“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” Romans 3:21-25 I Want to Be Righteous Too many people believe that the Church is for righteous people. We seem to hear the words “the Church is a hospital for sinners not a club for the righteous,” but those words don’t really register. I mean, who wants to be in the hospital when there is such a lovely club to join? I think we struggle on the edge of that cliff until we grasp what St. Paul says in Romans. We are sinners because we break God’s law. We sin sexually. We sin behaviorally. We sin in our evil and malicious thoughts. We sin in our greed and gluttony. We sin in our failure to act when injustice is done and we sin in our over-reaction when we perceive injustice has been done to us. We are sinners because we break God’s law, but even if we didn’t break God’s law, we would still be sinners. See, that’s the thing you must grasp before you can understand forgiveness. Every single person on earth is confronted with the fact that not only do they do sin, but they are sin no matter what they do. No one likes the feeling of “being sin.” So, we try to fix it. Some people adjust God’s law so that it does not accuse them or someone they love. They throw out anything that condemns them or a loved one. That part of God’s Word does not apply to us because it’s obsolete. Now there are some parts of God’s Word that do not apply to us, but not because it is obsolete. It is because Jesus fulfilled the law for us and it is no longer needed. Because Jesus set us apart from the world with Holy Baptism, we no longer have to circumcise our boys. You can if you want, but it’s a matter of choice. We no longer have to worship on Saturday. Jesus rose on Sunday and ushered in the new creation so that every day is sabbath for us. We no longer have to refrain from eating pork because Jesus pronounced all things clean and made us His children by faith created in us by the Holy Spirit. It is not what goes into us that makes us unclean. It is what comes out of us as Paul says. But Jesus and His apostles make clear that the moral portions of God’s Law, the 10 Commandments, are still fully in force and we cannot dismiss them because they are inconvenient. Some people hide their sin because they think others will believe them to be more righteous than they are. It doesn’t really matter because you cannot hide anything from God. As your pastor, I get to see the underbelly of the beast and I can tell you with absolute confidence that there is not one self-righteous person at Trinity. There are some who lie better than others. They lie to themselves, to others and to God but saying it won’t make it so. They are still poor, miserable sinners. They spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to cover up their sin and that is too bad. I wish they could let their façade go and use all that energy to serve God and others. The goal is righteousness, not self-righteousness. For thousands of years people have gone to extremes to try to make themselves righteous. They have sealed themselves off away from the world in convents and monasteries. They have mutilated their flesh (Origen even castrated himself to try to get rid of impure sexual thoughts – sadly for Origen, he reports that it didn’t work). They have put on elaborate performances to fool followers into believing that they were more righteous than others (see the televangelists for example). All that energy was expended for naught. One cannot make himself righteous no matter to what lengths one might go. All that happens is that you separate yourself from people who would love and support you in this broken world. Paul is clear. All righteousness comes from God and God alone. When we wrap our arms around our sin, carry it uphill to the foot of the cross and dump it at Jesus’ feet, we are free. I cannot overcome my sin. I cannot make myself righteous. Only Jesus can do that on the day of my death. He will remove all that sinful corruption from my soul and I will finally be righteous. Until then, every day, I load up as much as I can carry and dump it at Jesus’ feet and He forgives it. The purpose of the Holy Church is to help us do that. It’s not a club for righteous people. It’s a family of unrighteous people, and it has all the characters in it that your immediate family has: crazy uncles, obnoxious aunts, judgmental cousins, wild sisters, overbearing brothers and little rug rat, crumb-snatchers climbing the curtains. But this family is what gathers around us and lifts us up in the hard times. This family also whacks us upside the head when we’re being dumb. This family is how we travel through this dying world and into eternal life together where we will all be made fully righteous. Pastor Rogers |
