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Our churches teach that people cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merit, 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.(Augsburg Confession, Article IV, “Justification”)
This is the article on which the church stands or falls — the central article of the Christian faith, which everything in the Old Testament flows into and everything in the New Testament flows out of. It is the story of Christ, this “Justification” of the sinner, the making righteous of the sinner before God. It is the story of the Son of God who came down from heaven, incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, true God and true Man in one person, a sacrifice for the inborn original guilt and for the actual and continuing sins of all mankind.
Praise God for His great compassion! Our Faithful Father, the God of Grace who had mercy on our fallen race, who sent His Son into our depth of degradation. He is worthy of our praise, because He has accomplished all things for us. He has freely justified us and reconciled Himself to us for Jesus Christ's sake, purely out of His Fatherly grace and love for us.
Yet, Jesus shows us a person in today's Gospel that has no appreciation whatsoever for God's justification. He stands in sharp contrast to the clear teaching of Scripture: “People cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merit, or works.” (Augsburg Confession, Article IV)
The Pharisee was so pompous, so arrogant. But those are the least of his problems. He stood right in the shadow of the Temple, near God's earthly presence, right when the sacrificial lamb was being offered up on His behalf, and even as the smoke of incense symbolizing the prayers of God's people for forgiveness and mercy was billowing out of the Most Holy Place of that Temple, his prayer was, instead, self–justifying, self–righteous, selfish
“O God, I thank You that I am not like the other men, thieves, unrighteous, adulterers, or even as this Tax Collector. I am fasting twice around each Sabbath, I am tithing all that I acquire.” (Luke 18:11–12, my translation).
The Pharisee can read into other men's hearts. He is apparently like no other man. He knows that other people are sinners. The Lord forbid that sinners approach the throne of grace. The Pharisee knows — assumes — that no one fasts the required one time before each Sabbath Day, so he fasts twice to make up for others. The Pharisee also assumes that those merchants he purchases food and other goods from are not tithing, so he even tithes a portion of what he buys from others to make up for the merchants who he assumes do not. This man must have graduated first in his class from Pharisee school: “Everyone around me is a sinner and I make up for them!”
Clearly, the Pharisee thought He could be justified before God by His own strength, merit, and works. He was blind spiritually. God was sacrificing a lamb right under his nose there at the Temple — which he could see and hear and smell being done — and yet, it all was not good enough. It meant nothing to him. The same would be true for those Pharisees on Good Friday. Their justification was being accomplished by the slaughter of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, fulfilling all the countless lambs sacrificed for so many years —, and it happened right under their noses, right in their viewing and hearing and smelling — but it all meant nothing to them. They chose to put their faith and trust in themselves.
But all unrepentant sinners have been Pharisees: stuck on trusting and having faith in themselves. Without the Gospel, without repentance and saving faith in Christ, we are certainly in a “depth of degradation” as our hymn just said. And as time goes on, this sinful world keeps sinking deeper and deeper. It only degrades to greater and greater disorder, disunity, and dislike and disapproval of God's Law and God&339;s Gospel. There are many people, even churches and their theological leaders, interested in self–justification, self–righteousness, selfishness.
This week, you may have heard that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's national convention fully approved and endorsed a homosexual, sinful lifestyle outside of God's bounds for marriage between one man and one woman. They have even endorsed openly practicing homosexuals to be ordained as ministers, and have endorsed their congregations “marry” homosexual couples.
They are reaping the fruits of what they have sown, forsaking the Holy Scriptures as the sole rule and norm of all doctrine and life. Doing this leads us sinners into looking to ourselves and to idolizing ourselves, just like the Pharisee. It is sin to place our own reason and experience over and above God's Word.
When the leaders of church bodies cannot follow God's Law and are willing to muddy and shame God's Gospel, how can they expect their members to be different? Worse, how can they expect the world to hear and believe the good news about Jesus Christ from them or their members&363; Pray for the remnant of faithful Christians stuck in such a church, and pray that God's grace keeps our church body and our congregation from similar errors. Pray that God will always keep us humble enough to repent of our own sins and errors. Pray that God will always bring to our church body and congregation faithful pastors, teachers, and theologians who preach the Gospel rightly and administer the sacraments according to His Word.
And there is our hope and the source of our justification. The true Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News of His saving, justifying work on our behalf, and the giving out of that salvation through the preaching of the Gospel and the Sacraments. Even in the midst of self–aggrandizing Pharisees, even after the pompous and prideful of this world make their show of false doctrine and self–idolatry, still there is a remnant kept safe by the Gospel. The Holy Spirit does create faith in the hearts of sinners, by the preaching of the Word of Christ.
The repentant tax collector stands humbly off to the side, ever quiet in the back of the room — usually unwelcomed by the self–righteous — rightly fearing God for his sins and shame but trusting in God's grace on account of the firstborn Lamb being sacrificed in front of him in that Temple service.
“He [the Tax Collector] was continually beating his chest, saying, ‘O God, make atonement for me, the sinner.’” (Luke 18:13, my translation). The mercy the tax collector calls for is not just the quality of mercifulness found in God, as in, “Lord, have mercy.” Rather, it is a reference to the mercy seat of God, above the ark of the covenant in the Most Holy Place of the Temple whereupon the blood of the Lamb was thrown once a year to atone for the sins of the people. There is no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood.
He needs atonement. Since Adam's fall, we all do. We are the sinner, not just one hiding in the crowd. We are all guilty of everything. Down to the last ounce of our being, we are guilty and stand in judgment for sin.
But the faith of the tax collector is not curved inward. It looks for that which comes from outside of itself. It looks to an object which is far more pure, far more powerful, far more cleansing than our own strength, merits, or works. True faith and true repentance trusts in the holy, precious blood of Jesus Christ. “By His death, Christ made satisfaction for our sins.” (Augsburg Confession, Article IV)
Your great love for this has striven
That we may, from sin made free, live with You eternally.
Your dear Son Himself has given, and extends His gracious call,
To His Supper leads us all.(Lutheran Service Book #559, Stanza 2)
The Son calls us by His Holy Spirit, through the Gospel, to repent of our sins and believe in His strength, His merits, His works on our behalf. This is the justifying, sin–forgiving, life–saving faith in Christ that God counts for righteousness in His sight.
“I say to you, this one [the Tax Collector] went down to the home of his having been made righteous [or justified] rather than that one [the Pharisee].” (Luke 18:14a, my translation). Jesus says here, in so many words, the fourth article of the Augsburg Confession: “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.” The sinner is accounted to be the saint on account of Jesus' atoning blood.
Now, God is living and active in His world. He did not do His saving work on our behalf and, then, leave us to fend for ourselves, leaving us to revert into being hopeless Pharisees. He continually calls us by the Gospel to receive that atoning blood of Jesus, in our Baptism and in His Supper, to strengthen and keep us from falling into our selfish desires, and to forgive and cleanse us for the times when we have. “There [in the Word and Sacraments] He sends true consolation, giving us the gift of faith, that we fear not hell nor death.”
Give thanks and praise to our Heavenly Father for the gift of faith in His Son Jesus, for the gift of justification, peace, and atonement before Him on account of the blood of Jesus, the very Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Pray that this saving, justifying faith in Christ remain strong and firm in us and in our children to the end of our days, and pray that we are always freely able to hear and receive His saving, justifying, and sanctifying Word and Sacraments.
Lord, Your mercy will not leave me;
Ever will Your truth abide. Then in You I will confide.
Since Your Word cannot deceive me, my salvation is to me, safe and sure eternally.(Lutheran Service Book #559, Stanza 4)
God grant to you His precious gift of justification, now and always, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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