When We Love

[Below you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, earlier today, as well as video of both worship services.] 

John 14:15-21

Do Jesus’ words at the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson make you uncomfortable? He says “If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15) 

Does Jesus seem to be contradicting Himself and the rest of the Bible?

Elsewhere, He famously says, for example, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

And also: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29)

The apostle Paul summarizes all this teaching from Jesus by saying, “For we maintain that a person is justified [that is, declared innocent of their sins] by faith [in Christ] apart from the works of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

The distillation of these passages of Scripture and many more is that we who are born sinners cannot and are not saved from death, the condemnation for our sin, by anything we do; we are saved solely by Christ Who died and rose for all sinners through the faith in Christ we receive through the Gospel Word about Jesus.

So, what is up with Jesus’ words at the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson: “If you love me, keep my commands”? It sounds as if Jesus is saying that our relationship with Him and our eternal salvation from Him depend on how much we love Him and on our obedience to His commands.

There are schools of thought within Christianity that teach this is exactly what Jesus is saying here. They think their salvation depends on what they do and the depths of their love for Jesus. People taught this way are constantly turned in on themselves, trying to police themselves of doubt or sin.

But, friends, this kind of thinking can only lead us to one of two endpoints: Either false pride when we think that we really are obeying and loving Jesus perfectly or despair, even unbelief, at the realization that we cannot obey or love Jesus perfectly.

Jesus and the whole Bible are clear though that we won’t find life with God by diving more deeply into our personal sewers of sin and self-obsession.

Freedom from sin and death only come from outside ourselves through Jesus Christ!

So, what is Jesus telling us in the first verse of our Gospel lesson? There are two words in the verse that say much more than we might realize and will help us understand what Jesus is saying.

The first word is if, “If you love Me,” Jesus says.

The word in the Greek in which John wrote his gospel is ἐάν, a conjunction that usually means if. But there is an irregular use of the word and almost every time it appears in John’s writings, this irregular use is meant. Let me give you a few examples of this use.

In John 12:32, Jesus says, “And I, when [that’s our word, ean] I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Another example, 1 John 2:28 : “And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when [there’s our word again] he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.” (1 John 2:28)

One more, 1 John 3:2: “...we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

So, Jesus isn’t telling us, “If you get yourself convinced that you love Me.” He’s saying, “When, by the power of my Word, given in Scripture, preaching, teaching, and the Sacraments, that all your sins are forgiven and that you have been justified by grace through faith in Me…”

Jesus is assuring you: “When you have been told, ‘I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,’ you will love Jesus.”

That’s the power of His forgiving, loving Word; it incites love for Him within us.

“This is love,” the apostle John writes elsewhere, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

We love Jesus when His Gospel Word allows us to experience the love He has given to us from the cross. It was this very love that the disciples who betrayed Jesus would experience after His resurrection: forgiveness and love despite their sin.

The second word is keep. “If you love me,” Jesus says, “keep my commands.” The word here in the original Greek is τηρέω. It means to watch over, to guard, to observe. To keep the commands of Jesus, of God, is to acknowledge their authority over us. It doesn’t mean perfect obedience to God’s Law, which God’s Word tells us no sinful human being can muster.

Jesus, you’ll remember, used words from the Old Testament to summarize God’s commandments for the human race.

He summarized commandments one through three–that we have no other gods, that we not take His name in vain, that we hold His Word at the center of our lives–by telling us to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37).

He summarized commandments four through ten–that we honor our parents, not murder, not commit adultery, not steal, not bear false witness, and not covet–by commanding us, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39)

Honesty compels each of us to acknowledge that we do not obey God’s law of love. We are worthy of condemnation.

But, friends, we keep these commands of Jesus every time we come to Him and acknowledge, formally or informally, together or on our own, “We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” We keep His commands whenever we respond to His Word and take up our crosses daily and follow Him. (Luke 9:23)

We love Jesus and we keep His commands, acknowledging His grace and authority, whenever He comes to us with His Word assuring us that through Him, all our sins are forgiven. This is what Jesus explains to us in the rest of today’s gospel lesson. Jesus sends His Holy Spirit Who comes to us in the word of forgiveness and rebirth we receive at Holy Baptism, in the preaching of His Gospel Word, and in the forgiveness and power for living we receive in Holy Communion.

When Jesus tells us today, “If you love me, keep my commands,” Jesus isn’t turning us in on ourselves to engage in a morbid inventory of our sinful selves. He’s freeing us from both the sewers of self-congratulation and self-condemnation.

He calls us to look to Him, the One Who died and rose to set us free from sin and death.

It’s good and right for us to confess our sins to God. But when Jesus’ words of forgiveness come to us, our old sinful self is crucified and, with the words of absolution, we rise to newness of life!

Pastor David Schmitt talks about a friend who, as she puts on a coat to go outside, says with a smile of her deceased dad, “My father always told me to wear a coat.” These are the words of a woman who knew how deeply her earthly father loved her, that his “command” wasn’t arbitrary but came from love, and so, even now, out of his immediate presence–even when she forgets to put on her coat, she “keeps” her father’s “command.”

When the Holy Spirit–the Spirit of truth–turns our attention to Jesus and we know that He has already paid the price for our sin and already given eternal life to all who believe in Him, we are filled with the love of children who know they are deeply loved by God and, from love, reverence, and respect, will always gladly acknowledge His authority over us.

Receive the forgiving love of Jesus and you will love.

That is Jesus’ Word for us today.

Amen

When Worship Happens

[Below you'll find live stream video of worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church that took place this past Sunday as well the message shared during both services.]

John 4:5-30, 39-42

A man came to visit me once. He was deeply troubled by something he had done years earlier. His wife became pregnant and he insisted that she have an abortion.

The man was overcome with grief and guilt, first of all, because of the little life that had been snuffed out and secondly, because, by his insistence, he laid deep guilt and regret on his wife while driving a wedge between him and his wife that had never diminished. He wondered what he could do to take both his and his wife’s guilt away.

Over the centuries, all of the religions of the world but one have tried to deal with this problem of human guilt and God’s expectation that we should be righteous by various forms of works righteousness, that is deeds or gestures the religions tell us we can do to overcome our sin.

These religions have been obsessive about creating systems of sacrifice. Through these systems, human beings, conscious of their sin, have made offerings of sacrifices to get out from under the guilt they know they bear.

In olden times, people offered up animals, plants, gold and silver, and even other human beings to try to make themselves right with God.

Today, people give up swearing for Lent, trumpet their contributions to good causes, and so on as a way of assuring themselves and the world and, sometimes, God, that they’re good, righteous people.

Even Old Testament Judaism had a system of sacrifices that saw the offering of sheep, pigeons, and grain, although King David reminded God’s people: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17, English Standard Version] God, David was saying, didn’t want our stuff or our showy deeds, he wanted hearts and lives turned to Him. He still does.

There are two big problems with sacrificial religions.

The first is that as soon as you offer up a sacrifice like putting a bit more in the offering plate or standing up for someone who’s being gossiped about, making you feel all clean and righteous based on your own behavior, you commit another sin. You take God’s name in vain. You entertain a lustful thought. You lose patience with your spouse or child.

The second problem with sacrificial religion is that you can never be sure you’ve sacrificed enough. And if a  sacrifice isn’t enough to cover a person’s sin, eternal separation from God is the consequence.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus encounters a woman who confronts her sin and her sinful nature all the time.

She’s the woman at the well outside the Samaritan village of Sychar.

Married five times, now living with another man to whom she isn’t married, she goes to the well at noon each day, despite the scorching heat, to avoid condemnation and shunning from the other villagers.

From what she says to Jesus, the only hope she has for forgiveness or righteousness is in the sacrifices she and all Samaritans make at Mount Gerizim.

Under the sacrificial system, the woman at the well could only hope that her sacrifices could earn God’s forgiveness for her. But she could never be sure.

That’s why Samaritans and Jews kept offering sacrifices for their sins year after year, over and over again.

Now the woman meets Jesus.

Jesus asks her for a drink. She’s shocked because Jews won’t talk to Samaritans and Jewish men aren’t supposed to talk with women to whom they’re unrelated in public.

Then Jesus tells her that if she would ask Him, He could give her “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14) Jesus is offering her a free gift that she thought she could only earn, a life with God that never ends.

The woman is dumbfounded with disbelief and fear.

Could Jesus be greater than Jacob, the Jewish patriarch who had dug this well for God’s people?

She would love to be out from under the condemnation of God, freed of her debt of sin, assured of life with God. “Sir,” she says, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” (John 4:15)

Knowing this woman and loving her the way God loves all of us sinners, Jesus now confronts the woman in her sin. God’s grace comes as new life to those who understand that they are otherwise dead in sin. That’s why Jesus tells us elsewhere, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

Jesus now tells the Samaritan woman to bring her guilt to Him, the guilt from which she’s tried to run and for which she’s offered endless sacrifices. “Go,” Jesus says, “call your husband and come back.” (John 4:16)

Jesus has already offered the woman eternal life, the Gospel. But here, He surfaces the very set of sins–her serialized and continuing adulteries–to show her that even when the world’s religions of sacrifice and good works fail to give us peace with God or peace with ourselves,

Jesus gives us that peace as a free gift.

He gives us forgiveness.

He gives us life.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Mark tells us that He preached, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15) By the well at Sychar, Jesus is proclaiming the same message to this woman who spent a lifetime in sin, regret, and shame. Turn from death and turn to Me, Jesus is telling her.

In the offer of living water, the woman had heard the Word of God’s grace. In Jesus’ request that she fetch her husband, she heard the Word of God’s Law condemning sin.

To her credit, she doesn’t try to dodge Jesus’ call to confession and repentance. She admits that she’s breaking the sixth commandment at that very moment and had many times before with other men.

When you and I gather for worship on Sunday mornings, the first thing we do is hear Jesus’ call to repentance. We turn to Jesus so that we can once more live in the freedom of forgiven sin and the grace of God by which we sinners are declared saints, NOT by sacrifices or religious works. NONE of that stuff can make us righteous or acceptable to God. Religious law cannot save us. It can only tell us, as it told the woman who had been trudging day-in, day-out to the village well burdened by guilt, unsure of God’s forgiveness, that we are sinners whose impulses, thoughts, attitudes, and actions merit condemnation.

In Romans 10:4, the apostle Paul writes that, “Christ is the culmination [or the fulfillment or the end] of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”

We are made righteous before God not because of sacrifices or works, but by grace through faith in Jesus alone.

Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that true worship isn’t about making sacrifices to God nor about the places where sacrifices are made, whether at Jerusalem. “A time is coming and has now come,” Jesus tells her, “when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” (John 4:23)

Listen, friends, to what Jesus is telling us: True worship isn’t about what we do for God or give to God.

Worship happens when needy sinners like you and me enter into the presence of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and Jesus the Messiah explains everything to us, everything we need to have faith, to be righteous, to be assured that we are free of all condemnation by God!

Worship happens when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we hear and believe the truth of the Gospel, as expressed by Paul in our second lesson today: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

Worship is about what God gives to us in the Word and the Sacraments, not about what we think we do for or give to Him!

Each time we worship, Jesus Christ, sent to us by God the Father, presents Himself to us crucified and risen, and tells us, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29)

Each time we worship, He gives us the Word that the Holy Spirit uses to give us saving faith.

And each time we worship, Christ gives us His body and blood by which we are filled with His forgiveness and new life!
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When the woman in our Gospel lesson hears Jesus identify Himself as the very Messiah Who could save her (and you and me), without our sacrifices but simply by grace through faith, she leaves her buckets behind and runs back into Sychar!

Head held high in the freedom of God’s forgiving Gospel, she tells the very people from whom she’s been hiding all about Jesus: “He told me everything I ever did!”

God wants you to hold your head high in His forgiving grace too, friends! He knows everything you ever did and loves you and died for you and rose for you anyway!

Nothing you ever do will ever make God love you any more than He already does.

Nothing you ever do–no sacrifice or good work–will ever make you more righteous than you are through Jesus Christ.

Jesus has already done everything needed to give you life with God!

It’s when we hear and receive this message, this gospel, that we worship in spirit and truth!

As Jesus says later in John’s Gospel: “Whoever hears my word and believes [the Father] who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” (John 5:24)

When you hear and believe Jesus’ word of life, your sin is not held against you and you are alive in God’s grace forever.

Friends, you can trust in that promise. Amen

The Crucified Christ Alone!

[Below, you'll find live stream video of both of today's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, and the text of the message shared during the services. Jesus Christ is all we need! Have a good week.]





1 Corinthians 1:18-31

This morning, I begin with a confession: I have sinned against God and others and violated my ordination vows, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

My sin started innocently enough. I looked at “seeker-sensitive” churches drawing huge numbers of people and commandeered their “secret sauce.” Its foremost ingredient was the preaching of its pastors.

The preachers who drew the crowds, whether they were ultraliberal, ultraconservative, or evangelical/Calvinist, focused on ethics, personal happiness, and how to get ahead in life. They preached messages people called “relevant.”

Some of them told people to be justice-seekers or peace-makers. They preached on passages of Scripture like our first lesson for today, Micah 6:1-8, and gave people step-by-step procedures to being peace-makers and justice-seekers.

Others looked at passages like our Gospel lesson, Matthew 5:1-12, and produce sermon series about nine things people could do to get God’s blessings. I heard one of these preachers give his formula for sermon creation: (1) Tell them what you want them to know; (2) Tell them what you want them to do.

God forgive me, folks, there was a time when I bought into this nonsense.

Only later did I realize that this formula was unchristian. “Do this and you’ll be right with God and others,” was my unspoken and false message.

I preached “sermons” on topics like How to Divorce-Proof Your Marriage, Eight Steps to Success, Raising Faithful Children, How to Foster Friendships. My sermon titles sounded like how-to books by motivational speakers.

But the crucified and risen Jesus was getting pushed to the side.

There are big problems with this approach.

One is that almost everyone would agree about how we’re supposed to live our lives; yet none of us does live fully as we’re supposed to live. How-to preaching will lead us either to despair over our failure to live up to religious dos and don'ts or to pride in how well we think we’re doing.

A second problem with this approach is that it causes people to take confidence in the works they do rather than in the God we know in Jesus Christ. Jesus says, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) Our justification in the eyes of God and our hope for this life and the next have nothing to do with the things we do. Our hope is in Jesus Christ alone!

I never completely abandoned proclaiming or teaching the truth of Christ’s Gospel. But the Word of God is an all-or-nothing proposition for Christ and His Church. I was effectively preaching a “Christ and these how-to lists” message, as if Jesus Christ wasn’t enough of a Savior.

I was beginning to realize how much I needed to repent when a crisis developed in the Lutheran denominational body of which I was (and many of you were) formerly a part. That denomination was, in its way, turning away from the Word of God, including both the Law that condemns our sin and the Gospel about Jesus that sets us free from condemnation. I was appalled by what was happening.

But as I read God’s Word and prayed, I realized that I was part of the problem.

In the quest for “relevance” and crowds (which never materialized, by the way), I was making the people who heard my weekly versions of “what do I want them to know and what do I want them to do” sermons susceptible to false gospels that tell people to rely on their works, their thoughts, or their emotions rather than on Jesus Christ only! I repented before God and told Ann that I never wanted to preach another “cute” or worldly sermon for as long as I lived.

In today’s second lesson, the apostle Paul says, “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified…” (1 Corinthians 1:22-23)

What Paul is saying is that people in the world have things they demand from the Church in order for them to consider the Christian message “relevant” to their lives. In Paul’s day, his fellow Jews demanded miraculous signs before they would listen to the Church. And the Greeks, a term Paul here uses for non-Jews, Gentiles, demanded the Church be a dispenser of wisdom. Above all, the world of Paul’s time (and our own), wants the Church to tell it exactly what it wants to hear. “Tell us we’re right on our politics, our view of what’s true and what’s not, our take on personal morality, then we might pay attention to you.” But Paul says the Church and Christians must refuse to be “relevant” dispensers of how-to worldly wisdom. “We preach Christ crucified!”

When we hear or when we proclaim the message of Christ crucified, there are two things God reveals.

First, we see the depths of our sin and the deadly consequences of them. In the eyes of the holy, righteous God of the universe, the One Who made us, every sin we commit, whether in thought, word, or action, is a capital offense, making us worthy of death. A single lie, one misuse of God’s name, a solitary fantasy of sexual immorality, a passing word of gossip: These, along with sins like idolatry, greed, murder, or the refusal to honor those in authority, warrant the same punishment from God: death, eternal separation from God, everlasting condemnation in hell. We know all of this is true because on the cross, we see Jesus, God the Son, perfect in His sinlessness, dying for our sin. Christ crucified shows us that sin–our sin–is fatal and that, unless something is done for us, Jesus’ prayer from the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” will be our constant cry from hell.

Second, in Christ crucified, we see what God has done to spare us the consequences of our sin. On the cross, Jesus does what we cannot do for ourselves: He offers Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He takes the punishment we deserve. He does everything needed to make us right with God. We are born sinners with no right to live. But the God unwilling to easily part with us because of His love for us has gone to the cross for us. As Paul writes elsewhere: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

He goes on: “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (Romans 5:9-11) Dear friends in Christ, you are deeply loved by God. Christ crucified brings this love to you. Christ crucified and risen reconciles you to God now and forever!

Our call is simple then: To turn from our sin and turn to Christ.

So, what about passages like Micah 6?

Or Jesus’ Beatitudes in Matthew 5?

Aren’t these blueprints for our salvation, behaviors we can adopt that will make us acceptable to God and give us the good life.

No, that’s not what they are at all!

If you and I were capable of adopting them, capable of loving God and loving neighbor, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to go to the cross. But like Paul, we are bound to confess, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out…” (Romans 7:18)

God’s Law is meant to cause us to see that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves and assure us that we can turn to Jesus, the One Who sets us free from our bondage and then takes up residence in our lives so that, as we trust in Him, the goodness, love, and obedience to God that is foreign to our natures, begins to be manifest.

Jesus Christ sets us free from our sin and self-absorption and lives in those who are baptized in His name and who trust in Him!

The Christian can say with Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

The world doesn’t need wowing signs or worldly wisdom. Neither do we.

All we need is Jesus Who died and rose again.

Jesus doesn’t promise to make us popular or powerful.

He doesn’t promise to give us health or wealth in this world.

He doesn’t promise us that He’ll cause this life or this world to make sense.

He promises us forgiveness of sin, new and everlasting life with God, and the assurance that He is always with us.

No matter what a confused and dying world (or we ourselves sometimes) may think, the crucified and risen Jesus Christ–and Jesus Christ alone–is all we need.

You can trust in Him!

Amen