“What we were, What we are, What we will be, and Why”
Romans 5:6-15
6/15/08
Today in our nation we celebrate the gift of fathers
and the blessings that God has given us through them. What we are
today as adults is largely due to what our fathers did for us in the
past and how they raised us. And yet, that can be seen both
positively and negatively. You can probably think of many
positive qualities your father possessed that contributed in a good way
to forming you into the person that you are today. But you can
also probably think of a number of negative qualities your father
possessed that contributed to some of the “issues” (shall
we say) that you struggle with today. Some of those positive
qualities may have been things like his faithfulness, dependability,
and hard work in providing you with food, clothing, and a place to
live, while some of the negative qualities may have been things like
his inability to show you the love and affection that he should have,
or his physical or emotional absence from your life altogether.
But the greatest “issue” that our
fathers have bestowed on us according to the Apostle Paul is the
problem of sin, a condition that fathers have passed on to their
children going all the way back to Adam. We all struggle with
this issue in our lives, and no matter how much we might say,
“I’ll never be like my father was,” this is one area
where you’re always going to be exactly like your father.
You might be able to free yourself from some of the other negative
qualities that your father might have passed onto you, but you’ll
never be able to free yourself from this one. A different Father
must do that for you. And from today’s epistle text we
learn what that Father has done for us, in taking us from where we
were, to making us what we are, to promising us what we will be, all
for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. In Him the problem of sin
that we’ve inherited from our earthly fathers has been completely
taken care of, and we look forward to the life we will have with our
heavenly Father in our new inheritance to come.
With our earthly fathers, we didn’t get to
choose either who they would be nor how they would raise us. Life
was given to us by our fathers and our mothers completely apart from
our willing or doing, and they raised us however they sought fit to do
so. Similarly with our heavenly Father, the Scriptures prevent us
from saying that we chose God to be our Father or that we birthed
ourselves into His family. That you are now a child of God is
wholly and completely the result of God’s work alone, who gave
you new birth into His family by way of your Baptism into His Son,
Jesus Christ. From the way Paul describes here what we were
before our Baptism it is clear that we could not have contributed in
any way to our salvation. Look at the words he uses to describe
us before God saved us: He says we were weak and ungodly.
He says that we were sinners and enemies of God. He says we were
both under God’s wrath and under the reign of death. Talk
about “issues”! Let’s look at these a little
more closely.
To be weak means you have no strength to help
yourself. Now, you may be a strong person in this world.
You may have a strong personality. You may be physically
strong. But the Scriptures make it clear that before God you are
helpless, unable to contribute in the least to your salvation.
That includes even the faith that so many people want to take credit
for. You and I are so weak in our sinful condition that, as
Luther puts it, “we cannot by our own reason or strength believe
in Jesus Christ or come to Him.” The Apostle John talks
about receiving Christ and believing in Him, but he also says that this
ability to receive and believe doesn’t come from ourselves, but
that it’s God’s work, not ours. He says that
God’s children are born “not of blood nor of the will of
the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Furthermore, in addition to being weak, we were
ungodly, we were sinners, and we were enemies of God. All of
these further prove that it was impossible for us to save
ourselves. Not only were we too weak to do so, but we were
actively hostile against God. Not only could we not help
ourselves into God’s family, but we didn’t even want Him as
our Father. We hated God, and that from birth - yes, even while
we were infants. We were born into this world dead in our
trespasses and sins, enemies of God from our conception. Because
of this we were under God’s wrath and under the reign of
death. Had we died as enemies of God we would have suffered
eternal death under God’s wrath in hell. That’s what
all of us deserve. That’s what our fathers have passed on
to us. That’s what we’ll pass on to our
children. That’s where we were before God had mercy on us
in Jesus Christ.
Given our hostility towards God, His love for us in
Christ is incomprehensible. How He could love such ungodly,
sinful people who were His enemies is amazing. God’s grace
becomes all the more magnified and His work in Christ all the more
glorified the more we see the greatness of His love towards weak and
helpless sinners such as ourselves. “God shows His love for
us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for
us.” Completely apart from any willing or doing on your
part, Jesus gave His life for you on the cross to save you from your
sins, God’s wrath, and eternal death. Completely apart from
any willing or doing on your part, Jesus has taken away from you the
sin and death that our father Adam passed onto us. Completely
apart from any willing or doing on your part, God baptized you into His
Name and delivered Christ and His righteousness to you, giving you new
birth, making you a child of His. Look at the words Paul now uses
to describe who we are in Jesus: We are justified by His
blood. We are saved from God’s wrath. We are
reconciled to God. We are under God’s grace in Christ.
The fact is, in and of ourselves, we are still the
same pieces of dung that we were before God saved us. According
to the sinful nature that we all share we are still ungodly sinners at
enmity with God. The Apostle Paul laments the struggle that he
has to endure as a Christian between his old nature - the part of him
that hates God - and the new nature - the part of him that loves God
and wants to do His will. We Christians are still sinners.
But we are justified sinners, sinners who have been sprinkled with the
blood of Christ at our Baptism and declared righteous by God through
faith in Jesus. We enemies of God have been reconciled to
God. God is no longer your enemy. You are now at peace with
Him through Christ, who worked this peace with the sacrifice of Himself
on the cross. And in Him you, a justified sinner, have been given
a new heart and a new nature, so that you can begin to fear, love, and
trust in God as you ought to. Though you deserve both temporal
and eternal punishment (as we confess), you’ve been saved from
God’s wrath. It was poured out instead on Christ on the
cross, so that you might live under God’s grace and mercy.
We Christians now have the privilege of calling God our Father, who
calls us His beloved children and promises to hear and answer us when
we call to Him.
Now, just as what our earthly fathers do for us and
how they raise us has a lot to do with what we will be when we grow up,
so with our heavenly Father. What He has done for us in Christ
and the way He raises us as His dear children promises us a glorious
future, a future without “issues.” First, it’s
a future in which we will be saved on the day of Christ’s coming
from God’s wrath. No matter what you suffer here and now on
this earth, no matter how many issues you have to deal with in this
life, no matter how your heavenly Father disciplines you (and He
disciplines you for your good), you have God’s promise that Jesus
has reconciled you to God, that God is no longer angry with you, and
that therefore on the Last Day you will escape the wrath that
He’s going to pour out on those who have rejected the
Savior. Jesus sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty
even now, interceding for you before Him with His blood. In
addition to the promise of escaping God’s wrath on the Last Day,
you can look forward to the promise of your future inheritance -
eternal life with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the new
heavens and the new earth that God is going to create for His
children. There all “issues” will be completely done
away with, when God makes all things new and wipes away every tear from
our eyes.
In the meantime, our heavenly Father continues to
cause us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ by feeding us on Him through His Word and His
Sacraments. The Apostle Peter writes, “Like newborn
infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up
to salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is
good.” The Lord doesn’t want you to remain infants,
but to mature in the faith as you live under God’s grace towards
you in Christ. A Christian father carries out his vocation most
faithfully when, in addition to providing for the earthly needs of his
children also provides for their spiritual needs by raising them in the
Christian faith, teaching them about Christ, and bringing them with him
to services in God’s house. Such fathers are masks of God,
instruments behind which our heavenly Father is at work giving us what
we need to sustain the new life He’s given us in Jesus.
And so the Apostle Paul, like a good father, points
us to what our heavenly Father has done for us in Christ by tracing our
lives as Christians from what we were, to what we are now, to what we
will be in the age to come, all because of God’s love for us in
Jesus, who died for us, while we were still sinners. Whereas in
earthly life we begin with birth and end with death, in the new life
that we have now in Jesus we begin with death and end with life.
As Paul puts it, we were weak, ungodly sinners, enemies of God under
His wrath and under the reign of death. But now that Jesus has
died for us sinners and through our Baptism we have been sprinkled with
His blood and given new birth, we are justified with His blood, saved
from God’s wrath, reconciled to God, and under God’s
grace. And we have a glorious future to look forward to, when we
will escape God’s judgment on the Last Day and be ushered into
our inheritance - eternal life with our heavenly Father, His Son Jesus
Christ, and the Holy Spirit in the new heavens and the new earth.
The sin of Adam has been taken care of by the righteousness of
Christ. And so, “we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Amen.