The Rev. Paul J Cain
1 Corinthians 9:24–10:5
Grace Alone
Septuagesima, 24 January 2016
Immanuel Lutheran Church, Sheridan, Wyoming
In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
Christians are saved by grace alone. Sola gratia. That’s the
Latin. We’ll talk about faith alone in two weeks and Scripture alone next
Sunday. What does it mean to be saved by grace alone? We are saved by the work
of Jesus Christ in our place as our substitute. Our salvation from sin, death,
and the devil is a gift from God. That we are saved by grace alone means that
you and I are saved apart from our conduct, apart from our good works, apart
from an act of our will, apart from our piety. And we dare never claim that
faith is our doing. Faith, too is a gift of the Lord.
Kristyn Getty says it this way:
What grace is mine that He who dwells in endless light
Called through the night to find my distant soul
And from his scars poured mercy that would plead for
me
That I might live and in his name be known
So I will go wherever He is calling me
I lose my life to find my life in Him
I give my all to gain the hope that never dies
I bow my heart, take up my cross and follow Him
The Epistle for this Sunday from the first letter by Holy
Spirit and St. Paul to the Corinthians speaks of this taking up of our crosses
in faith, following Christ.
24 Do
you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the
prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every
athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a
perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So
I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my
body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should
be disqualified.
One of the saddest conversations I have ever had was with a
parent who claimed to be atheist (denying the existence of God), but
functionally was agnostic (not believing in organized religion), because she
admitted praying to the God she said wasn’t there. Her prayer was simple, that
her children would have a better life than the one she was suffering through.
Her life seemed self-sacrificial in many significant ways. She was willing to
do anything for her kids but held out no hope in this life or even a chance at
heaven for herself. I still pray for this family.
As Christians, our run of faith has the aim of eternal life
and faithfulness to the Lord in this life. We do not “box as one beating the
air.” The discipline we practice in heart, body, and mind is to keep ourselves
under control, lest we “be disqualified” “after preaching to others,” even our
own families and friends.
We run in this world with a worldview and perspective from
eternity. Some “prizes” of this world are worthless from an eternal
point-of-view. We don’t need to go much farther than “You can’t take it with
you” as one point in this discussion. The real danger of some things that
people pursue in this life is that they often lead to something worse than
death: falling away from faith, embracing an idol substitute for the one true
God.
Note: Luther spends more time on the First Commandment than
on any other portion of the [Large] Catechism, explaining how essential it is
to know, trust, and believe in the true God and to let nothing take His place.
He was convinced that where this commandment was being kept, all other
commandments would follow. A right relationship with God produces right
relationships with fellow human beings.
You shall have no other gods.
1 What
this means: You shall have Me alone as your God. What is the meaning of this,
and how is it to be understood? What does it mean to have a god? Or, what is
God? 2 Answer: A god
means that from which we are to expect all good and in which we are to take
refuge in all distress. So, to have a God is nothing other than trusting and
believing Him with the heart. I have often said that the confidence and faith
of the heart alone make both God and an idol. 3 If your faith and trust is right, then your god is
also true. On the other hand, if your trust is false and wrong, then you do not
have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God [Hebrews 11:6].
Now, I say that whatever you set your heart on and put your trust in is truly
your god.
Let’s pause in the middle of this portion of Luther’s
explanation of the First Commandment and deeply consider his last statement: Now,
I say that whatever you set your heart on and put your trust in is truly your
god. That’s deep. What you spend your time worrying about, what you spend your
time on, what you give your devotion, that is your idol, your false god. There
are many who worship other divinities at other altars with various kinds of
sacred rites. Trust doesn’t make a false god real. A person’s false trust in a
false god is a real waste of time, a waste of a life, and a waste of a soul for
eternity.
Back to Luther: 4
The purpose of this commandment is to require true faith and trust of the
heart, which settles upon the only true God and clings to Him alone. It is like
saying, “See to it that you let Me alone be your God, and never seek another.”
In other words, “Whatever you lack of good things, expect it from Me. Look to
Me for it. And whenever you suffer misfortune and distress, crawl and cling to
Me. I, yes, I, will give you enough and help you out of every need. Only do not
let your heart cleave to or rest on any other.”
5 This
point I must unfold more clearly. It may be understood and seen through
ordinary, counterexamples. Many a person thinks that he has God and everything
in abundance when he has money and possessions. He trusts in them and boasts
about them with such firmness and assurance as to care for no one. 6 Such a person has a god by
the name of “Mammon” (i.e., money and possessions; [Matthew 6:24]), on which he
sets all his heart. 7
This is the most common idol on earth. He who has money and possessions feels
secure [Luke 12:16–21] and is joyful and undismayed as though he were sitting
in the midst of Paradise. 8
On the other hand, he who has no money doubts and is despondent, as though he
knew of no God. 9 For
very few people can be found who are of good cheer and who neither mourn nor complain
if they lack Mammon. This care and desire for money sticks and clings to our
nature, right up to the grave.
10 So,
too, whoever trusts and boasts that he has great skill, prudence, power, favor,
friendship, and honor also has a god. But it is not the true and only God. This
truth reappears when you notice how arrogant, secure, and proud people are
because of such possessions, and how despondent they are when the possessions
no longer exist or are withdrawn. Therefore, I repeat that the chief explanation
of this point is that to “have a god” is to have something in which the heart
entirely trusts.[1]
Jesus is worthy of your trust, your true faith:
What grace is mine to know His breath alive in me
Beneath his wings my wakened soul may soar
All fear can flee for death's dark night is overcome
My Saviour lives and reigns forevermore
So I will go wherever He is calling me
I lose my life to find my life in Him
I give my all to gain the hope that never dies
I bow my heart, take up my cross and follow Him
St. Paul returns to the contrast between faith and unfaith,
a self-controlled and disciplined race and those who run after evil:
10 For I do
not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the
cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and
all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the
same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed
them, and the Rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless,
with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the
wilderness.
Why were they overthrown? They failed to keep the First
Commandment.
You shall have no other gods.
What does this mean?
Answer: We should fear, love, and trust in God above all
things.[2]
If we press on to read just a little more after today’s
appointed Epistle, we hear this: 6 Now these things
took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. 7 Do
not be idolaters as some of them were;
Idolatry is the issue. Moses called them to repentance. St.
Paul called his hearers to repentance. Jesus, our Master, calls us to repent of
any sense of entitlement. The Denarius given the workers in His Matthew 20
parable was given out of generosity. It was the promised payment for the
service of those who began working early in the morning and continued working
all day long. Did they deserve more? No. Did the others, those hired at the
third hour and after deserve less? Yes. Did they receive less? No. All benefit
from Jesus’ generosity.
Do you hear the spiritual danger that Moses, Paul, and Jesus
all warn us about? It is idolatry. It is a First Commandment issue, like Luther
says, yet it is the idolatry of believing in a false god that saves us because
we supposedly deserve it. We don’t. I don’t and you don’t deserve anything but
eternal condemnation and life-long suffering before that.
That’s why we Christians speak about grace, why we say that
we are saved by grace alone. We can’t earn salvation. We can never deserve
salvation. We can only receive it as a gift from Christ. Good works save us
only when they are done by Jesus Christ. Our own good works serve our neighbor
and prove that our faith is living. We are saved by grace alone.
Consider two very familiar verses from Ephesians 2 followed
by a less-familiar verse: 8 For by grace you
have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift
of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no
one may boast. 10 For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Our good works are not salvific. Our good works are the
prepared-beforehand service to our neighbor, your Thank You Note to the Lord
for His gift of salvation by grace alone, your disciplined, faithful race in
Christ for the prize of eternal life.
So I will go wherever He is calling me
I lose my life to find my life in Him
I give my all to gain the hope that never dies
I bow my heart, take up my cross and follow Him
Amen.
In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
