping of the Law and of reconciliation with God. We are justified, that is, we are declared righteous; God declares us righteous.
Our Lutheran Confessions put it this way in the Augsburg Confession: Our churches teach that people cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works. People are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake. By His death, Christ made satisfaction for our sins. God counts this faith for righteousness in His sight.
But since we are justified, that is, since God had declared us righteous on account of Jesus and His work for us, does that mean that good works don’t matter, that it doesn’t matter what sort of lives we live? Hardly! Good works are necessary. In fact, precisely because we are justified—declared righteous by God for Jesus’ sake —that’s why we can live a life of good works. Good works follow faith. Although we are not saved by our good works, good works flow from faith—faith in Jesus worked by the Holy Spirit. Where there is faith, there will be good works—those things we Christians do out of love for the Lord in accord with His Law.
1. This is exactly what St. Paul is talking about in our text: Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. Notice St. Paul calls them brothers. They are Christians. As Christians—like St. Paul, like you, like me—they in faith received with joy the work and blessing of Jesus; they in faith received Jesus’ perfect holiness; they received the Father’s proclamation—forgiven! They were justified! With us, they have the joy of salvation. This joy of salvation flows into thanksgiving—living lives of thanksgiving to the Lord who loved them and saved them. In faith and love of the Lord we strive to walk and to please God. And how do we know what pleases God? By what He has revealed in His holy Ten Commandments.
This striving to walk and to please God is something that we as Christians are glad to do. We willingly do the good. Christians are a willing people. In as much as we are Christians, to walk and to please God is not something that is forced out of us. St. John writes [1 John 5.3]: For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. They are not burdensome because we are not trying to heap up all sorts of works so that we somehow earn our way into heaven. The commandments of God are not burdensome because they are not some sort of compulsory service, but rather they flow out of love toward the God who saved us, who justified/ declared us righteous and made us in baptism His dear children and heirs of heaven. We know we do not and cannot earn anything by our works but as Christians, we strive to walk and to please God out of love and thanksgiving to Him.
And because we are Christians, brothers, because we have been given the gift of faith—faith that looks to and trusts in Jesus and which receives with joy God’s pronouncement “forgiven!”—that means that we also have the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus has given us the gift the Holy Spirit, that means that the Holy Spirit is in us, leading and strengthening us in a life of faith and good works. The very fact that we have the Holy Spirit means that He is working in us and on us. The moment that the Holy Spirit works faith in Jesus in us—for most of us that was at the moment of baptism when we were baptized as babies—from the moment He created faith that receives all of God’s blessings to us in Jesus, that receives the pronouncement “forgiven!”, we were perfectly justified—that is, God declared us righteous; before Him we are holy and righteous. And why? Because faith, worked by the Holy Spirit, is receiving Jesus, His perfect keeping of the Law, His perfect holiness and that’s what God sees—not our sin and wretchedness but the perfect holiness of His dear Son, Jesus.
As Christians, brothers, we are justified—declared righteous by God—and we have the Holy Spirit. And as Christians, led by the Holy Spirit, we want to be who we are called to be; we want to live lives in accord with our calling. Our text: For this is the will of God, your sanctification. Our sanctification is our life of good works of becoming more and more holy, more and more godly. That’s our joy and thanksgiving. No true Christian will ever think: since I’m justified—declared righteous by God—then I can go out and sin as much as I want; I don’t have to follow the holy Ten Commandments; I can do whatever I want because I’m forgiven and God has declared me righteous. Instead, led and empowered by the Holy Spirit and in joy and thankfulness to the Lord who saved me from my sin, from death, the devil and hell, the Christian wants to do what he/she was called to do and to be what God called him/her to be. For this is the will of God, your sanctification. This is God’s will and this is also now the Christian’s will: good works.
2. Our life of good works/ our sanctification is not only our life of thanksgiving and doing and being what God called us to do and be. But that we do good works and continue on in good works is part of what St. Peter writes [2 Peter 1.10]: Be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure. It’s not that good works preserve faith—only the Holy Spirit working in word and sacrament does that—but evil works destroy faith because by fighting against and squelching the Holy Spirit and His work in us, we can grieve Him and drive Him out of our hearts. But by following His desires in us we are being all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure.
The Lord called us and set us apart as His own. St. Paul writes in our text: For this is the will of God, your sanctification; and For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. The holy God wants clean hearts—sanctification/ holiness. That’s why He called us. And when He called us, He worked faith and love in our hearts. We now know Him rightly as our dear gracious Father and Savior. The purpose of us being Christians now is to praise our Lord for His grace and mercy by believing His holy word and living lives in accord with it. Yes, we Christians will be different because God called us into holiness. And we dare not toss aside His holy will that He wants us to do, for that is a rejection of Him, of the Holy Spirit and of our call.
But precisely here there is a danger for us because although God called us to holiness and gave us His Holy Spirit to lead us into good works and to strengthen us to do them, we still have our old sinful nature. We need the exhortation to walk and to please God or else we can easily grow lazy and careless in our life of good works. That’s why St. Paul here tells us that part of our lives of sanctification/ good works is: that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor. Our old sinful nature wants us to use our bodies for sin, to use the various parts of the body to carry out its sinful desires. But with the Holy Spirit in us, with the new self/ Christian in us, the battle is set up. That’s why we so often as Christians have that battle between good and evil waging in our hearts. That’s a good thing! It shows the Holy Spirit is strengthening us to fight the battle against sin. The Holy Spirit is leading us to control [our] body in holiness and honor. He is strengthening us and leading us to take hold of/ control our emotions and thoughts: the passion of lust. Elsewhere St. Paul calls this battle against sin that we wage against our sinful desires and temptations a “putting to death” or “crucifying” of our old sinful nature. Our lives of good works/ of being diligent to make our calling sure is precisely what God has called us to do.
Although our justification is perfect and complete—God has declared us righteous in Christ and before Him we are holy and perfect with the holiness and perfection of Jesus—our lives of sanctification/ good works are far from perfect. That’s why the holy Apostle in our text writes: you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. Did you catch that? These Christians are living a Christian life and pleasing God. St. Paul commends them for that: just as you are doing. But then he adds: that you do so more and more. The point? As Christians living here and now, we will never be without sin. We can always improve in our lives of sanctification. That’s really the Christian life here on earth—continually battling against sin and never giving up: you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. Let us use this Lenten season upon us now to hold up the mirror of God’s holy law to our hearts and lives, to see where and how we can strive to walk and to please God…[and] do so more and more. Perhaps it would be good to focus your attention against one particular sin this Lent and ask the Lord to bless you and strengthen you in the fight against it.
Remember, we are our Lord’s dear Christians. He has in Jesus declared us righteous; He has given us His Holy Spirit to believe and receive it; He has called us to a life of holiness and by the Holy Spirit He leads and strengthens us to do so. May we stay close to our Lord and His holy Word and Sacrament through which He is working on us. INJ Amen.