LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1995, Page 76

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150TH ANNIVERSARY BIBLE STUDY 77

he wanted to be cured of his leprosy and came and Elisha
told him go wash in the River Jordan. If you have ever been
there and seen it in the springtime, muddy old thing, and
Naaman says, “Aren’t the rivers. of Damascus a whole lot
better? Why should I do such a simple, stupid thing as
that?” “Which ones?”

Well, Jesus runs down a lot of them, doesn’t He? The
fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and sums up the
Second Table of the Law and says, “You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” “Oh, those? All those I have kept
from when I was a little boy. I never shot anybody, put
cyanide in their ice tea, took anything from anybody, al-
ways tried to love my neighbor as much as I love myself.”

And Jesus’ directive after the young man answered that
way? He didn’t scorn him. He didn’t say, “What’s the matter
with you, you lummox? Have you forgotten everything you

learned in confirmation class?” Mark says Jesus loved him.

He didn’t scorn him. But He says, “Go sell everything you
have, give it to the poor, and come follow Me.” Mark says,
“Take up your cross, also suffer with Me. Be like the birds of
the air that don’t have where to lay their head: Follow Me.”

And the man leaves sorrowful. He had great posses-
sions.

“And now,” as Luther says, “We smell the roast,” don’t
we? Now we know what is going on. And so they leave
today, many who don’t have nearly the commitment that
this young man had, those who simply want a little bit of
religion, but don’t want to get too much involved. As one
writer puts it, they say, “I would like to buy three dollars
worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or dis-
turb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk,
or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of Him to
make me love a black man or gather beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of
the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal
in a paper sack. I would like to buy three dollars worth of
God, please.” And Jesus’ conclusion? He didn’t run after
him and say, “Well, would you consider half of your posses-
sions, or a third? We would love to have you in the church.
What if we cut the instruction from 13 hours to 3 hours?”
Instead He said, “How hard it is for a rich man,” and we
say, “Yes, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.” “It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,” and
whether you interpret that to be a real needle or whether
that needle in the entrance to the city, regardless of what
kind of needle, it is impossible. “By the works of the Law
there shall no flesh be justified in His sight.” “Whosoever
keeps the whole law and. yet offends in one point is guilty of
all.” “Not of works lest any man should boast.” “Not by
works of righteousness which we have done.” With man it
is impossible,

“But with God all things are possible.” And how our won-
derful, wonderful, incredible God does this is found in the
second passage that is referred to in your book, Romans
3:23-24. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. Being justified freely by His grace through the redemp-
tion that is in Christ Jesus.” All have sinned. Who can say, “I
have made my heart pure, I am free from sin?” “If we say we

" have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

But whether it is at a synodical convention or whether
it’s in the life of our individual parishes or whether it is in
our home in our relations with husband, wife, or children,
we like to put the blame on someone else. Your study docu-
ment talks about that on page 13, if you look there for a
moment, in what the writers call the blame game. It’s al-
ways somebody else’s fault. “I did it, but it wasn’t my fault.
He verbally abused me for years.” Haven’t we heard a lot
about that in recent times? “I know it’s wrong, but the gov-
ernment gives me no choice. We have to live together with-
out marriage or our benefits are cut in half.” Haven’t we
heard a lot about that? It’s not our fault. It’s not really sin.

Many years ago Bishop Fulton Sheen, at a national
prayer breakfast, talked about this and said, “Now we come
to the fact that we are sinners. We Americans do not like to
hear about sin. We Catholics believe in the Immaculate
Conception of the blessed Virgin Mary. We used to be the
only ones who did. Now all Americans believe they are im-
maculately conceived.

“There is no sin,” he said. “We just make mistakes. We
were fed on grade B milk. We had insufficient playgrounds,
or our mother loved us too much. Or our father loved us too
little.”

We are justified freely by His grace. Justified! Justified!
Forgiven! Declared just! Holy! Pure! Without a spot or stain
of sin! Little Jacob on page 9 of your booklet talks about this.
He and Quinlin were both little nix-noxes, going around call-
ing everybody wimps and geeks, making a nuisance of them-
selves in the classroom. Very frustrating to the teacher. At
the end of the class, she wanted to check to see how well she
had done in explaining this difficult word, justified. And she
asked, “What does the word justified mean?” There was com-
plete silence, for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, Jacob
raised his hand and with a joyous smile on his face said,
“Justified means no matter what I’ve done wrong today in
class, God is willing to look at me just-if-I’d never done it.”
Freely! By His undeserved love. By grace.

Doesn’t make sense, does it? Way beyond reason. In-
credible! Unfathomable! The riches and the mercy of God,
that freely by His grace He forgives not just the things that
we have done wrong, but all the good that we have ne-
glected in terms of human care and compassion and kind-
ness. No wonder the message of the cross is foolishness to
those who are perishing. The foolishness of the cross, the
wisdom of God, the power of God that freely by His grace
He justifies. __

But God is not like some kindly old grandpa who simply
says, “Well, you know, kids will be kids, and so I’ll forget
about it.” He is also a holy and righteous God, so we are told.
We are justified freely by His grace through the redemption,
the buying back, that took place through the shedding of the
blood of Jesus Christ. The pangs of hell, the agony of soul—
as though He had committed all of those sins. Yes, “without
the shedding of blood there is no remission.” What a price!
“Not with gold or silver but with His holy precious blood and
with His innocent suffering and death.”

And verse 22 tells us that this becomes ours through ~

faith, this trust, this conviction, worked by God the Holy
Spirit through Word and Sacrament, that God truly has

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