Justification in Jesus’ Death - March 30, 2018 - Good Friday - Text: Apology to Augsburg Article IV

This year during the season of Lent through to Easter Sunrise and Easter morning we are continuing our celebration of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation as we did at Advent through Christmas. During Lent through Easter we are covering what is considered the most important doctrine of the Church and the Lutheran Church, Article IV of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. Article IV is the article on Justification and how we are made just and right in God’s eyes. Indeed, this article is the article on which the Church stands or falls, because we are saved either by ourselves, our good deeds, our obedience, and so forth or our salvation comes from outside of us, namely it comes from Jesus, who has earned and paid for our sins by His suffering and death and the cross and which He gives freely to us with out any merit or worthiness within us.
 

In the beginning God. In the beginning God created all things out of nothing. At the end of each day of creation God saw what He had created and said it was good. At the end of all that He created He said that it was very good, indeed all that God created was perfect. God’s demand on His creation was to remain in perfection. Well, that lasted for the first two chapters of the Bible.
 

When we get to Genesis chapter three, after God had completed His work of creation, and we move on to hear about what humans are doing, just three chapters in, and we do not know exactly how long that was, but when humans came on the scene that is when everything began to degenerate into sin. Satan, Lucifer, the light bearer who may have been one of the higher ranking angels, if I may speak as such, thought more highly of himself and rebelled against God. God cast him and his host out of heaven. Indeed the very reason God created hell was not for humans but for the devil and all his evil angels. At any rate, the Devil took the form of a serpent whom we are told was more crafty than the other animals and came tempting Eve and Adam. The devil’s temptation was to question God, His Word and the authority of His Word, much like he still does even today. Eve and Adam, being perfect and holy and only knowing good, listened to the devil, disobeyed God and brought sin and imperfection into the once perfect world.
 

Because God knew this was going to happen even before it did, and because God created humanity to love and because He loves His creatures, He immediately stepped in and promised a Savior for all His creation. He was not specific as far as time frame or events, simply His promise was that He would send One who would bring humanity back into a just and right relationship with Himself. He did not impose anything on humanity, but on Himself and His work.
 

Latter on, as God designed to bring forgiveness, He chose Abraham to be the one through whom the Savior of all would be born. Abraham did not choose God, as a matter of fact we are told how he had to put away his foreign gods and idols. God chose Abraham and promised that through his earthly line, the earthly DNA of Abraham the Savior of all people would be born. This covenant and promise came with no conditions, but was a reiteration of the promise made in Eden. God did however add certain conditional promises, earthly promises, all of which pointed to the ultimate heavenly fulfillment of His Word and as we know today promises that Israel never fulfilled, thus promises they lost.
 

Finally, at just the right time in human history God chose Mary and Joseph to be the parents of God in flesh. Notice again, it was not Mary and Joseph that chose God, but that God chose them. God chose them to be the one’s who would bring to fulfillment the promise He made in Eden and reiterated to Abraham.
 

The whole Old Testament, as well as all of history, which is the Old Testament, pointed to this moment in time, the time of the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ. The One promised was born true man, born of the woman. He had to be truly human in order to be our substitute. As we say today, you do not substitute dislike for dislike, apples for oranges, rather you substitute like for like, humans for humans, so Jesus was truly a human man.
 

Yet, not only was He truly human, He was also truly God, conceived by the Holy Spirit. He had to be truly God in order to be born in perfection, in order to be perfect, for us, because God’s demand is that we are perfect and we are not and cannot be perfect.
 

So, Jesus was truly God, born in true human flesh and blood, one hundred percent God, one hundred percent human. The fullness of the Gospel is not simply that He died for us, but that He lived for us, in our place, in perfection. All that we could not do He did, perfectly. We cannot perfectly obey the commandments, but He did, for us. Not only did He live in perfection He also fulfilled all the promises and prophecies concerning the coming Savior.
 

Jesus lived a perfect life. He was perfectly obedient, both passively and actively. He passively allowed Himself to be put on trial, convicted and crucified. He actively obeyed all God’s commands and promises perfectly.
 

After living in perfection He then, freely because of His love for us, He took our sins and the sins of all people, of all places, of all times on Himself. He suffered. He suffered the eternal spiritual death, hell for us in our place. He suffered the complete and total price for our sins, the price set in Eden. He suffered and died and paid the complete price, once and for all.
 

And Jesus died. Yes, our God died. While some people have a hard time believing and understanding that God died we might think about it the same as our dying. We have a soul that when we die the soul departs from the body and such was the case with Jesus. He is God who took on human flesh so that when He died His soul left the body. And yet, we know the whole story, death and the grave had no hold over Him as on the third day He rose from the dead.
 

What does this mean? As always, God is the prime mover. God does, God gives and we are done to and we are given to. God’s demand is perfection and we live in imperfection. Imperfection can never regain perfection in and of itself. Perfection must come from outside of us, it must come from One who is already perfect, it must come from God. In and of ourselves, when God looks at us He sees us in our imperfection.
 

We sin, God forgives. Because we are conceived and born in sin every inclination of our hearts is evil all the time. Our desire from conception is to sin. Our will has been tainted by sin so that we cannot do good nor can we will ourselves to do good. Good must come from outside of us. Forgiveness must come from outside of us.
 

God loves and we are loved. God created us to love us. God created us knowing that we would sin. God created us knowing He would have to save us. God’s great love and the mystery of God is this fact that He loves us and created us to love us even knowing our frailties.
 

While some people would espouse an attempt at perfection, or at least an attempt at trying to appease God, thinking in themselves that they might have the ability to do so, we glory in the cross of Christ. We rejoice in the God’s great love for us, a love seen in the giving of His life for ours. We rejoice in the forgiveness earned and paid for by Jesus on the cross. In the cross of Christ we glory because in the cross we have forgiveness of sins and with forgiveness is life and salvation.
 

The price for sin was set in Eden and that price was set at death, eternal spiritual death and physical death. Apart from Jesus, apart from Him paying the price for our sins, the sin would remain on us and we would have to pay that price. Jesus paid the price for our sin and for the sin of all people. By faith in Jesus, faith given to us by the Holy Spirit through the means of grace, when God looks at us He sees Jesus’ perfection and so we are just and righteous in His sight. By faith in Jesus He has paid the price of death, eternal spiritual death, so that we have eternal spiritual life in heaven. And He has paid the price of physical death so that although we may pass on from this world, we may die in this world, that death is merely a falling asleep in the Lord, a movement from earth to heaven. In the cross of Christ I glory giving thanks for His love for us and moving us to rejoice and say, to God be the glory for Jesus’ sake. Amen.