HOME

08.30.09

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

THE RIGHTEOUS LIFE THAT GOD DESIRES

PSALM 25; JAMES 1:17-27

• The Polarity of Belief
• Simplistic Faith
• It’s easy to be a Christian
• All you have to do is believe in Jesus
• Once you get saved by believing in Jesus, life becomes smooth sailing
• You can live your life any way you want because God will always forgive you
• All you have to do is show up at church once in awhile
• That statement reflects the belief of a large percentage of our population where religious belief and values are concerned
• Christianity is a “quick-fix solution” to all of life’s problems
• Once we believe in Jesus, God will instantly fix everything, and any time we get into trouble, we can go running to God to bail us out
• Because God loves us and forgives us, we can do anything we want because God’s grace is always there to cover over our sins
• What’s important is not how you live your life, but whether you believe in Jesus
• Belief in Jesus is the only thing that matters
• Salvation By Works
• Contrast that to the mindset of another large portion of our population who say that it makes no difference what you believe
• What matters is how you live your life
• As long as you try your best to be good and don’t intentionally do others harm, God is going to be pleased with you
• As long as you try to be loving, support a charity or two, and volunteer a little bit of your time to help others out, you can earn your way into heaven
• You can believe whatever you want or believe nothing at all
• As long as you live a good life, God will be pleased
• These two positions characterize a controversy that has raged since the early days of the church
• That is the controversy between faith and works
• At the center of this controversy is the question “How is it that we are saved?”
• Are we saved purely by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, or do the good things we do in our life somehow earn us the favor of God?
• The Reformation Controversy
• It was this question that helped fuel the fires of the Protestant Reformation
• In the decades prior to the Reformation, the Church definitely practiced a works theology
• As long as you attended church, made your weekly confession to the priest, paid your tithe, and generally tried to live right, God would be pleased with you and grant you entrance to heaven when you died
• But if you weren’t sure that your living was “good enough,” you could go to the priest, who would gladly sell you an “indulgence”
• By paying what was an exorbitant fee to the church, the priest would guarantee in writing that you will go to heaven when you die
• It was this works-based theology that raised the hackles of a young monk named Martin Luther
• Luther especially had issues with the practice of the sale of indulgences
• This practice said that only the wealthy had a place in heaven because only the wealthy could afford to “buy their way into heaven”
• There was no place for the poor, no matter how faithful they were or how good a life they lived
• Luther challenged the pope in this regard, calling the sale of indulgences a scam to fill the coffers of the church and line the pockets of the priests
• Based upon his own reading of the Scriptures, Luther argued against the church’s works-based theology
• As Luther studied the Scriptures for himself, he happened upon the words of the apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9
• “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
• Luther argued that it was God’s grace alone through faith in Jesus that saves us, and nothing we do will ever earn us God’s favor
• Seeking to call the church back to its biblical roots and a faith-based theology, Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany
• For that act he was, ultimately, excommunicated
• The Place of Works in the Life of the Believer
• Not Either/Or
• As Christians of the Reformed faith tradition today, it is our belief that salvation is ours solely by the grace of God as it comes to us through faith in Jesus Christ
• Even our faith is a gift of God, for it is not possible for us to have faith without the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives
• Our salvation is purely God’s doing and nothing we can do for ourselves will influence it
• That raises the question then, “What is the role of good works in the life of a Christian who has been saved by the grace of God?”
• If good works are not necessary for our salvation, do we need to be concerned about doing good works at all?
• The answer to that question is an emphatic YES!
• Good works are absolutely essential in the life of the Christian who has been saved by the grace of God
• These works are essential not because they help to earn our salvation, however
• They are essential because they are the evidence to the world that we have been saved by God’s grace
• The way we live is a very important part of our witness
• Salvation by grace changes the way we live, the way we relate to others, and it changes our attitudes about life and the world
• If we are not radically changed once we encounter the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, one would be right to question whether we are truly saved
• Dr. John Gerstner, my church history professor in seminary, approached this grace vs. works controversy by saying, “We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.”
• His point in saying this was that our salvation ought to bring about in us righteous living
• Because we are saved by the grace of God, our lives ought to reflect our thankfulness to God by living the kind of life God desires for us to live
• The Evidence of Faith
• This is the kind of life for which David prayed in Psalm 25
• He offers his soul to God—and soul in the Hebrew Scriptures means our whole self, body mind, and spirit—and he prays for God to show him God’s way for his life
• The righteous life God desires is to live an open life, one that is flexible and teachable, so we might learn God’s ways and apply that learning to our living
• The righteous life is one that trusts in the mercy of God to forgive our sins and seeks God’s help to turn away from sin and walk in the way of truth
• The righteous life is also one that knows for certain that “All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant”
• When we live in a right relationship with God (that’s what the word covenant means) we can rest in the goodness of the Lord, knowing that God desires only good for us
• Even in the midst of calamity, we will seek the good that God is doing in us and not allow the adversity to be an opportunity for temptation and sin
• These are the things for which David prays so that he might live the righteous life that God desires
• The New Testament Letter of James could easily be subtitled “Practical Advice for Christian Living,” for James focuses on how to apply the faith we profess to the living of our lives
• While some, including Luther, discount the value of the Letter of James because of its emphasis on law instead of grace, the law to which James often refers isn’t the law of the Pharisees that Jesus condemned
• Instead, it is the law that Jesus taught: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”
• So when James uses the word “law”, he means “the law of Jesus”
• He begins this section by saying that God has already given us everything we need to live the kind of life God desires
• All that God gives to us is good and God’s nature never changes, so we can live in the confidence of the goodness of God
• The goodness of God is packaged in the seed of the word that has been implanted within us, and that “word” is Jesus Christ, “the Word made flesh”
• Hopefully, the soil of our heart is the good soil Jesus spoke about rather than shallow, rocky soil, or soil so hard that nothing can penetrate
• Hopefully, that soil is not so cluttered with anxious concerns that choke the seed of the word as weeds choke plants
• As that seed takes root in our hearts and grows, the fruit of that seed will become more and more evident in the way we live our lives
• James’ basic premise in this letter is that faith is useless unless it changes the way we live
• James goes on, then, to list some of the qualities that ought to be apparent in us as we live the righteous life God desires
• To live a righteous life, we must be quick to listen and slow to speak
• James recognizes the damage the human tongue can cause, so a righteous life is one in which we do our best to control our tongue
• Harsh and bitter words testify to the fact that we do not love God with all our being or love our neighbors as we ought, for if we truly loved God and neighbor, that love would be reflected in everything we say
• And too often, we are too busy talking to really listen to what others have to say
• Our lack of respect for other’s opinions is a testimony to our own selfishness
• In the righteous life, there is no room for anger, for human anger is contrary to the purposes of God
• Anger is like cancer cells that multiply and destroy the health of the body
• When our lives are a breeding ground for anger, there is no room for forgiveness, and where there is no room for forgiveness, love for God and neighbor is absent
• So James urges us to strip off everything that is unkind and immoral, just as we strip off our clothes when they are dirty
• Only when we allow our souls to stand naked before God can we be clothed with the righteousness of Jesus
• Where the faith vs. works controversy is concerned, James nails down a solution by proposing a middle ground: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves, do what is says.”
• James illustrates this is the second chapter of his letter—2:14-17
• In order for faith in Jesus Christ to impact the world, it must first change the way we live our lives
• A faith that does not change us is no faith at all
• We can’t have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ and continue to live the way we did before
• We cannot look at ourselves in the mirror of Jesus and ignore the way we are
• We are called, in our living, to reflect the life and love of Jesus
• Indeed, we are saved by the grace of God, and it is that grace that changes us
• In response to that grace and in thankfulness to God, we must live the righteous life that God desires
• As the seed of the Word grows within us, our likeness to the Living Word Jesus Christ will become ever more apparent