Reformation Sunday , 10/28/2018

Sermon on Romans 3:19-28, by Beth A. Schlegel

Romans 3:19-28 English Standard Version (ESV)

¹⁹Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. ²⁰For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

²¹But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²²the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,²⁵whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

²⁷Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. ²⁸For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

….

Have you ever wondered – or heard someone else wonder – “what will happen to me when I die? Will I go to heaven or to hell? And what can I do now to make sure?”

Every religion deals in some way with questions like these.

Consider what Jesus said to his disciples before his crucifixion: “I go to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, you may be also. If you continue in my Word, you will follow me.”

On Pentecost, the apostles baptized Jewish converts into the resurrection of Jesus so they would live instead of die.
To the Christians in Rome, Jews and Gentiles, Paul preached that while the Jews would be judged by the law, all would live with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

For Christians, Jesus is the Way, the truth, and the Life – no one comes to the Father except through him. So what happened that this clear message became an opportunity for profiteering?Sin has a way of corrupting everything. Once the apostles died, the authority for transmitting the message lay with the church leadership, who gathered together for what are called the ecumenical Councils. . As time went on and the church expanded, it became more and more difficult to maintain the purity of the proclamation.

But in the course of these Councils, with each disagreement
So the Councils – in lively debate – developed the Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds as ways for the whole church to believe rightly.

Is Jesus really God?
is Jesus really human?
Is the Holy Spirit from the Father alone, or also from the Son? Those who agreed with the Councils’ decisions remained part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. The others became sectarian offshoots.In 1054, the Great Schism occurred between East and West – the East claiming orthodoxy and the West claiming catholicity.Our heritage is in the western catholic branch of this history, and the territory of its initial influence is Europe. In the European Middle Ages, education became a wedge between rich and poor.
So, 492 years ago, on October 31 – the eve of All Saints’ Day – Martin Luther affixed 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, the local bulletin board
And more than that, it was leading poor souls away from faith in Jesus Christ.
Nothing in the Old or New testaments supported this horrendous practice.
This practice of selling indulgences was immoral and against the scriptures themselves.
He also knew it was false that eternal life can be bought or earned.
Now, to make a long story shorter, when Martin Luther got wind of this, he was furious. He knew it was wrong for the pope to get rich at the expense of the poor.
The little poem became widely used: When the coin in the kettle clinks, another soul to heaven springs.
So began the practice of selling indulgences – pieces of paper stating that the buyer or a loved one would get to heaven quicker because of it.
What better way to raise money than to charge for an antidote to mortal fear.
Remember – sin corrupts everything.
But any construction costs money and grandeur costs lots and lots of money.
So in the late 1400s, the pope – a member of the powerful Medici family – decided he needed a bigger cathedral. He began plans to build what we now know as St. Peter’s Vatican City.
Those with power of knowledge can exploit that by telling people what they want them to hear in order to gain a certain outcome.
And in those days, the church leaders were also political leaders – there was no separation of church and state.
The leadership of the church could read and write Hebrew, Greek, Latin, so they had the power of knowledge over those who could not read.
The church divided.
inviting scholarly debate regarding the practice of indulgences,
the nature of salvation,
and the work of Jesus Christ. He also preached, taught and wrote that people enjoy eternal life
not because of how good they are or how much money they give to the church,

but solely by the grace of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, who is revealed in the scriptures, .Now was this just his own opinion? No – it is taken entirely from the Bible – from the Holy Scriptures themselves.Listen to what Paul said in our second lesson this morning: It’s a term for balancing the scales – our holiness on one side and God’s holiness on the other. So what do you think – is it possible for anyone to balance those scales? That is, the necessity of God to balance the scales for us to share in God’s life.Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, now they are justified – the scales of holiness are balanced – by God’s grace as a gift – through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whose death on the cross became the holiness of God on our side of the scale, that it might be balanced.And we receive this balancing of our scales through faith in Jesus Christ. Not by buying indulgences, not by good report cards on keeping the commandments, not by any reputation of being good.We are saved by Christ alone, by grace alone, Interestingly, what now divides us from the Roman Catholic Church is not our understanding of the work of Christ, as it was in Luther’s time, but things that have happened in both churches since then: shedding his blood for our sins, and making us pure and holy in God’s eyes, And when we die, we keep on living with him. When we trust Jesus, we no longer worry about heaven or hell, for life is wherever Jesus is. When we trust Jesus, when we place the balance of holiness in his hands and let him take care of our side of the scale, all that is necessary has already been done. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son; that whoever believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life. Amen.

When we trust Jesus at his word, we live forever already.
“What will happen to me when I die? Will I go to heaven or to hell? And what can I do now to make sure?”
For Jesus himself is here to give you the sign: his own body and blood for your life.
Begins now, is yours to live now.
This life, this forgiveness, this grace, this salvation, this righteousness, this holiness, this freedom,
Before God, nothing else matters.
and he rose from the dead to give us God’s life forever.
Jesus Christ died on the cross for us,
Whatever the twists and turns of history, and whatever the corrupting power of sin, the truth that Martin Luther uncovered and shined up for all to see remains:
Perhaps, even in our lifetime, we will see a similar move toward Lutherans.
Who would have thought even a few years ago, that the Roman Catholic church would make room for Anglicans?
We are seeing in our time momentous shifts among Christians
.
The legacy of that division not only led to our own Lutheran denomination, but also to all those that have been lumped together by historians as “protestant”.
And for that conviction, Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
through faith alone.
whom we know in Scripture alone,
But now, the righteousness of God has been disclosed.
So Paul continues – through the law comes knowledge of our sin.
Of course not.
To be so good and perfect that we measure up to the holiness of God?
To be justified is to be put right with God, reconciled.
“No one will be justified in God’s sight by deeds prescribed by the law.”

The Rev. Beth A. Schlegel
York, Pennsylvania, USA
E-Mail: pastorschlegel@live.com

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