Sermon
for Pentecost 6, July 9, 2023
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ. He gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age,
according to the will of our God and Father—to whom be the glory forever and
ever. Amen.
Romans
7:15-25 15For I do not understand
what I am doing, because I do not keep doing what I want. Instead, I do what I hate. 16And if I do what I do not want
to do, I agree that the law is good. 17But
now it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me. 18Indeed, I know that good does
not live in me, that is, in my sinful flesh.
The desire to do good is present with me, but I am not able to carry it
out. 19So I fail to do the
good I want to do. Instead, the evil I
do not want to do, that is what I keep doing.
20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who
am doing it, but it is sin living in me.
21So I find this law at work: When I
want to do good, evil is present with me.
22I certainly delight in God’s law according to my inner
self, 23but I see a different law at work in my members, waging war
against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin, which is
present in my members. 24What a miserable wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body of
death? 25I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
(EHV)
Thank God for Jesus’ victory in the battle
within.
Dear friends in Christ,
Most of us likely cannot imagine what it is like to wake
up daily in the midst of a war, and the few of us who have are very likely to
appreciate that we are not currently being bombarded with bombs, missiles, or
other weapons of mass destruction. On
the other hand, however much we imagine we are living in peaceful times; the
truth is that the Christian is always under attack in a deadly battle—a war not
of politics or seeking to establish control over a portion of this country, or another,
but a battle for the soul, a battle primarily fought between the old sinful
nature and the new life of faith. With
St. Paul, let us consider the struggle and say: Thank God for Jesus’ victory
in the battle within.
The
battle between your old man and new is what Paul is examining here. The Christian life is a paradox of
sorts. When the Holy Spirit brought you
to faith in Jesus through the Word and Baptism, you were cleansed of all guilt
as He implanted in you a new spiritual life that truly wants to live according
to God’s law. Therefore, those of us who
believe in Jesus have the comfort of knowing that by God’s grace we have been
rescued from just condemnation. Still,
as long as your time here on earth continues, you remain walking in this
totally corrupt, sinful human flesh with an inherited nature that fights
against your new life every day.
Paul
writes here about the spiritual battle that is, and must be, fought in the
daily life of every Christian believer. Yes,
our new man appreciates the law, and as a child of God, knows it is good,
because it plainly shows God’s will for our lives. Our new man lives to do God’s will. Yet, the new spiritual believer also feels
the tormenting guilt of our sinful nature never measuring up to the law’s
demands.
Naturally,
the unbeliever often doesn’t feel this remorse that still troubles the believer. To the unbeliever, God’s law is the enemy,
for it accuses, convicts, and condemns the sinner’s weaknesses, his boisterous
arrogance and rejection of God. The
unbeliever wants to rule his own life, make his own laws, and be the only judge
for his actions, but the unbeliever is dead before God and destined for the
fires prepared for Satan.
This
all changed for you and me when the Lord brought us to faith in Jesus. By implanting that new life in you, your eyes
were opened to the truly wretched condition of your birth. At the same time as you were given eternal
hope through faith in Christ, you became aware of how hard it is to live
perfectly holy. The perfection you now
desire often escapes you, as it does us all.
St. Paul wrote, “I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is present with me. I certainly delight in God’s law according to
my inner self, but I see a different law at work in my members, waging war
against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin, which is
present in my members.”
Now, some spiritual advisors will tell you that if
you are truly saved you won’t sin anymore.
Or, they might say that the only way to know you are saved is if you see
Jesus’ holiness in your own life.
However, the faithful Christian readily admits with Paul, “Indeed,
I know that good does not live in me, that is, in my sinful flesh. The desire to do good is present with me, but
I am not able to carry it out. So I fail
to do the good I want to do. Instead,
the evil I do not want to do, that is what I keep doing.” This honest confession stands in full
agreement with the prophet Isaiah who lamented, “All
of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a
filthy cloth.” (Isaiah 64:6)
What the Holy Spirit, through Paul, is teaching us
here is that we can’t rely on our feelings to know we are saved, and we can’t
trust our own actions to please God, not even our good intentions, because
everything about us has been corrupted by the infection of sin. However, there is something that is certain,
and there is One Man who we truly can trust to rescue us from this body of
death. The Christian believer has this
sure and certain confidence: that God has given us the victory “through
Jesus Christ our Lord!”
For a
world of sinners, God sent His Son into the bloody brawl, a fight to the
death. The Son of God and man entered
this world to undo what our first parents had done. Jesus came to live the perfect obedience we
need. The temptations that so sneakily
attack us, Jesus easily deflected. Instead,
confident in the holiness of His Father, Jesus lived in perfect fulfilment of
that law that we now agree is good—even excellent.
Jesus
went into battle as the hero substituting for you and me, valiantly defending
against the assaults of the enemy who tried his best to deceive, tempt,
mislead, and trap God’s Son. At the same
time, Jesus never gave the enemy a foothold by saying the wrong thing; He never
looked lustfully at a woman or desired any property that wasn’t rightfully
His. No evil thought ever sprang up in
Jesus’ mind. So, after thirty-some
years’ of the devil’s sneak attacks, subterfuge, and blatant assaults on God’s
Son, it was Jesus who remained victorious, the champion of the world forcing
the liar to wear the chains of an eternally defeated enemy.
But
then, after Jesus had won this spiritual trench warfare of living on our behalf,
and the devil had been forced into submission—mercifully, miraculously, Jesus
took the guilt for all the spiritual shrapnel and bullet wounds the devil, the
world, and our own corrupt flesh have inflicted upon us, and all the people
around us as well, and He carried all the guilt of the world to the cross. There, on Calvary, God meted out on Jesus all
the just judgment and punishment deserved for the injuries we have caused in
this troubled world, for the destruction caused by the devil’s lies, and for every
foul odor of sin among the dead and dying of the world. For winning the war against our greatest
enemy, Jesus’ reward was death for the sins of the world, and that’s exactly
the way He wanted it, because that was the eternal will and plan of His Father
in heaven, who loved you and me with an everlasting love—even to the point of giving
His life for ours.
When
St. Paul considered the battle that still raged within his own life, he
exclaimed, “What a miserable wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body
of death?” But, Paul immediately answered the question, “I thank God through Jesus
Christ our Lord!”
As we examine ourselves, honestly, we have to admit
with the psalmist, “Certainly, I was guilty when I was born. I was sinful when my mother conceived me.” (Psalm
51:5) Like everyone else, we have been
selfish, unkind, greedy, and jealous, with wicked thoughts, and hurtful
comments. That corruption isn’t fully
removed from us this side of the grave.
Yes, we have been given new life through faith, but our old, corrupt
nature still clings. Therefore, we can’t
rely on anything we do to win us a place in heaven.
Thanks be to Jesus, God doesn’t leave us stuck in the
condition of our birth. Rather, the
Spirit put in us a new life that is sanctified to serve. Through Ezekiel, the Lord promised, “I
will give you a new heart and put a new spirit inside you. I will remove the heart of stone from your
body and give you a heart of flesh. I
will put my Spirit within you and will cause you to walk in my statutes.” (Ezekiel
36:26-27) Through the Gospel in Word and
Sacrament, the Holy Spirit worked faith in you to believe in Jesus as your
Savior. In that new and living faith, “We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians
2:10) We know our works won’t save us,
but they will work to serve and help those around us, perhaps even leading
other wretched sinners to the saving faith that gives them new and everlasting
life.
Furthermore, we are not stuck in this dual-nature
paradox of saint and sinner forever, for the Lord has promised that our removal
from this world in death will bring us the perfect holiness we believers now
desire. The Holy Spirit had Paul write:
I tell you a mystery: we will
not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an
eye, at the last trumpet. For the
trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be
changed. For the perishable must clothe
itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the
imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written
will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of
sin is the law. But thanks be to
God! He gives us the victory through our
Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:51-57)
As long as we remain in this world, we each must
battle daily in the ongoing war against Satan’s temptations and the corruption
of our own flesh, while it remains true that our consciences still so easily
bruise us. That is as it should be. Being sinners, we know we fail to live
perfectly. However, as Christian
believers, we also walk with Jesus, who lived perfectly for us. And walking with Him by faith, Christ’s
holiness now also covers us.
You see, the battle for salvation isn’t ours. In fact, salvation is already won for us in
the conclusion of the most epic war ever waged as Jesus rose victorious from
the grave. Christ’s resurrection from
the dead is the crowning victory over all our enemies. So, dear friends, here we stand rejoicing,
washed in Jesus’ blood, cleansed of all unrighteousness, sanctified to serve,
dressed in Jesus’ perfect holiness, and anointed to live and reign with Him
forever. Therefore, gathered together in
His name, we Thank God for Jesus’ victory in the battle within. Amen.
Now to him who is
able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless in the presence of
his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, be glory, majesty,
power, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all time, now, and
to all eternity. Amen.
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