Forgiven, Set Free to Forgive

[Below you'll find videos of the live stream videos of both the 8:45 AM and 11:00 AM worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, as well as the text of today's message.]





Luke 17:1-10

A prominent nineteenth-century Lutheran theologian once gave this important advice: “When [God’s] Law condemns you, then immediately lay hold of the Gospel.”

We need to remember this as we consider today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 17:1-10. Jesus has just finished telling His story of Lazarus, the poor man, who had faith in God and entered heaven, and the rich man, who trusted in his wealth and possessions, and been condemned to an eternity without God. Jesus told this story for the benefit first, of the notorious sinners who were starting to believe in Him and trust in His grace. He wanted to assure them that, despite the judgments of an unforgiving world, by God’s grace, they had faith in Him that saved them and gave them a place in the Kingdom of God eternally. Jesus also told the story for the Pharisees and teachers of religious law, certain of their own righteousness, that they might repent–turn from their sin–and trust in Jesus for life with God, rather than trusting in themselves, their ethnicity, or their wealth. Without faith in Jesus, they would spend eternity, not with God, but like the rich man, eternally condemned, separated from God.

Now, as He heads for Jerusalem where He knows that He will be crucified, then raised from the dead by God the Father, Jesus turns to His disciples. After hearing Jesus’ story, they may be feeling vindicated in following Him or superior to others, Jesus speaks a Word of Law.

“Things that cause people to stumble [things that cause people to trip into temptation] are bound to come, but woe to anyone [that’s God’s condemnation to anyone] through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones [that is, the sinners and tax collectors coming to Jesus in repentance and faith] to stumble. So watch yourselves. If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.” (Luke 17:1-4)

Do you hear what Jesus is saying here? “Christian, don’t cause others to sin! Don’t cause them to doubt Jesus or the forgiveness He brings to those who repent and believe in Him! Don’t cause them to question God’s grace given in Christ!” Christians who do that, Jesus says, are worse off than people fitted with concrete shoes and thrown into the ocean. Quite simply, Christians who trip others into sin, despair, and unbelief by their rigidity or refusal to forgive are damned. Jesus goes on to say that when others sin against us, we are to confront them and if they repent, we must forgive them, no matter how many times they sin against us and repent.

Jesus’ words must have hit the disciples hard. They hit me that way too. It’s so easy for me to hold a grudge. Jesus’ Word of Law here is an expression of the command of the first table of the Ten Commandments, that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, condemns me. Failing to forgive is a sin. And this isn’t the only time that Jesus and His Word tell us this. Jesus teaches us, remember, to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” You know what? I love to be forgiven; I’m not as keen about forgiving. Maybe you feel the same way. But Jesus tells us that that attitude is a sin. It merits everlasting condemnation.

Is it any wonder then that the apostles say to Jesus: “Increase our faith!”? (Luke 17:5) The apostles’ reasoning is understandable, isn’t it? “Add some faith to us so that we can strengthen our wills to do this impossible thing the Law demands,” they’re telling Jesus. But they’ve got it wrong. They don’t need more faith. They need–and what we need–faith enough to turn in helplessness and trust to Jesus. It’s Jesus and Jesus alone Who can  destroy the condemnation for sin that we deserve and make us worthy of life with God. You don’t need big faith. You just need faith, however big or small it is, in the big, loving, forgiving God we meet in Jesus Christ! Jesus is big enough, whatever the size of our faith!

God’s Law is good. It reflects God’s will for us. But if we cannot obey this Law, which we cannot, then we surely cannot be saved by it. Even if I decided today to forgive those who have hurt me, I could not make that decision stick by my willpower. And I could not erase the pain I’ve caused others by my past unforgiveness. And that doesn’t even address all the other ways I have failed to love God and love others. Blessedly though, God’s Word tells us [I’m reading here from the Good News translation of Romans 8:3-4] “What the Law could not do, because human nature was weak, God did. He condemned sin in human nature by sending his own Son, who came with a nature like our sinful nature, to do away with sin. God did this so that the righteous demands of the Law might be fully satisfied in us who live according to the Spirit, and not according to human nature.” Friends, Jesus has done the Gospel, the Good News, for us. He went to Jerusalem and offered up His sinless life to take the condemnation and punishment you and I deserve, even went to hell itself, then rose from the dead so that all who daily repent and trust in Him have forgiveness and everlasting life with God! Jesus perfectly obeyed the Law of love for us, because on our own, you and I can’t!

After the apostles ask for more faith, Jesus tells them that freedom from the condemnation of the Law doesn’t come from having a bigger faith, but by the greatness of your God. How great is the God you can trust in Jesus Christ? Not only is He the God Who made the heavens and the earth, He’s the God Who comes to us in Jesus Christ. As we take shelter in the grace of God given to us through Jesus, Who suffered, bled, died, and rose for us, we know that we are not condemned, that we belong to God forever. God has justified us, counted us innocent of our sin, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Like the apostle Paul, we can say, “​​since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” (Romans 5:1) As we trust in Christ, we have this peace with God not just in eternity after God has called us from our graves, but right now! This very moment!

At the end of our gospel lesson, through an illustration, Jesus describes what our peace with God looks like. We are freed from the sure condemnation that goes to the self-righteous. And we are freed from terror at the truth that none of us, by our own merit or effort, is good enough for a place in God’s kingdom. Jesus has bought us out of our slavery to sin and death, “not with perishable things such as silver or gold…but with the precious blood of Christ…” (1 Peter 1:18-19) Forgiven by Christ, we can forgive others and, like the servants in Jesus’ illustration, not keep score. When God commends us for forgiving and loving as we’ve been forgiven and loved, we can say, “​​…we have only done our duty…” (Luke 17:10) The idea here isn’t that I have done some laudable work that other people should notice. The force of this statement by the servants is to say they don’t need a participation trophy, they are simply doing what people do when Jesus has set them free from sin and set them free to love and forgive. For those who trust in Jesus, who receive His Word, who have been claimed by Him a Baptism, and who receive His body and blood with repentance and faith, Jesus is the Vine and we are the branches. (John 15:5) As His life courses through us, we do what God’s servants do, knowing that, however the world may regard us, we live each moment in God’s grace and approval. A disciple saved by God's grace in Christ is called to a life in which they no longer are susceptible to the terrors of damnation and who no longer need strokes for doing what God‘s grace in Christ impels us to do. 

To applaud a Christian for being a Christian is a bit like applauding a carrot for being a carrot. A carrot has no say over whether it's a carrot. Nor do we have any say over the Spirit wooing us to faith in Jesus. It's by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can repent and trust in Jesus Christ, not ours. So, when we forgive, we are just doing what Christians do and that is solely a miracle of God’s grace, of Christ living in us!

“When [God’s] Law condemns you, then immediately lay hold of the Gospel.” The Law of God commands us to forgive as we are forgiven. The Gospel assures us that as we trust in Christ, we are forgiven and that, freed of self-regard or self-loathing, we are conduits of His grace  and love for others. Friends, you can trust in Jesus Christ for this! Amen

Humility

[This was shared this past Sunday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 17:1-10

The whole idea of humility, of being humble, is taking a beating these days. 

Snapchat and Instagram are full-up with selfies. 

We revere athletes, actors, and politicians who arrogantly look down their noses on the rest of the world. 

We celebrate and retweet the posts of those who specialize in unkindness and vindictiveness. 

And every day, you and I are tempted whenever we go shopping to judge and deem ourselves superior to those we see along the aisles and at the checkout.

Of course, our penchant for arrogance goes back to the garden of Eden. There, the serpent tempted the first human beings with the idea that, if they broke free from God, their loving Creator, they could create their own life apart from God: they could be their own gods. 

We’ve been mesmerized by this fiction ever since, inflicting a world of hurt on each other and on ourselves. 

All wars, 

every instance of child and spouse abuse, 

all the feuds between families and among families, 

all the prejudice and discrimination, petty egotism, snobbery, and gossip, 

every case of murder, thievery, adultery, covetousness, not to mention every time human beings bow down to false idols they think they can control by their sacrifices or piety or good works, 

every time we think that our race, ethnicity, nationality, or financial condition makes us better than others, 

every time a person looks on the vast cosmos and dares to say that there is no God, 

and every time a Christian thinks that God’s gift to them of faith in Jesus somehow makes them better than others, 

every time any of these things appear, we cave into this delusion that we can be like God which we inherited from Adam and Eve. 

It is our original sin. 

We keep trying to ignore, deny, or live around the simple truth that God’s Word teaches: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18) 

And why is pride so destructive? 

Because pride violates the first commandment. The proud have a false god: themselves. 

But we can only find life through repentance and faith in Jesus. So, when we worship at the altar of ego, we place our hope in a god that will die. 

A Christian songwriter put it simply: “Pride kills.”

We will either die in pride or we will live in humility.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus talks about humility as an essential element of Christian discipleship. Take a look at the lesson, please: “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves.’”

The “little ones” Jesus refers to here seem to be the outcasts, those hated and disdained by society’s so-called “good people” with whom Jesus so readily interacted: People like prostitutes, extortionists, foreigners, beggars, the lame, and notorious sinners. 

Jesus is warning those of us who call ourselves Christians to take care that instead of inviting and welcoming society’s “little ones” into fellowship with Christ and with us as He tells us to do, we turn them away or cause them to sin all the more unrepentantly. 

This past week, several of us were talking about how often restaurant personnel hate working the Sunday afternoon shift because they know that the Christians taking in lunch after worship are going to treat them like garbage and leave either no tips or miserly ones. A disciple of Jesus understands that a Christian saint is no more than a recovering sinner undergoing reconstruction by the Holy Spirit. But an unbeliever will look at the parade of hypocritical church people eating lunch in their restaurant on Sunday afternoons and think, “If that’s what Jesus does to a person, I want nothing to do with Christian faith.”

Jesus says that when Christians act arrogantly toward non-Christians, we might as well put millstones around our necks and sink into hell. Proud Christians block the grace of God given in Christ not only to those they treat disdainfully but to themselves as well. “So,” Jesus tells us, “watch yourselves.”

Then, in verses 3 and 4, Jesus says, “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”

Refusing to forgive those who have genuinely apologized and sought our forgiveness is the height of human presumption and pride. And we will never be free until we set those who have apologized to us free from the debt they owe us. 

This is why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” 

The word that Jesus uses for forgive in this passage is, in the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, aphiemi, literally meaning I release. When we forgive others as Christ forgives us, we not only release them of their debt to us, we also release ourselves from our bondage to sin. We let the forgiveness of God given in Christ flow into our own lives.

Skip down for a moment to Jesus’ words, starting in verse 7: “‘Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, “Come along now and sit down to eat”? Won’t he rather say, “Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink”? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

These words of Jesus may seem cryptic to us. But again, the theme is the essential place of humility in the life of a Christian. 

As is often true in His parables, the short stories with deeper meanings He often tells, Jesus here creates a scenario which, to his original first-century hearers, would have seemed outrageous. 

In that top-down society, no wealthy land-owner would tell his servant to take a load off his feet and eat with him. And he wouldn’t thank the cook on his payroll for doing his job. 

The obvious conclusion is that if a follower of Jesus loves a neighbor, or sacrifices for a fellow believer, or shares the good news of new life through repentance and faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, she or he does so not for applause, recognition, or thank-yous. They do these things because Jesus so lives inside them that it doesn’t even dawn on them to not love their neighbor, to not sacrifice for the fellow believer, to not share the gospel of Jesus with someone in need of Him. 

For them, such expressions of faith aren’t planned events. They’re simply the supernatural outgrowth of a life lived with Jesus in daily repentance and renewal. 

Humility, you see, is not an acquired life skill, it’s something that happens in the lives of those who seek each day to walk with Jesus. 

Our motives, our values, and the way we view everything get changed as Jesus takes up residence in the center of our lives when we take our gaze off of ourselves and fix our eyes firmly on God the Son, the Word made flesh, Jesus.

And that leads us back to the middle two verses of today’s gospel lesson. The apostles hear Jesus’ words and realize that, because of their (and our) inborn sinful nature, the kind of humility that Jesus commends in these verses is impossible. So, they make what seems like a reasonable request. 

Verse 5: “Increase our faith!” 

This may not be a pious request at all. It may be what can be called the “increase our faith dodge.” You hear it all the time. 

Christians who don’t want to heed Jesus’ call to follow or be servants in His Church or share their faith in Christ, will say things like, “My faith isn’t strong enough” or “Everyone else knows more than I do or can do more than I can do.”

I suspect that people don’t really believe these things as often as they say them. 

And I suspect that they’re really not that interested in having more faith or following Jesus or sharing Him with others. 

I think that often, these are the expressions of a false humility. People figure they sound pious and Christian when they speak of what they can’t do, can’t give, can’t try. And so they keep right on, not doing, not giving, not trying.

Jesus’ response to the apostles is direct. Verse 6: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” 

To follow Jesus, to heed His call to love and serve our neighbor, to get our minds off of ourselves and onto the God Who creates, gives us faith in Jesus, saves us from sin and death, and empowers us to live more selfless lives, is not about waiting around for God to give us more faith. 

It’s acting on the little faith the Holy Spirit has given to us in the big, loving God of the whole universe we meet in Jesus Christ, then daring to live the life of love, joy, and connectedness to others for which He has set us free. 

It’s only in those who respond when Jesus says, “Follow Me” that God grows faith: Only when we refuse to look at other disdainfully, only when we dare to forgive those who seek our forgiveness, and only when we heed His call to believe, to love and share Christ’s gospel with others in our lives.

C.S. Lewis observed that, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.” 

Without our consciously realizing it, humility becomes part of us as His Word works in us to create faith and we think of Jesus more and of ourselves, less. 

When we turn to Jesus, humility begins to break through. 

And when humility breaks through, we not only know joy for ourselves, we will share it with others. 

We become the conduits of God’s grace for everyone we know. 

Turn to Jesus each day and the pride that can kill us will meet its master. 

Turn to Jesus each day and He will fill you love for Him instead of pride in yourself. 

Turn to Jesus and live. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

AUDIO: The need for humility

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor Living Water Lutheran in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Need for Humility

Luke 17:1-10
A prominent New Testament scholar jokes about the man who wrote a book titled, Humility and How I Achieved It. Of course, a truly humble person would never be so wrapped up in themselves as to identify themselves as exemplifying humility.

And yet, for the Christian, cultivating humility is both central to our faith in Christ and reflective of Christ living in us because, despite being God, Jesus was always humble.

Hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, the prophet Zechariah, wrote of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday: “See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly [or humble] and riding on a donkey...” [Zecharaiah 9:9]

And, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the apostle Paul wrote in Philippians: “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant…” [Philippians 2:5-7]

Jesus humbled Himself, making Himself our servant, going to the cross to bear the condemnation for sin we deserve, then rising from death to open God’s eternity to all who repent of sin and believe in Christ.

It was humility that set Jesus free from allowing the certain horrors of the cross to keep Him from fulfilling His mission of saving the human race.

Humility can set us free to be the people God made us to be.

C.S. Lewis once observed that humility isn’t thinking less of ourselves, it’s thinking of ourselves less.

In true humility, there’s true freedom. When we follow Jesus Christ and know that we have God’s forgiveness and the power of the Holy Spirit guaranteeing us God’s presence with us now and in eternity with God, we’re set free from operating out of the pathetic human desire to be our own gods. Since we know that God is already looking out for us, eternally, we don’t need to “look out for number one.” We’re set free to live out of God’s love and truth revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus.

The call to humility is a common thread running through the seemingly disconnected set of sayings from Jesus that make up today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 17:1-10.

Unlike the parables of Jesus that have absorbed our attention over the past few weeks, which were addressed to people who followed Him and people who didn't, Jesus’ words in today’s lesson are spoken only to His disciples, followers of Jesus like you and me. Jesus is telling us how we disciples should live each day. Let’s take a look at what Jesus has to tell us this morning, starting at verse 1.

“Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves.’

“[Jesus goes on] “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”

I once spoke with a man who told me that he couldn’t put any symbol of His Christian faith--like a fish or a cross or a bumper sticker saying something like, “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven”--on His car for fear that if he cut someone off in traffic or engaged in a fit of road rage or failed to forgive someone who had wronged him, people would think less of Christianity. “That’s too much pressure,” he told me.

I appreciated his honesty. It’s not easy being a Christian. As Christians, we know that we’re sinners saved by grace through faith in Christ, not because we’re such great and holy people. (I know that I’m not.) Sin still lives in us and a big part of the Christian life involves daily enlisting God’s power to overcome our sin. “Daily repentance and renewal” is what Martin Luther called it.

Because we know how unchristian we can be in our thoughts and actions, we might well think, “Who am I, an ordinary, garden variety sinner, to represent Jesus Christ to the world? Who am I, someone who muddles along in life, sometimes with only the tiniest wisp of a faith, to be, in the words of 2 Corinthians, an ambassador for Christ?” The truth is, it probably only makes sense to Jesus that we should be His representatives in the world.

And if we find fulfilling that role daunting, so did Jesus’ first disciples. After hearing Jesus say that if they led others into sin and away from God, it would be better to be deep sixed with a millstone around their necks and that, if they were going to bear His name, they needed to forgive those who apologized to them without keeping score, they reacted as maybe we react. Verse 5: “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’”

The disciples thought that they could be better Christians if they had bigger faith. We're inclined to think that too.

But Jesus’ response to the apostles shows us that the size of our faith should never prevent us from faithfully seeking to do His will. Verse 6: “[Jesus] replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”

We can do the big things that Jesus commands of us as individual Christians and as a Church, whether our faith is large or small. We can love God. We can love our neighbor. We can make disciples. We can forgive those who have hurt us. We can share the good news of new life for all who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus. We can reach up, reach in, and reach out.

We can do all of that with just a little faith in a great, big, omnipotent, omniscient, compassionate, loving God.

With a little faith in a big God--no matter our age, our training, our gender--we can do the will of God and bring God’s kingdom to the people in our lives. It all begins with the humble recognition that God is God and that, by God's grace, we are His people.

When I first came to faith in Christ, I was hesitant about sharing Him with others, especially my old school friends and classmates. In my imagination, I could see them rejecting the message of Christ coming from me because they remembered what a big-mouthed, overbearing loser I was.

Through the years, I’ve prayed for the opportunity to share Christ with the people with whom I grew up and I’ve asked God to get my brain off of me, onto Him and onto others.

In recent years, I’ve had the chance to share Christ with many members of my graduating class. And when we had our most recent reunion, after we’d all gotten our food and sat at our tables, one of my classmates approached me and asked, “Mark, would you say grace for us? I think it would be a really good thing to do.”

There’s no way self-absorbed Mark ever would have been asked to do that. When we let God set us free from worrying about how little we are and trust in how much He can do, God can use us for His good purposes. A little faith in a big God can accomplish a lot!

This is why Jesus commends humility. “Get out of the way and let me work through you,” Jesus is saying.

Christians know that our single mission in life--the mission of the Church of making disciples--is only accomplished when we recognize that it’s about God and not about us!

That, I think is why Jesus wraps up this section on humility in the way that He does, starting at verse 7: “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

Listen: Every disciple of Jesus Christ lives in the daily assurance that by God’s grace through our faith in Christ, we are saved from sin and death and are living in an eternal relationship with God. It doesn’t get any better than that! But there are no personal bragging rights in that. Christians aren’t better than other people, just freer than other people, more alive than other people, because of what Christ has done and our faith in Him. With Paul, we can say: “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” [2 Corinthians 11:30] Like Paul, we know that when we are weak, the strength of Christ empowers us and is visible to others. God’s power is perfected in our weakness, our humility. [2 Corinthians 12:10]

And when we strive to live out of our faith in Christ, to trust in Him and heed the Bible’s commands, weak though we are, we do it only in the power of God.

Once, I singled out a person at a church I served as pastor for having undertaken some particular act of service. The congregation applauded. But after worship, the person told me, “I appreciated your words. But don’t ever do that again. Whatever good I do comes from the Lord and He’s the one who deserves the applause.” I didn’t entirely agree with that person: Holding up faithful examples to others can help the faith of us all. But I appreciated the humble reliance on Christ and the fact that she refused to take credit for what she knew God had done through her.

James writes in the New Testament: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” [James 4:10]

Peter says something similar: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” [1 Peter 5:6]

Humble reliance on Christ is essential to being a faithful disciple.

Jesus tells us that “with God all things are possible” [Matthew 19:26]. The fact is, there is no limit to what impossible things God can do through those who lose themselves in Christ’s grace and make themselves His servants.

May Christ teach us humility. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during worship earlier today.]