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For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by His life.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen. Dear Della and the baptized, St. Paul is interested in this chapter 5 of Ephesians to let us know. So, to remind us, maybe even to impress upon us, how it was with us when Jesus was dying on the cross.
Now, at first, it seems very strange because if you ask what you were doing when Jesus was dying, you would say, well, I didn’t exist yet. That was, you know, almost 2,000 years ago. I wasn’t even, my great-great-great-great-grandparents weren’t even around back then. How was it with me when Jesus was dying on the cross? It doesn’t make sense.
But Paul wants to press this into our hearts and our minds and our consciences. Three times in the text he says, while we were, Christ died. While we were, Christ died. Verse 6, for while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. See it? Or look at verse 8, God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Or a third time in verse 10, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.
So Paul wants us to know that while we were weak, while we were sinners, and while we were God’s enemies, Christ was dying for us. What is he doing? Saint Paul, by the Holy Spirit, wants all of us to know that there is nothing in us, nothing about us, nothing from us, nothing accomplished by us that motivated the Son of God to take on human flesh and to take on our sins and die in our place.
Jesus did not come to die for the strong. He did not come to die for the righteous. He did not even come to die for His friends, but for weak, sinful enemies. This is a big question that always comes up in theology, is what are we? How do we think of ourselves? Are we free to choose God to follow after Him, to do good works, to serve and bless God by our own efforts, or do we need the grace of God to help us?
Then there’s the question of whether with the grace of God, we can begin to do good works and serve and do all these sorts of things, or are we, and this is what we confess, dead in our trespasses and sins so that we can’t do in and of ourselves anything good to please God?
That’s true, but Paul says it’s even worse than that. It’s not just that we’re dead, it’s that we are in fact actively in opposition to God. Actively rebelling against Him, actively running towards Him. If you can imagine it, you know, if God stands here at the baptismal font and we say, well, are we able to walk towards Him? And we say, no, no, we’re not. We actually can’t move towards Him at all. We just stay put.
But Paul says, no, in fact, it’s even worse than that. You’re worse than dead. You’re worse than stuck. You’re worse than bound to your own sins. You in fact are a rebel against God. It’s perhaps the most extreme language that the Bible uses to describe our sinful nature in this text, in verse 10. But it’s necessary for us to know this, that you and I are born, according to our sinful nature, as the enemies of God, as haters of God, as rebels against God and His kingdom.
We need to know this, well, I suppose for a lot of reasons. I mean, number one, because it’s true, and number two, because there’s always a danger. I always wonder what people think that we’re doing in here, the neighbors when they hear us ringing the bell, and they say, well, they must be doing something in there.
And I’m just gathering around, and what are they doing? This is my best guess, is what our neighbors think that we’re doing in here, that we gather to sit here and talk about and think about how good we are and how bad they are. That’s my best guess, to talk about how we’ve got it all together, about how we’ve achieved righteousness on our own, about how God must really love us because we’re something special, and oh boy, all those people out there who are forsaken and godless and all this sort of thing.
But see, Paul wants to fight directly against that idea, that there’s something special about me that caused God to come and die for me, that there’s something special about what I’ve done or what I’ve accomplished or what I’ve prayed or anything about it. No, the death of Jesus is motivated by His love and His love alone. You didn’t do anything to cause it or to invite it or to woo God down to do this accomplishment.
Last week we were looking in Heidelberg at some theses that Luther wrote, the Heidelberg Theses, and here’s one of them, and I think this is what Luther’s getting after, the same thing that Paul is. He says this, the love of God does not find, but creates that which is pleasing to it. Our human love is very different.
Our human love is always looking for the thing that pleases it. Our human love is motivated by the thing that is lovely, so I find something lovable and then I give my love to that. And we think, well if that’s how we are, that must be how God is. That if He’s going to love us, He must look down and find us to be something lovable. Ha! He looks at us and says, oh boy, you guys are the greatest, you know what I’m going to do for you because you’re so great? I’m going to send my son to die for you and then we can be together forever.
Remember, Paul says, no, no. God’s love does not find that which is pleasing to it; God’s love creates that which is pleasing to it. In other words, there’s nothing in you and nothing in me and nothing in all of the world that would draw Jesus toward us to rescue and save us; in fact, quite the opposite. Everything about us is repellent to the holiness of God, but still, still, for us, weak, sinful, rebellious enemies of God, for us, for you, Christ dies.
Now this is almost unbelievable; if it wasn’t written down you couldn’t believe it, but it’s also incredible, because I think one of the fears that grips most Christians is something like this: Well, I’m baptized now, my sins are forgiven, I have the Holy Spirit, so I better do something to make sure God stays happy with me. I better keep earning His love, I better keep wooing Jesus to be my Savior and my friend, and we become afraid when we sin, when we break His commandments, when we add to our prayers, when we rebel against those in authority, when we’re angry and lustful and greedy and deceptive.
We become afraid that now we must have earned God’s wrath. But listen, while we were sinners, Christ died for us. While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Jesus is for you pure love and pure grace and pure kindness. And He, not because of anything that we’ve done, He simply, because of His great love for you, came and bled and died.
Now this is our confidence and I want us to hold on to this because the reason Paul wants us to exclude anything in us is because the more we recognize the depth of our own sin, the more we recognize the height of His love. If you want to think of it like this, it’s the glory, comfort, seesaw. You remember the seesaw? It used to exist before it was outlawed as a dangerous weapon.
Remember the seesaw you’d get on one end and your three kids would get on the other and they would stay away at the top and you’d say, this should be outlawed? The seesaw goes like this, and this is the glory, comfort, seesaw. The way it works is that if God gets all the glory, then we get all the comfort. But if we try to pull down on the glory side and get a little glory for ourselves, take a little good works, take a little effort, take a little something for ourselves, then we lose the comfort. The comfort starts to disappear.
And so this is what Paul is doing. He says, look, there’s nothing in you that has anything to do with salvation. All the glory belongs to Christ. You are God’s enemies, weak, sinful human beings. All the glory belongs to Christ and when all the glory is His, then all the comfort is ours. Christ is ours. His life and His suffering and His death are ours. His peace and righteousness and holiness is ours, all because while we were weak, while we were sinners, and while we were His enemies. Christ died for us.
May this truth be our wisdom and our peace in life and death in the name of Jesus. Amen. And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
