1.
Grace,
mercy and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word this weekend of
the Second Sunday in Lent comes to us from Paul’s letter to the Romans in
Romans 4:1-8 and 13-17, it’s entitled, “Abraham: The Father of the Faith,” dear brothers
and sisters in Christ.
2.
Early
in 2003 Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark caused a bit of controversy by
banning eulogies at funeral Masses in his diocese. The reason? It seems that
words of remembrance too easily and often gave way to speeches of praise,
family matters, or even politics. We
ought to pose this question to ourselves: Have our funerals become too much
about the dead and too little about the living Christ? The archbishop’s ban fits well with what Paul
said in Romans 4. The danger of a eulogy at Abraham’s funeral would be this: he
could be described as such a fine man that he had no need of saving or Savior.
Paul rejects that argument in full, with his insistence on grace, not works,
even for Abraham. In at least one
theological sense, genes are destiny. By nature, we are nekrov—that’s Greek for stiff, stinky, hopelessly dead, rotting by the
side of the road. Our only hope is grace bestowed from outside, forgiving
and resurrecting us. That grace flourishes as faith, confessing the Lord who
justifies us and lets us live within his grace now and forever.
3.
Our
journey through the season of Lent began last week with Satan and Jesus
face-to-face in the wilderness. There Satan proved a wily Beast among the
beasts, tempting the Son of God to forsake his baptism. These temptations offered Jesus a range of
avenues out of the wilderness, each more comfortable than the last, but none
leading to the cross laid on him in the waters of the Jordan. At his baptism
the Father named him Son, and the Holy Spirit anointed Jesus as the promised
Suffering Servant (Is 42:1; 61:1–3), sending him toward crucifixion.
4.
Had
Jesus fled the Father and the Spirit, making his own way out of the wilderness
to a destination cross-less and satanic, then we would be left to make our own
way too. Unfortunately, our ways are always the end of us. Hell, after all,
means getting our own way for an eternity. Nothing could be more punishing. The Good News is that Jesus didn’t flee his
destiny, but rather pursued it full force. Setting his face toward Jerusalem,
he stuck his nose into the cosmic mess separating us from our Lord. For Jesus,
being face-to-face with Satan eventually meant being nose-to-nose with sinners
like us, but for our good.
5.
It
was for such encounters that the Lord first came to Abram in Genesis 12, the Old Testament Reading for this Sunday. There
the Lord bestowed on Abram the gifts of name, nation, land, offspring, and
blessing for a single purpose: chasing down and drawing back those lost on
avenues cross-less and satanic, be they Jew or Gentile. The Apostle Paul brings that blessing home to
us in the Epistle lesson for today in
Romans chapter 4. Just as salvation came to Abraham as gift and not as due (Rom
4:4), so Jesus’ Cross is put to us as gift by way of promise, faith, and
righteousness. All of this is our Father’s Gospel work—Christ to us, on us, in
us, for us—through the Holy Spirit’s use of Word and Sacrament. The means of
grace applied to us is our only righteousness.
6.
The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 4:1–8, 13–17,—“1What then shall we say was gained by Abraham,
our forefather according to the flesh? 2For if Abraham was justified by works,
he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3For what does the
Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as
righteousness.” 4Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift
but as his due. 5And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies
the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks
of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 7“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are
forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8blessed is the man against whom the Lord will
not count his sin.” 13 The promise to
Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come
through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14For if it is the
adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is
void. 15For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no
transgression.16That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may
rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent
of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the
father of us all, 17as it is written, “I have made you the father of many
nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the
dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”
7.
Notice
here in Romans 4 that in order to reinforce that a person is justified by faith
and not by circumcision, Paul uses the example of Abraham. Genesis 15:6 says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as
righteousness.” The Scriptures say
this about Abraham before he was circumcised, not after. Even when he was uncircumcised, Abraham was
declared righteous.
8.
Second,
Paul notes that this righteousness was counted to him as a gift. If Abraham was saved by his works, he would
have deserved this righteousness as a reward for what he had done. But there is no mention of works, only of
faith. Abraham believed, and because he
believed God, God declared him as righteous.
Because of this, Abraham isn’t only the father of those who are his
natural descendants; he’s the father of all believers, of all who share the
faith of Abraham. This is the faith
you’ve been given. Abraham believed the
promise, the promise of the Seed through whom all the nations of the earth
would be blessed. Although he was well
advanced in years, Abraham believed that he would be the father of many
nations, and God kept His promise.
9.
Your
faith too has also been counted to you as righteousness. Since you share the faith of Abraham, he is
your father in the faith. In the previous
chapters of Romans, Paul stressed that no one is righteous. Your works can’t save you. You aren’t justified before God by what you
do or don’t do. Instead, you are
justified by faith. As it was for
Abraham, so it is for you. You believe,
and it’s counted to you as righteousness.
10.
But
this is where the devil loves to twist and distort the truth. The devil tempts people to think that their
faith is something they do, a good work they must accomplish to be saved. The devil wants you to regard faith as “your end of the deal”—Jesus died for
you, but you must believe it, as if you had the power and ability to do this on
your own.
11.
As
it was with righteousness, so faith also was God’s gift to Abraham. Without God bestowing the gift of faith on
him, Abraham would have never believed that he would father a son when he was
almost a century old. Likewise, you have
not only been declared righteous, but you have also been given the faith by
which you are justified. Since Jesus was
delivered up for your trespasses and raised again for your justification, you
have been given the gift of faith by which you are now justified.
12.
It
is faith in this gift-giving triune God that justifies (Rom 4:3). In Eph 2:1
Paul is strikingly explicit. By nature we are nekrov, that is roadkill, so dead in trespasses and sin that we’re
stiff and smelly. Dead men can’t raise
themselves from rot. But dead men can be
raised. The bridge between death and life is resurrection, spiritual and
physical. Bestowing the gift that resurrects, the holy breath that enlivens and
enlightens, is the Lord’s work. That gift is faith.
13.
The
Small Catechism’s explanation of the Third Article gets it absolutely right: “I believe that I cannot . . . believe.”
No one decides for Christ. But Christ decides for us, sending his Spirit to
move us from death to life by way of God’s Word and Sacraments. This is faith:
gift given, gift received, gift confessed. Grateful tongues acclaim this
resurrection as a divine work done to
them, not a human work done by
them. All that Abraham got, he got as
gift and not as due. It was not that Abraham worked and God received the
benefits, but rather that God worked in Christ and Abraham received the
blessing. If that is true for our father of the faith, Abraham, it is doubly
true for us as well. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all
understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life
everlasting. Amen.
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