LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1986, Sheet 81

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CONVENTION SERMON

Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and
from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

What a magnificent experience this is! With glorious
singing and uplifting music, we join hands and hearts with
the representatives of more than 6,000 congregations
throughout North America, and indeed our partner
churches throughout the world, to lift high the cross of
Jesus Christ—in song, in word, and in the body and blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing that we do here in the
coming week, as we transact the business of our beloved
church body, is more important, more powerful, more com-
pelling than what our gracious God—Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit—does in and through His Word and Sacra-
ments—this evening and every day of our lives. We are
alive in Christ! That is the theme of our convention and
the focus of our worship tonight simply because it is the
clear and compelling message of God Himself. Hear His
Word through the holy apostle, St. Paul, in Gal. 2:20 (NIV):

I have been crucified with Christ and I no
longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I

live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.

I. To Be Alive in Christ Is to Know that
We Were Once Dead in Trespasses and Sins

There is a saying among us that life is cheap, and so it
sometimes seems to be, at least in some cases and contexts.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers die in battle, and, it
often seems, die needlessly. Millions of unborn babies die
in their mothers’ wombs, millions expose themselves to
harm and danger by living recklessly, wantonly, and care-
lessly as though life itself were not a precious commodity.
But ask anyone who has stared death in the face, who has
escaped its jaws, or who, even now, this evening, faces it
as an early probability, and you will know that life is any-
thing but cheap.

If this is so for our life in the flesh, how much more is
it so for our life in the Spirit! If there is any clear and
consistent teaching in the Scriptures it is that all of us,
without exception, have sinned and come short of God’s
law. “The wages of sin is death,” writes the apostle Paul.
Not merely punishment, or pain, or rejection, or disease,
but death itself—cold, final, and eternal. The apostle
writes to the Ephesians, “You were dead in trespasses and
sins.” And the reason, as he tells his readers again and
again, is that the acts of our sinful nature are at enmity
with God; “I warn you,” he wrote to the Galatians, “that
those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of
God.”

To us, who this evening celebrate our life in Christ, let
us hear that powerful word from God again: God’s life is
not cheap. These are words addressed to you and to me
and to all people—people who were dead in our trespasses
and sins, and whose every transgression or attempt to live
under the Law or achieve God’s favor through our behav-
ior, again returns us to that fearful triumvirate of sin, law,
and death itself. Paul’s words to the Galatians recount the
deep pain he feels as he reviews the fact that some of his

Galatian fellow Christians were again reverting to a life
under the Law, to a life that attempted to be justified before
God through one’s own works and deeds. No, says the apos-
tle Paul, the way that begins with Law and attempts to
stand before God on one’s own is a way that leads to certain
death. To be alive in Christ is to remember that we were
once dead in trespasses and sins, and to know that the
way of Law and of self-justification puts us right back there
again!

II. Crucified with Christ
the Old “I” No Longer Lives

But St. Paul’s word to the Galatians and to us this eve-
ning is not only that sad and terrifying word of Law that
reminds us of death, but the sweet and powerful Gospel
that assures us of life itself. He captures that whole beau-
tiful Gospel, addressed from the first to the last page of
Holy Scripture, in that magnificent sentence of our text:
“I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me.” Just think of it! The sheer miracle of grace
that has happened for all of us who were dead in trespasses
and sins! The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for
me!

The sheer unmistakable beauty and power of those
words is overwhelming! Not merely some noble man, some
great prophet, some angel sent by God, but God’s own Son
loved me and gave Himself for me. Indeed, when the full-
ness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made
of a woman, made under the Law, to redeem us who were
under the Law. God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son
that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have
eternal life. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God
is life eternal. And all of this because God’s own Son loved
me and gave Himself for me! He did not simply wave our
sins to one side through some act of divine power. He plays
no game of heavenly pretense, acting as though our sins
were not there. No, He loved me and gave Himself for me,
bearing in His own body our sins and crucifying them with
Him on that awful tree!

Dr. Martin Luther, in what is perhaps the finest com-
mentary ever written on this magnificent epistle, put it
like this:

It was not I who loved the Son of God and gave myself for

Him, as the sophists pretend that they love the Son of God

and give themselves for Him. For they teach that purely by

his natural endowments a man is able ... to love God and

Christ above all things. They anticipate the love of God and

of Christ by doing what lies within them; they become monks

and observe poverty, chastity, and obedience. Thus they dream
that they give themselves for Christ. They turn the words of

Paul upside down and read them this way: “We have loved

Christ and have given ourselves for Him.” But while these

wicked men, inflated with the mind of their own flesh, dream

and imagine that they are doing what lies within them, loving

God and giving themselves for Christ, they actually abolish

the Gospel, ridicule, deny, blaspheme, spit upon, and tread

Christ underfoot. In words they confess that He is the Justifier

and the Savior; but in fact they deprive Him of the power either

to justify or to save, and they attribute this to their self-chosen
acts of worship. This is not living by faith in the Son of God;
it is living by one’s own righteousness and works.