“The Gift of God is Eternal Life in Christ Jesus, our Lord”
Romans 6:12-23
6/22/08
Today we celebrate 50 years of having received
God’s gifts to us in Jesus Christ here in this place. For
50 years here at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Pacifica the
Lord has been giving out His gifts through His Word and Sacraments to
us who have gathered here in His Name. The gift way is the
Lord’s way with His people; it’s the way He wants to do His
Lording. And, as we just witnessed, He’s had this way again
today with little Yianni, baptizing him into His Name, gifting Yianni
with eternal life, the forgiveness of his sins, and sonship in
God’s family. We who are gathered together here in this
place are reminded that like little Yianni we are simply on the
receiving end of the Lord’s gifts, being nothing but given to by
Him. We, too, have been baptized by the Lord. We have been
sprinkled with the blood of Christ. We have been sonned by
Him. We have been absolved by Him. We have been declared
righteous through faith in Him. We have been fed with His body
and blood. We have been given God’s peace, eternal life
now, and the promise of the life of the world to come in Jesus.
All of these gifts and more God has been giving to us in Jesus, apart
from any merit or worthiness in us.
The Lord has always been about giving gifts to
people, apart from any merit or worthiness in them. God is a
gift-giving God. He gave us life in the beginning; He gives us
new life in Jesus. All that we have we have received from
Him. To worship God rightly is to receive from Him with
thanksgiving the gifts He gives to us in Christ. It’s when
we try to hinder God from giving us His gifts that we get into trouble
and earn His wrath. God just wants to pour out His love upon us;
but when we refuse His love or insist upon receiving it on our own
terms, He gets angry. Instead of simply letting God shower His
unmerited love upon us, we often insist on earning that love.
Rather than being satisfied with simply being on the receiving end of
God’s gifts, we sinners insist on doing things for those
gifts. This was seen in the Garden with Adam and Eve. God
had created them in His image. They were righteous, holy, and
blameless. They were already like God, apart from any doing or
willing on their part. And yet, the devil deceived them into
thinking that they had to do something themselves, in order to become
like God. Instead of rejoicing in the gifts which God had already
given them, they were deceived into thinking they had to obtain those
gifts themselves by disobeying God and eating of the fruit they were
told not to eat of. The first sin of the human race was the sin
of trying to obtain God’s gifts by works. And we have been
trying to do the same ever since. Instead of letting God give to
us out of His undeserved love for us, we treat Him like some great
employer who owes us wages for our acts of love and obedience.
And when you insist on being reimbursed by God for
your works rather than simply being given to by Him, you do have your
wages. But those wages, as St. Paul tells us, are death. To
try to earn God’s gifts is to spurn His love. How might an
earthly father or mother feel if their child insisted on trying to earn
their love? What kind of relationship would it be between a
parent and a child, if that relationship were based on
performance? And yet, some people try to use the 10 commandments
to earn God’s love. They believe the more you obey God, the
more gracious and merciful He’ll be to you, the more He’ll
love you. But this is a misuse of God’s commandments.
God never gave His commandments to His people to be used as a means to
gain His love. It was because He loved them already (apart from
any merit or worthiness in them) that He gave them His
commandments. The commandments were given not so that the
Israelites might use them to try to become God’s children, but
because God had already made them His children. The 10
commandments were given to show them how they were to live now as
God’s children.
Sin is the failure to live as a child of God.
It is the spurning of God’s love and His gifts, the insistence on
having your own way, working for God’s favor. While the
people who try this think they’ll obtain life, this behavior
actually brings death. It brings death, because life is a gift
from God; it cannot be earned. The only way this gift is received
is simply by being given to by the Lord. To try to gain it
another way earns both temporal and eternal death. And sadly, the
Apostle Paul in this very same letter tells us that we have all sinned
and fall short of the glory of God. We have all refused to simply
be on the receiving end of God’s love and His gifts and instead
have tried to obtain those gifts ourselves by our works. Thus, we
have all earned death.
But what does the Lord do? He gives us more
gifts. He gives us the gift of all gifts - His Son, Jesus Christ,
in order to save us from the wages we have earned for ourselves by our
sin. In Jesus Christ God shows us what kind of a God He is
towards us. As the Apostle John writes, “God is
love,” and He demonstrates His love towards us in that while we
were still sinners Christ died for us. “God loved the world
in this way, that He sent His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes
in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” God is a
gift-giving God, who wants to pour out His love and His gifts upon us
sinners. He does this most completely in His Son, who in His love
for us poured out His life for us on the cross. There, Jesus
received the wages that we deserve on account of our sin, so that we
might receive the gifts that God wants to give us out of His love for
us. On the cross Jesus endured the wrath that God threatens
against those who spurn His love and reject His gifts, so that we, who
deserve that wrath, might instead enjoy God’s grace, mercy, and
peace. In Jesus Christ God’s gift of eternal life is given
to those who formerly tried to earn it.
And now, here today, for the past 50 years, and for
the past 2,000 years, God is still delivering the gift of eternal life
to His people through His Son, Jesus Christ. He delivers this
gift through Baptism. Through this washing of regeneration and
renewal He gives us a new birth and clothes us with Christ. He
gives us Himself along with His Name, He makes us His children and
gives us His Spirit, He sprinkles us with the blood of His Son, He
cleanses us from all sin, He crucifies and raises us with Christ,
granting us life and salvation. The gifts that God gives us in
Baptism are so many that they can’t be numbered. And
that’s the way it is with God’s gifts: He gives us
more gifts than we have need of. He gives us 100% plus
more. There are no fractions to God’s gifts, no fractions
to God’s forgiveness. He forgives all your sins, and He
continues to forgive your sins.
And so He goes on giving through the proclamation of
His Word. Here, too, He delivers eternal life to us by speaking
us righteous for Christ’s sake. With His Word of life He
absolves our sins, He points us to the cross of Jesus, He conforms us
to His image, He gives us the hope of the resurrection, He comforts and
strengthens us in our trials, He teaches us how to pray and how to live
as His children, living in faith towards Him and in love towards one
another. The gifts that He gives us in His Word are so numerous
that every time you read or hear that Word new gifts are given to you.
And along with all these gifts He gives you the body
and blood of His Son in the Sacrament of the Altar. Here God
gives us eternal life as we feed on the food of immortality, a food
that not only grants eternal life to your soul now, but also ensures
you the resurrection of your body and the life of the world to come, as
Jesus says, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal
life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” In this
holy meal the very sacrifice which Christ offered on the cross for your
sins - the body which He gave and the blood which He shed - is given
you to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of your sins, life, and
salvation.
With the Lord, then, it’s all about His giving
and our receiving. Whereas before our neighbor it’s better
to give than to receive, before God it’s better to receive than
to give. The Lord wants to give His gifts to you. Jesus
says unless you become like a little child you will never enter into
the kingdom of heaven. Little children are nothing but given
to. Like Yianni, let us again become like little children, the
children of God that we are now in Jesus, being nothing but given to by
the Lord. We in this congregation have been on the receiving end
of God’s gifts since our Baptism. We have received and
continue to receive His gifts today as He delivers His Son, Jesus and
the eternal life that He brings to us through His Word and
Sacraments. And by His grace we will continue to be on the
receiving end of His gifts even beyond our death, when at the
resurrection of our bodies we are taken by the Lord to live and reign
with Him in His heavenly kingdom forever. Thanks be to God for
His indescribable gift! Amen.