What is Faith in Christ?

[Below, you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, this past Sunday, August 20, along with live stream videos of both our traditional and modern worship services.]

Matthew 15:21-28

Just before the event recounted in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus had an encounter with Pharisees from Jerusalem. They confront Jesus for allowing His disciples to break God’s Law that said good religious folks must undergo ritual cleansing before eating.

Jesus explains that it isn’t the things that enter our bodies from outside of us that make us unclean in the eyes of God. Instead, it’s the sinful nature inside each of us that leads us to commit sins that makes us unclean. Jesus says, “...out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…” (Matthew 15:19-20)

Then, as if to demonstrate what He means about not being defiled by what comes from outside of ourselves, our lesson for today finds Jesus, the pure, perfect, holy, Son of God, going into territory that Jews deem unclean, the region of Tyre and Sidon. This area hugging the coast of the Mediterranean was a land whose people were notorious idolaters and sinners. The whole region is regarded by Jesus’ countrymen as evil.

And here’s Jesus going into this unclean land to encounter a Gentile woman with a saving faith in Him that the Pharisees and most of Jesus’ fellow Jews would reject.

We all know the central importance of faith in Christ. Every little child in the Church knows John 3:16: “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.” 

Romans talks about faith and salvation too. "...But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe [who have faith]." (Romans 3:21-22)

Our salvation in Christ isn’t based on what we do or even on what we are, but solely on what Christ has done for us and our faith or trust in Christ.

But what does it mean to have faith or to believe in Jesus?

The great Lutheran preacher of the last century, Bo Giertz, posed this very question and said that the Canaanite woman in today’s lesson illustrates exactly what it means to have faith in three ways. So, I want to take those three insights of Giertz and talk about each of them.

To have faith in Jesus means, first of all, to set all one’s hope on Jesus. That’s an enormous statement!

Faith in Jesus means that we trust that He, God the Son, is the author of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17), the supplier of everything we need, from our eternal salvation to our next meal. He is “our daily bread” in this life and the next.

We may wonder where this woman got her faith in Jesus. The gospel of Mark tells us in recounting this same incident, that the woman had “heard” about Jesus. (Mark 7:25) So, in some form or another the Word about Jesus had traveled from Capernaum, which is where Jesus’ ministry was centered at that time, to Tyre, about the distance from Dayton to Springfield.

This Word about Jesus had done its work in this desperate woman. By this second-hand Word about the Lord and Savior of the world, the mother of the demon-possessed girl, had come to believe in Jesus. She set her hope on Jesus.

The apostle Paul asks in Romans: “How…can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14)

And He says that once the Word about Jesus reaches people, the Holy Spirit can create faith in Christ within them: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)

The Canaanite woman had been given the Word about Jesus and through it, had come to set her hope on Him.

To have faith in Jesus means also not to think much of oneself. I’m not talking about “self-esteem” here.

The Canaanite woman, a Gentile who stood outside of the covenant God made with His people, the Jews, through Abraham, knew that she didn’t deserve anything from God.

When she approaches Jesus, we’re told, “A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.’” (Matthew 15:22) And again she says, “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25)

The woman acknowledges Jesus as Lord, that is, as Yahweh, God of all, and as the Son of David, the Messiah King, true God and true man.

She asks for His mercy. “I am a sinner, Lord,” she is effectively telling Jesus, “I don’t claim to be entitled to anything. I can’t claim to be a good person. But because You are good, because of Your grace, I ask, I beg. for Your mercy.”

As I’ve explained before, we sinners who cannot perfectly obey God’s Law nonetheless keep it when we acknowledge that we are rightly judged to be sinners by that Law–the Ten Commandments–and turn to Christ for mercy, grace, and forgiveness. This is what the Canaanite woman does!

When Jesus tells her that it would be morally wrong to take blessings away from God’s people to give them to dogs (what Jews called Gentiles), outsiders, the woman fully understands. No parent would be right to scrape the food off the plates of His own children in order to feed dogs. This is, in essence what Jesus is telling the woman. The woman agrees with Jesus but says, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” (Matthew 15:27)

Now, this incident occurs between two miraculous feedings by Jesus: the feeding of the 5000 in Matthew 14 and the feeding of the 4000 in Matthew 15. At both feedings, there were leftovers, 12 baskets-full at one and 7 at another.

“Lord,” the Canaanite woman is saying, because of her faith in Jesus, “don’t give me the choicest of Your blessings. I know Your grace is overflowing. Just give me the leftovers. Just give me Your crumbs. I know You and I know that will be enough!”

Faith means not to think too much of ourselves, but to always think of how great, good, gracious, and wonderful is the God we know in Jesus!

Finally, Giertz says, “faith holds onto Jesus even if He does not seem to answer.” Why does Jesus delay answering the woman’s prayer for her daughter? Why does He seem to delay or not answer our prayers? I don’t know. Like you, I’ve experienced God seeming to tarry in answering my prayers in Jesus’ name. And I’ve experienced things going completely differently from what I prayed would happen.

But, like the woman, our call is to keep praying and seeking from the God we know in Jesus the blessings we feel we need and trust Him to sort things out as He, in His grace and wisdom, sees fit. This is the point of our praying, “Thy will be done.” We trust and pray in the certainty that it is His pleasure to show mercy to those who cling to Him in faith. And when the answers to our prayers seem to be delayed, Jesus blesses us with His presence and places us in the comforting presence of His people.

The woman in our lesson trusted in Jesus as God and King. She acknowledged her sin and that she didn’t deserve God’s favor. She expressed faith in the enormity of God’s grace that could provide even for her, an undeserving sinner.

Friends, whether in this life or the next, Jesus loves to bless and reward such faith. It is people with this kind of faith that are meant when the Bible tells us, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

And so, Jesus tells the woman that the disciples wanted to send away: “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” We’re then told: “And her daughter was healed at that moment.” (Matthew 15:28)

How does one acquire such a faith?

You don’t decide to have it.

You can’t work to get it.

God gives it to us through His Word and His Word made visible in the Sacraments. He speaks faith into us.

Through the Word about Jesus, we know that Jesus is our God and King, that we are sinners saved by grace through faith in Jesus, that all our sins are forgiven, and that Jesus wants to give us His mercy. By the power of the Word about Jesus, you may believe that this is all true! Amen

Ten Healed, One Saved

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio on Sunday, October 13.]

Luke 17:11-19

Our gospel lesson for this morning, Luke 17:11-19, is particularly well-known among Lutheran Christians, I think because it often serves as the text for our Thanksgiving celebrations.

The lesson does talk about being thankful.

But if we come away from this passage thinking that if we’re thankful, Christ will save us from sin and death, we completely miss the point. 

Such an interpretation would turn Jesus into a lawgiver who demands that we earn salvation. 

But, good Lutherans that we are, we know that we cannot be saved and will not be saved by anything that we do. Nor can we be made holy by anything that we do. 

To those tempted to think that we can be saved by works, the Scripture speaks clearly. 

Romans 3:21-22, for example: "But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” 

Ephesians 2:8-9: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”

If we could be saved from sin, death, and futility by good things that we do or by the attitudes we adop, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to go to the cross to offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. 

And we would have no need of the Word that makes it possible for us to trust in Him or to be claimed by Him in Holy Baptism, where the Word of Jesus meets the water, or to receive Him in Holy Communion, where that Word meets the bread and the wine to yield the body and blood of Jesus Himself. 

Christ has done everything needed to save you and me from sin and death in His own death and resurrection. 

Then the Holy Spirit, preaching the Word about Christ to us in the Word and in the Sacraments, brings us the gift of faith, the capacity to believe that Christ did this even for you and me. 

This is how we are saved and how we are set apart to grow as people of God: by God’s grace through a faith in Christ constructed within us by the Holy Spirit. 

Listen: God doesn’t need our thanks. 

God doesn’t need our faith in Christ. 

But when we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ, we will be thankful. 

Thankfulness to God will be present in those who have been saved from sin and death, saved to live with God for all eternity.

I remember seeing this movingly exemplified in a man at a funeral visitation years ago. I watched him as he showed particular empathy to a young widow whose husband had died suddenly and tragically. Later, this man and I talked. He himself was a widower who had lost his wife about ten years earlier. He had been a devoted husband and her death had devastated him. But he had the hope of the gospel. I remember him telling me, “Pastor, every night before I go to bed, I kneel down on my bedroom floor and I thank God that He loves me and saves me even though I’m a sinner.” 

This man wasn’t trying to earn brownie points with God (or me). He wasn't abasing himself and serving up a fake humble pie. His words were the expressions of a man in whom God’s great grace given in Christ had created a great faith in Christ that resulted in great thankfulness to Christ.

We see this very phenomenon happen in a seemingly unlikely person in today’s gospel lesson. Take a look at it, please. Verse 11: “Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’”

In those days, you know, lepers were forced to move away from their families and communities for fear that others might be afflicted with the same often disfiguring skin condition. They lived in colonies on the edges of towns, dependent on people who, from a distance, might bring them food or other necessities. This particular colony of ten included both Jesus’ countrymen and at least one Samaritan. Samaritans were, as you know, often hated and disdained by Jesus’ fellow Jews. But when people go through common horrors, the petty prejudices we stoke when we don’t feel vulnerable often evaporate. I have often seen bigoted people with loved ones hovering on the point of death in hospital ICUs bond with the families of other ICU patients despite differences in their colors or religions that would have, under different circumstances, have had nothing to do with each other. When life knocks you down and reacquaints us with the fact that we are not invincible, it’s easier for us to see that we are all human beings made in God’s image. So, it was with these lepers all desperate for Jesus’ help.

Verse 14: “When [Jesus] saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.” Jewish ritual and civil law required that a priest had to certify that a leprous person had been cured before she or he could resume their normal lives or be in worship at the temple or the local synagogue. That’s behind Jesus’ directive to the men.

But more to the point of today’s gospel lesson, we should ask ourselves, “What exactly did the lepers do to deserve to be healed?” 

We might all ask: “What did I do, what could I do to be saved from sin, death, and darkness?” 

I could ask myself a similar question: “What did I do that God spared me from a heart attack that should have killed me?” 

The answer to these questions and others like them that we might ask is the same: NOTHING! 

There is nothing that we can do to earn God’s grace, His undeserved favor, or any of His blessings. 

As the ten lepers should have learned that day on the frontier between Galilee and Samaria, the blessings God gives through Jesus are not deserved and cannot be earned.

Ten lepers were cleansed--or healed--that day. But only one of them, it seems, came to believe in Jesus as God the Son, the One and the only One we need for salvation from our sins and life with God that starts now and goes on in perfection beyond the grave. Nine seemed to view their return to normalcy as only their just due, taking good health as something God or the universe owed them, even though this is a fallen world in which ill-health or tragedy or difficulty can strike any person at any time. But one man had a different perspective.

Verse 15: “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.’”

Those last words of Jesus in this passage are the key to understanding the whole thing. 

Jesus tells the Samaritan first, “Rise…” Here, in the original Greek in which Luke and the other New Testament writers composed their works, Jesus tells the man, “Ἀναστὰς…” This is a variation on a noun commonly used in the New Testament, anastasis. It often means resurrection. Jesus is telling the thankful Samaritan more than to rise up from the ground. “Rise,” Jesus is telling him, “from sin and death and futility. Rise!” And then Jesus says, “go,” go about your new life.

Now comes the absolutely most important thing Jesus says in this whole passage: “your faith has made you well.” 

Now, we may think, “Weren’t the other nine made well too?” 

No, they were only purged of their leprosy. 

The word Jesus uses of the end to all ten men’s leprosy is ἐκαθαρίσθησαν, meaning they were made clean. But when Jesus tells the grateful Samaritan man “your faith has made you well,” He actually says, “Your faith has saved you.” The word our translation renders as made you well is sozo, which means save. 

Friends, you can bet your whole life on this fundamental truth: WHETHER YOU ARE IN GOOD HEALTH OR BAD, WHETHER YOU LIVE OR DIE, YOUR FAITH IN CHRIST SAVES YOU!

Ten of the lepers were healed, but only one of them was saved. 

Ten received grace; one had faith. 

Ten heard the saving Word of God in Christ; one believed. 

Ten had the kingdom of God come to them; only one entered that kingdom. 

The thankful Samaritan wasn’t saved because he was thankful; he was thankful because Christ had saved him by giving him the gift of faith. He came to faith in Christ the same way we come to faith in Christ: His Word comes to us and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we believe!

Thankfulness is a hallmark of all disciples of Jesus. The Samaritan was so overwhelmed by God’s grace and goodness that not giving praise to God and falling at Jesus’ feet would have been unthinkable to him. 

Is it that way for us? I know that it isn't always for me.

In speaking of Psalm 147:12, which directs God’s people to “Extol the Lord...praise your God,” Martin Luther observed, “We have to be yelled at before we start praising the Lord. Even animals don’t live that shamefully! Pigs recognize the person who gives them their food. They’ll run after her and cry to her. But the world doesn’t even recognize God, let alone thank and praise him…”

It was based on these words of Luther that we used to tell our kids that the reason we prayed at mealtimes was so that we wouldn't be less than pigs. One day when our kids were about seven and four, we were out at some restaurant. The server brought us our food and Ann and I set out, as you do with younger kids, to cut up their portions and just get them generally ready to eat. Then we dove in. At that point, Philip, the older of the two realized we hadn't prayed and said, "We're pigs!"
When the Word of God came to the leprous Samaritan, he was desperate enough, helpless enough, and vulnerable enough, that when God’s undeserved grace came to him through Jesus, he proved to be precisely the kind of good soil that Jesus says elsewhere is needed for the seed of faith to take root and grow. 

The gift of faith in Christ made him thankful for being healed and that faith made him well; it saved him. 

May we always be desperate enough, helpless enough, and vulnerable enough for faith to take root in us, to grow in us, to make us eternally well, right with God. 

And may we always be thankful. Amen

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

Good Monday News

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us..." (Galatians 3:13). (Christ did this when, despite His complete innocence, He bore the weight of our sin on the cross, where He was executed.)

We can never keep God's moral law to perfection. If we make our personal conformity to God' moral law the standard on which we ask God to judge our lives, we will be found wanting and never enter God's kingdom.

But if we believe in Christ and His gospel of new life for all who turn from sin and follow Him, we enter God's kingdom on Christ's merits, not our own.

We are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.

(Check out Ephesians 2:8-10; Romans 3:28; John 3:16-18; Acts 4:12; Romans 3:21-22).

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

Jesus on Marriage and Divorce

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Mark 10:2-16
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus points us to God’s intention for human beings when it comes to marriage, divorce, sexuality, and family living.

We may want to run from these words of Jesus. As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes, to some people in these times, anyone who dares to publicly read Jesus’ words here “is likely to be called cruel, unfeeling, unforgiving, exclusive...'unchristian'...”

But as we dive into Jesus’ words for us today, it’s important to remember Who is speaking them. This is the God Who loved us enough to take on human flesh, Who was, in the words of Hebrews 4:15, “in every respect tested as we are, yet without sin.” This is the sinless Savior Who took our punishment for sin on the cross, then rose from the dead, to offer the undeserved gift of new and everlasting life to all who willingly repent, daily submitting to the death of their own sins and sinful desires and entrusting their lives to the loving will of the God we know only in Jesus Christ.

Jesus words aren’t those of a closed-minded religious bigot, but of the God Who loves us more than anyone else could!

Jesus says to His followers, including you and me, in John 15, “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” I find that when Ann, who loves me, criticizes for something I’ve said or done, I’m initially defensive. But, after awhile, I remember how much she loves me and I’m ready to listen and learn from what she has to say. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts...” So, let’s listen to what our Friend, God, and Savior Jesus has to tell us today.

Please turn to our gospel lesson, Mark 10:2-16.

In verse 2, a group of Pharisees asks Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

It’s no coincidence that the Pharisees ask this question by the Jordan River out in the Judean wilderness, the same setting in which John the Baptist ran afoul of King Herod not long before.

John, you’ll remember, challenged the legitimacy of Herod’s rule because this Herod, Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, had married his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias had divorced Herod Antipas’ brother in order to marry the king. John claimed that Antipas and Herodias had defiled marriage and the royal throne by their adultery. Herodias, you’ll also remember, took particular offense at John the Baptist calling her husband and her out for their unrepentant sin. That’s why she made sure that John was beheaded.

The Pharisees, already anxious to get rid of Jesus, hope to entrap Jesus into offending the royal couple in the dominion of Antipas in the same way John had offended them.

Notice too, the thrust of the Pharisees' question. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

But Jesus isn’t interested in talking about whether it’s lawful for a person to divorce their spouse. In Deuteronomy 24, some 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, God revealed through Moses that it’s legal for a person to divorce a  spouse. But as the former Pharisee turned Christian preacher and evangelist, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial...’ ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.’”

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about how adultery can be a legitimate grounds for divorce.

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says that when an unbelieving spouse leaves the believing spouse--what has been called “spiritual abandonment”--the Christian may have grounds for divorce.

And no loving Christian would insist that a spouse remain tied to someone who perpetrates violence against them, since clearly an abuser isn’t interested in being married, but in dominating another human being.

But Jesus wants to move beyond the law to talk about the intention of God, the will of God, for human beings when it comes to marriage and divorce.

Jesus responds to the Pharisees by asking them, in Mark 10:3, “What did Moses command you?” Alluding to Deuteronomy 24, they reply correctly, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.”

The Pharisees were sticklers for Biblical law. They checked all the right boxes. Warmed a pew? Check. Gave my offerings? Check. Did my time in Catechism? Check. Gave to the poor even though I didn’t want to? Check. But they weren’t interested in surrendering to God so much as getting God to do what they wanted Him to do and to validate what wonderful, worthy, hard-working people they were.

This is what Martin Luther called “works righteousness”: the idea that I can be a good enough person to earn my way into God’s good graces. But it doesn’t work! At birth, you and I are so polluted by the sin we inherit from our fathers and mothers that, in the words of Isaiah, “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” Instead, righteousness comes as a gift only to those who surrender to and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ. Surrender to and trust in Christ is what the Bible means when it talks about faith. Turn to Romans 3:21-22: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law [apart from the demands of the little boxes the Pharisees tried to check off] is revealed...the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe...” in Christ.

Back in our gospel lesson, Jesus points to God’s original intention for marriage. Look at what Jesus says, starting at Mark 10:5: “Because of the hardness of your heart [Moses] wrote you this precept.”

God gave people the option of divorce as a concession to their hard-heartedness. But look at what Jesus says next in Mark 10:6-9. He points back to the book of Genesis: “But from the beginning of the creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man [or woman] separate.”

Even though God makes allowances for human sin, Jesus says it’s God’s will that marriage, the union of a male and a female made one flesh by the grace of God, should be inviolate. Just as war should be a last, dreaded option for nations, to be deferred until every peaceful resolution has been tried, so divorce should be a last, dreaded option for husbands and wives who have become one flesh!

After this time of public teaching on marriage and divorce, verses 10-12 find Jesus sitting with His followers in a house. He uses the time-worn method of hyperbole, exaggeration, to underscore His teaching. Jesus says that whenever a husband or a wife divorces a spouse and the ex-spouse remarries, the ex-spouse is made an adulterer. By expressing things in this way, Jesus is telling His disciples how seriously God takes the marriage vows of husbands and wives. Divorce may be unavoidable, even justifiable at times. But it is always the result of human sin and it always spreads the misery of sin around, even to helpless bystanders.

And the most helpless of all bystanders to divorce are children, which leads inevitably to the last verses of our lesson, Mark 10:13-16.

While Jesus sits with His disciples, people bring their children to be touched by Jesus. The disciples, verse 13 says, “rebuked” people for doing this. The disciples were reprimanding parents and grandparents for bringing their children to Jesus for blessing. Jesus says to let the children come to Him. It’s to people who come to Him in childlike trust that God’s kingdom belongs.

At the end of our lesson, in verse 16, we’re told, “And [Jesus] took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.”

When we were kids, we were taught to sing, “Jesus loves the little children.” He does! But I wonder sometimes how much some parents love their children when they press for divorces from their spouses just because they’re finding life together difficult or challenging.

Unless there’s abuse, adultery, or spiritual abandonment, kids--even grown kids--need their parents to persevere in staying together.

Listen: In twenty-eight years as a pastor, I have seen far more people, whether children or spouses, damaged by divorce than I ever have by marriages in which the husbands and wives have gone through tough times, yet tenaciously prayed, gotten counseling, surrendered each day to Christ, and, in effect, told each other, “No matter how I feel today, by the grace of God given in Christ, I will be with you tomorrow and until death parts us. Period.”

God, I’m convinced, is not calling married people to simply “stay together” while living separate lives. That is NOT what it means for a husband and a wife to become “one flesh.”

But when wives and husbands approach Jesus each day like little children, heeding His commands, trusting in His grace, speaking the truth to one another in love, forgiving each other, praying for one another, and asking God to help them to see the best in each other every day, they will do more than, as some have put it, “divorce-proof” their marriages.

Their marriages will become, in Martin Luther’s phrase, “little churches,” built on the rock of Jesus Christ, where the prayers go up and the blessings come down, and the peace of God that passes all understanding is most intimately and wonderfully known. Amen