St. Ansgar's Lutheran Church

God Is My Refuge: A Free Gift from God

 

God puts people right through their faith in Jesus Christ. God does this to all who believe in Christ, because there is no difference at all: everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence. But by the free gift of God's grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free   Romans 3:23b-24

 

Prayer:        

Today we celebrate one of the most if not the most significant event in church history Reformation. It never was Martin Luther's intention to break away from the mother church, but to draw its attention to the false teaching that had crept into the church's teaching and practice. Now after almost 500 years, a small step has been taken in coming to an understanding about the one doctrine that was at the centre of the Reformation.

The understanding of the doctrine of justification was at the heart of the separation between the two churches. The Lutheran Church has always stated that the teaching about justification is the most important teaching of the Christian Church, "the article upon which the church stands or falls". But what is the teaching about justification?

The word "justify" means "to declare righteous". The term comes from the courtroom of the first century. As a trial drew to a close, the judge, having heard all the evidence, would pronounce his verdict. If the accused person is found guilty, then he /she must suffer the punishment for the crime. If the verdict was one of "not guilty" the accused person was "justified". The accusation no longer had any power, and he or she was free to go. God declares us "not guilty" of sin and "straight" instead of "crooked" in his eyes.                                                       

It is a free and gracious act of God, performed by God on the basis of Jesus' death on the cross, and received by us through faith in Christ. Nothing we do and nothing we ever could do contributes to our own justification, or salvation in Christ. It is entirely an act of God on our behalf. The crooked are declared to be straight, and guilty is now declared righteous in God's eyes.

St Paul sums up this so neatly and precisely in Ephesians, "For it is by God's grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God's gift, so that no one can boast about it" (Eph 2:8,9). Our salvation is a gift from God the apostle says. It is a gift that comes to us without any cost to us, it is free, it comes with no strings attached. It's a gift that comes from a loving God who wants everyone to be saved and to have forgiveness and eternal life. Our text says, "by the free gift of God's grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus".

You see, what’s so amazing about this free gift of eternal life is that we are totally unworthy of a gift like this. When we talk about giving gifts we usually mean
giving a birthday gift to someone we love, giving a thank you gift to someone who has done something special for us, giving a wedding gift because we have been invited to the wedding celebration.

We give a gift because we believe that the receiver is worthy of our gift. Rarely, if ever, would we give a gift to someone we don’t like, someone who annoys us and hurts us. We would never think of giving an expensive gift to someone who is completely undeserving of a gift, not just any gift but the best gift that money could buy.

But that’s what God does. He gives us the most precious gift of all – his Son Jesus. It is through his death and resurrection that we are declared "not guilty". Through him we receive forgiveness and eternal life. Why is justification so important? All of us, whether we like it or not, we came into this world with something called deposition to sin. Even the newest child born into this world inherited this condition.

We recognize sin in our world and in ourselves because we can see how our sin affects our relationships with others, how sin has destroyed so much of God’ creation, how sin is evident in war, crime, death of children through hunger, and we could go on.

Sin is the symptoms of the deep rift between God and us.

From birth, we live on our own and for ourselves. Isn’t that a popular truth these days?. We live in an age that concentrates on the technological achievements, medical advances, scientific accomplishments of humanity, and we believe in our basic goodness.

It’s not hard to think that the human race has come a long way from the days of Martin Luther who never got tired of saying that before God we are beggars – completely empty of any goodness and solely dependent on God’s grace for our salvation.

But the fact remains, our deposition, that inner reality, separates us from God, and while we remain separate from God we face a grim future.

We are not able to earn our own salvation, we are not able to justify ourselves before God (make straight what is crooked), we need God’s help. In fact, we need God’s help every day because every day we do wrong and everyday we need God’s forgiveness.

In the movie The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a magical life of luxury with thousands of servants at his command. "What happens when you do wrong?" his brother asks. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished," the boy emperor replies. To demonstrate he breaks a jar, and one of the servants is beaten.

That is what Jesus has done for us. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished." Jesus died for us. He takes away our sin and gives his righteousness in exchange.

He takes way our guilt and makes us clean and perfect in God’s eyes. Listen to Paul, "Christ never sinned! But God treated him as a sinner, so that Christ could make us acceptable to God" (2 Cor 5:21). Dr Karl Barth is a renowned theologian who has spent a lifetime delving into the depths of the Scriptures and the teachings of the church. There is a well known story about one of his visits to a university.

Students and scholars crowded around him during a conference, and one asked, "Dr Barth, what is the most profound truth you have learned in your studies?" There was a silence as everyone waited for some deep theological answer. Without hesitation he replied, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." On another occasion he was asked, "If you had the chance what would you say to Adolf Hitler?" The old professor said, "Jesus Christ died for your sins." What could be more profound than these?

"Jesus loves me" "Jesus died for me" – simple yet deep. There is no limit to God’s grace. He keeps on loving us even when we go our own way. He keeps on loving us when we fall into the darkest of sin. He even keeps on loving us when our love for him has grown cold and our faith in him barely exists.

Jesus loves me this I know. He is my Saviour. He died on the cross for me. With faith in Jesus I can say, "I am forgiven". God is "the God of all grace", in the apostle Peter’s words. Daily God justifies me, he makes straight what once was crooked, he declares me innocent, forgiven, saved. All charges against me have been dropped. I have been acquitted even though I don’t deserve God’s unmerited favour (grace).

It comes to this finally. Because of God’s grace, there is nothing I can do to make God love me less. Of course, a person can reject God, turn away from him, believe that all this is nothing but a fairy tale. But like the father in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, the love of our heavenly Father is never diminished, it never gives up even though we, his sons and daughters, have treated him badly. He wants above all else to forgive and begin anew, to announce with joy, "This my child was dead, and is alive again; he/she was lost, and is found."                                                

The drama ‘Rising in the Sun’  I love the story line, because it illustrates this amazing grace of God. "It is a story about a Black family in Harlem who experienced a death. The father passes on and leaves $10,000 as a legacy. The son wants the money to start a business with a friend.      

The mother wants the money to buy a house outside of Harlem, to get away from the ghetto and its’ crimes. Her daughter wants the money to go to college. Finally the mother gives in to the boy because he says "Look mother, if you let me have the money I will make enough money and help fulfil all your dreams." But his so-called friend runs off with the money, and the boy has to return home with nothing. Having destroyed everybody’s dreams and crushed everybody’s hopes, his sister tears into him violently and calls him every name you can imagine.

The mother says, “I thought I taught you to love him.” “Love him,” says Beneatha, “There is nothing left in him to love.” The mother says, “There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learnt that, you ain’t learnt nothing, child. When do you think it is time to love somebody? When he has done good, and made everything wonderful for everybody? That is not the time at all. The time to love somebody is when he is at his lowest, because the world done whipped him so.

This is what grace and forgiveness is all about. To love somebody when he /she does not deserved to be loved. That’s the kind of God we have. One who loves us. One who freely forgives and makes us right with him through his Son Jesus.

This is the fundamental doctrine of the church at the centre of the Reformation. Today it is this doctrine that brings Lutherans, Anglicans, Catholics, and other Christian denominations together to celebrate the grace of God working in our churches and in the lives of his people.

We thank God for this unique celebration in the history of the church. Today, I hope we too would leave this place of worship with the assurance that Jesus loves us, this we know and he died for us. And we will go forth in the spirit of the Reformation and love the world God created.

We thank God for his grace. We thank God for being our refuge.

Amen.