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

Impossible Righteousness...Forgiving Christ

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

Matthew 5:21-37
I was baptized as an infant. 

As I was growing up, I loved going to church and I loved Jesus. 

In my pre-school and elementary school years, I broke all the Sunday School attendance records.

I was president of my third-grade Sunday School class. 

I starred in all the church plays. (I remember vividly playing the apostle Paul imprisoned with Silas, both of us shackled with construction paper chains!) 

My dad told Ann this past Thursday, “After we came home from church on Sundays, we had church again because Mark would re-preach the pastor’s sermon almost word for word.” 

My great-grandmother called me her “little preacher.” 

According to my pastor, I was the star pupil in Catechism class. When I got a 92 on an exam, he handed it back to me and said, “You could do better, Mark.” 

Here’s the deal: I believed in Jesus. 

To the extent that I was able to understand, when I heard His Word calling me to turn away from sins, I did that, asking for God’s forgiveness. 

And when I heard His Word, with its power to save and create faith, I believed.

But, as you know, when I was about fourteen, I stopped believing in Jesus. I was an atheist...for more than ten years. 

No trauma caused this change. I was just an adolescent who thought that science had somehow disproven God’s existence, as though knowing the answers to the what, when, and how of the universe somehow also answered the questions of its why and who. 

On top of that, my dad was working eighty hours a week, we had transferred to a different church to which none of us felt connected, and, I suppose, getting five kids ready for church was a mountain my folks found too difficult to climb. 

The upshot of it all was that I lost my faith. 

I no longer had a relationship with Jesus. 

I was dead, lost, just like the prodigal son, who knew about and had experienced the love of his father, but walked away from that relationship until he came to his senses and returned. He had been lost but was found. He was dead but was alive again. 

The amazing thing is that through the preaching and teaching of the Lutheran congregation that was Ann’s home church in Columbus, I heard the Law that convicted me of my sin and I heard the Gospel that brought me once more to faith in the crucified and risen Jesus. I was lost but was found. I was dead but was made alive.

Over the past two Sundays, as we’ve listened to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we’ve heard Him make a series of gracious declarative statements about us. He has conferred status on us that we do not deserve, but which He gives by grace through the faith in Him that His Word creates within us. 

“Blessed are you…” Jesus has told us. 

“You are the salt of the earth,” He has said. “You are the light in the world.” 

Elsewhere in the New Testament, we hear echoes of Jesus’ gracious words for Christian disciples: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession...Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10) 

And what do we do to get the incredible gift of life with God that u starts now and culminates in perfection in eternity? Nothing. 

As Ephesians 2:8 reminds us: “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

But the Bible reminds us that, just like the Prodigal Son and just like Mark Daniels, it’s possible for Christians to walk away from God and the salvation He gives through Jesus. The apostle Paul tells the young pastor Timothy, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” (1 Timothy 4:1) 

There is evidence of the devil’s work in churches all around the world today--in those that say that God saves everyone no matter how contemptuous they may be of Christ or God’s Word as well as in those that say God only saves those who follow their rigid rules. 

Here’s the deal: When God saves us in Christ, we are saved. But God doesn’t hold believers in shackles. 

If we refuse to hear His Word calling us to repentance and faith, we erect a wall between God and ourselves. 

This is why Jesus warns, “...every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit [that is, refusing to let the Holy Spirit convict us of sin or convince of us Christ’s power to save us] will not be forgiven…” (Matthew 12:31). 

God gives life. 

He declares you His own through faith in Jesus. 

But He will not stop you if you choose to walk away from life with Him.

All of this, I believe, lay in the background of Jesus’ words in today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 5:21-37. 

If almost all of Jesus’ words up to this point in the Sermon on the Mount have been Gospel--pure, undeserved grace, His words today are Law, showing us the depths of our sin and our need of His grace. 

At the end of last Sunday’s lesson, Jesus said, “...unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20) And, we said that we have that righteousness through Jesus, Who covers those who repent and believe in Him with His righteousness. 

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus shows us how high a standard for righteousness God has for human beings. 

He says that not only are we not to murder but that even anger against fellow Christians can be sinful. 

He says that to look at someone lustfully is a violation of the sixth commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.” 

He says that divorce apart from a spouse’s disloyalty is a sin. 

And He says that our truthfulness should be such that we needn’t resort to oaths. 

Quick poll, no need to raise hands, two questions: How many feel like you’ve been innocent of all these sins as God interprets them? 

And if you feel utterly innocent, the second question is this: How long have you been in living in denial about yourself? 

Truly, no human being measures up to the standards for purity of life and thought that we find in these words about the righteousness we need for entering the kingdom of heaven. 

This is what Scripture teaches. “There is no one righteous, not even one,” we’re told in Romans 3 and elsewhere in Scripture.

When I first began digging into God’s Word with a group at that Lutheran congregation in Columbus, I began to see the depths of my sin and rebellion against God. I wondered if I wasn’t doomed to separation from God, now and always. 

But I ran into passages of Scripture like this (listen carefully, please): 

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:8-11)

If we take our cues from the world, accepting its standards, being pacified by its entertainments and rewards, relying on ourselves, following our own deceitful hearts, we will drift from God. 

But if we remain attentive to God’s Word, we will hear God’s call to repent--to turn from sin--and we’ll be saved by His gospel. Christ will transform us. He will make us new each day. 

This is the work God does in us when we read, study, and listen to His Word together and on our own, when we worship and receive the sacraments: God saves us from our sin and replaces it with the righteousness of Jesus. 

That’s grace! 

And for that, this old sinner says, “Thank You, God!” Amen

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