This year, in keeping with the celebration of the 500 anniversary of the Reformation, for the Advent through New Year’s Eve services we will look at the main emphasis of the Reformation, which is the authority of the Word of God and the article of the confessions on which the church stands or falls, the article on justification by grace through faith in Jesus alone. We will look at justification in the way of the six chief parts of Luther’s Small Catechism and prayerfully we will connect this justification to our Christmas, birth of Jesus celebration and our New Year’s celebration as well.
Today we begin with the first of the six chief parts of Luther’s Small Catechism, the Ten Commandments. We divide the Ten Commandments into two parts, the first table, commandments 1-3 and the second table, commandments 4-10. The first table of the commandments concerns our relationship with God and gives us direction in how we are to be in relation with God.
The very first commandment is indeed the key to all the commandments. The very first commandment reminds us that we shall have no other gods than the one true God. If we could get this first commandment right, if we could keep this very first commandment then we can get them all right. The problem is that because we are conceived and born in sin, because our very nature is contrary to God, we have a tendency and we actually place many people and things before God in our lives, thus breaking this commandment, thus breaking our relationship with God and therefore causing us to break all the rest of the commandments as well.
This very first table of the commandments does what all of history and all of Holy Scripture does, it points us to God and to Jesus in particular. God is the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier and the Preserver. He gives and we are given to, thus He rightly demands first place in our lives, He rightly demands perfection, He rightly demands our all, but because we are spiritually blind, spiritually dead and enemies of God, in and of ourselves we are unable to keep this very first commandment and truly we are unable to keep all the commandments.
In these first three commandments we have God’s very gift of Himself and His desire to abundantly pour out on us all the good gifts and blessings He has to give. And He does give to us through the means that He has given to pour out on us all He has to give. We are to fear, love and trust in God above all which includes keeping His name Holy through our participation of the Divine Service Sabbath rest. It is only as we keep the Sabbath that we are given the gifts and blessings God has to give and we keep the Sabbath by not refusing and rejecting the gifts of God by absenting ourselves, putting something before God, but by making regular, every time service is offered, and diligent, paying close attention, use of the means of grace.
The second table of the commandments concerns our relationships with each other. This second table directs us in the way in which we should go in our daily lives so that we might have order and peace with each other in our world. Of course, as we realize that our relationship with God has been broken so this broken relationship puts a strain on our relationships with one another. Yet God in His infinite wisdom and mercy has given us this second table of commandments in order to direct our ways even if imperfectly.
The first commandment of the second table, that is, the fourth commandment sets the foundation for all authority, that is for all government. All government flows from God to us through mediators in particularly first and foremost through our parents. God gives parents the gift of children and the authority and responsibility to care for, raise and nurture children in the ways of the Lord, or as we say, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. As parents we extend this authority as we give some authority to those who rule over us for the common good of all, that is to those who teach our children, to those we elect into office, mayors, governors, presidents, also those in law enforcement and the like.
In the remainder of the commandments, which are often seen as simply God’s Law, we might understand the blessings of the commandments as God gives the gifts of authority, life, sexuality, possessions, reputation, and contentment. As we hear God’s law that we should not murder we can see that in this command God gives us the gift of life, that is we are to live and let live according to God’s will. As God commands chastity so we see God’s gift of sexuality and the good He gives us in leading chaste and decent lives. In God’s command to not steal we see God’s gift of possessions and care for the possessions of others as well. In God’s command to not bear false witness we see God’s gift of our reputation and the need to be careful of what we say and how we speak of others, always explaining everything the best way possible. And in God’s command to not covet we see God’s gift of contentment, that is to be content in all the good gifts and blessings He gives as well as to not be envious or covetous of others who have different gifts and blessings, rather to rejoice with them and to help them improve and protect what is theirs.
What does this mean? The main point of the commandments is to point out the fact that we are sinners. As we confess at the beginning of many services, “8If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9). How can we confess if we fail to recognize our sins and if we fail to confess then our sins remain on us and we would be eternally condemned.
The commandments were given and were not meant for us to find loopholes as some and even as we would sometimes seek to do, but they are given to show us our sins so we might repent. Indeed, how often do we find others and ourselves making excuses for our sins, pointing the finger of blame to someone else, “It was not my fault, after all,” or so we protest, “He/She/You made me do it.” “The woman you gave me.” “The serpent beguiled me.” And so it continues even today. This denial and loop hole finding is the work the Devil who would have us remain in our sin.
As we may need to be reminded, the Law shows us our sins, that is the point of the Law. And yet, ultimately it is also the point of the Law to point us to the Gospel. The Law does not motivate us to repent, only the Gospel motivates repentance. However the Law does show us our sins so that we see our need for the Gospel.
The Law and the Gospel together remind us that we cannot justify ourselves. We cannot make ourselves just and right in God’s eyes. We are conceived and born in sin. Every inclination of our hearts if evil all the time. The good that we would do we do not do but the evil that is before us, that is what we do, wretched people that we are. Just as a drowning person cannot save himself so we cannot justify ourselves.
Justification must and does come from outside of us. As a drowning person must have someone come to save them so we must have someone to come and save us. Just as a lifeguard will push away a drowning person attempting to help save himself so as to not have them both drown so too we cannot help God save us. He must do the work completely because He and He alone is without sin and He and He alone can take our sins and give us forgiveness.
As we prepare for the Advent of our King, we prepare to celebrate the birth of the One who came as true God, in perfection in the flesh as true man, we prepare for the one who justifies, Jesus. Jesus is true God, conceived by the Holy Spirit and true man, born of the human woman. Jesus is perfection and He is God’s answer to our sin and imperfection. We owe our very lives because of our sins, remember, the wages of sin is death. Jesus owes nothing as He is the sinless Son of God even God Himself in human flesh. Jesus came as God promised, to reconcile us, to bring us back into a right relationship with Himself, a relationship that we broken in the Garden of Eden.
The fullness of the Gospel is the fact that Jesus came to live for us, to do for us what we are unable to do, to be perfect for us, and that perfection He fulfilled by keeping the commandments for us, in our place. When God looks at us, by faith in Jesus He no longer sees us as sinners, but as saints, as redeemed children. He sees Jesus in and through us.
Jesus makes us just and right in God’s eyes. We have no part in what Jesus has done, does and continues to do for us and in and through us. It is all Jesus and Jesus alone.
As we prepare our hearts and mind to celebrate the birth of Jesus, God in flesh, we do so by being reminded of the reason He was born, to live for us, to be perfect for us in our place, to obey all the commandments for us because we cannot. As we prepare our hearts and minds we do so by confessing our sins and our part in the reason for Jesus’ birth, especially as we are reminded that the ultimate reason for His birth was to give His life as a ransom for us all, not out of coercion, but because of His great love for us. As we prepare our hearts and minds to celebrate Jesus’ birth we do so with the joy of the faith given to us through the very means of the Word of God which is the ultimate authority in this Word, given to us by God because of His great love for us a love seen in His Son and His life for our forgiveness. Our response; to God be the glory, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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