Made Righteous through Faith

Cheddington Thursday13 October 2011 Midweek Communion

First Reading Romans 3

Righteousness Through Faith

²¹ But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.

²² This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference,

²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

²⁴ and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

²⁵ God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished

²⁶ — he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

²⁷ Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith.

²⁸ For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

²⁹ Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too,

³⁰ since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.

³¹ Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.

Gospel Luke 11

Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to N.

All Glory to you, O Lord.

⁴⁷ Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them.

⁴⁸ So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs.

⁴⁹ Because of this, God in his wisdom said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.'

⁵⁰ Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world,

⁵¹ from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.

⁵² Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.

⁵³ When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions,

⁵⁴ waiting to catch him in something he might say.

This is the Gospel of the Lord.
All Praise to you, O Christ.

Sermon

Hard to overstate importance of this reading, both as a foundation text for the Reformation, but also as an aid to our understanding of what was accomplished by Jesus on the cross.

Paul starts by affirming that all have sinned and fallen short of the righteousness and glory of God. No works of the law can change this sorry state that we as humanity find ourselves in.

Yet God comes to our aid. Through the death of Jesus God accomplishes three things. He justifies, he redeems and he effects atonement. It would take too long to explore these three, but here’s a few thoughts.

Justification does not mean that God stamps ‘not guilty’ on our heavenly passport. Instead, God repairs the breach between humanity and God through his grace and the death of Jesus Christ. Justification means we are ‘made righteous’ not through anything we have done, but freely by the grace of God himself.

Secondly, redemption. Bonds can be redeemed. Slaves are redeemed. Glass bottles used to be redeemed – you took them to a recycling centre and got back a few pence for each one. Redemption is a liberation. It brings freedom, and ownership passes from one person to another. This is how God has redeemed us. Once we were slave to sin. Now we are free.

It’s not, I think, that Jesus had to die in order to redeem us. He did die, through the evil of wicked men, but still, that was the path God chose for our redemption.

Thirdly atonement. At-one-ment. A purely invented word to suit the purpose. Here we have the language of sacrifice. Like in the Old Testament when an animal was sacrificed. This is not a debt paid to an angry God. But through its action, we are made one again with the God from whom we were estranged through sin. We are at one again.

How this came about it’s hard for us to begin to grasp, and certainly too complex a notion for us to explore in a few minutes on a Thursday morning. It’s enough today for us to be thankful, as we join together in our communion with each other, and as we tell again the story of what God’s grave has done for us, freely, undeserved and abundantly.