11-11-2024

Good Morning All,

    Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

  We have been justified by faith.  That is truly an amazing and radical action.  God chose to forgive us, chose to love us, and chose to redeem us.  We sometimes call this the happy exchange.  We give Jesus our sins and he gives us his righteousness.  But what does this mean; that we have faith?

    Faith is more than just knowledge, even the devil knows that Jesus exists.  For too many people, faith is simply the existence of knowledge of Jesus.  He was a real person who lived a long time ago and taught some good moral values.  These are the people that the Bible says will be lost but will say to Jesus “Lord, Lord” but Jesus will dismiss.  Faith is more than just knowledge.  Faith changes you.

     “Faith is a divine work in us which changes us and makes us to be born anew of God.  Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake life on it a thousands times” (Martin Luther).  The Word of God in the hearts of men changes lives; it cannot be helped.  Faith moves us to do good works which God creates for us to do.

    One way to look at this is to think of a Christian as an apple tree.  The tree grows from the ground and is nourished by the ground.  It produces apples. But who benefits from the apples?  The tree doesn’t and the ground doesn’t.  The people who eat apples benefit.  The birds and the squirrels benefit but the tree and the ground really don’t benefit.  Sometimes, if the apple tree is really prolific; we might say that it is in really good ground.

    We are the same way.  Our faith grows out of God.  God nourishes our faith with his sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion.  We produce the good works which he gives to us.  The works do not benefit us.  This means that our good works do not make us any better or more important before God.  Nothing we do will impress God or make him love us any more than he already does.  The works we do benefit those around us; our family, friends, strangers; all those who God calls “our neighbor.” 

    God doesn’t need our works any more than the ground needs the apples.  But God can and should receive the glory for our works.  This is how we as Lutherans define good works.  We define good works as acts of love which we do for the glory of God and for the benefit of our neighbor.  If we all do good works, just think about how happy everyone would be.

    Yet our old sinful nature still clouds our life.  This nature continues to harass and cloud our faith.  Here we might make the cry to God, “I believe; help my unbelief!”  We need to continually pray for God’s strength and hear his Words of forgiveness when we fail.  We need to trust in him with faith and dare to live in the confidence of His grace.

Dear Father, we fall short of your will far more than we keep it.  Forgive us when we fail to do what we should.  Forgive us for not loving our neighbor as ourselves.  Strengthen our faith that we may serve you in your kingdom.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray.  Amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret