Lent 1
Dear friends in Christ. As we come to this first Sunday in Lent, our Epistle reading points us to the main, central teaching of Christianity—we are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ. This is so vital for us to hear and take to heart at the beginning of this Lenten season because it gives us our bearings as we take a renewed look at our heart and lives in the light of God’s holy Law. With our focus on the holy Law of God—what He expects and demands of us—and what we have done or not done it according to it, it is very easy to get sucked into the thinking that somehow, someway, our works have a role to play in salvation; even that we can earn heaven if we do enough “good things.”
But now, this first Sunday in Lent, we hear the holy Apostle tell us by the Holy Spirit: Therefore we conclude that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. As we examine our text, we will see that we are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ alone. Faith alone in Christ saves us from our sin and opens the gates of heaven to us; but that faith is never alone—Does it follow that we overthrow the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law. Faith will be followed by all sorts of good works that we do. Those works do not save us; they are only the evidence that faith is in our hearts.
1. Our text: Where, then, is there any room for boasting [in God’s glorious plan of salvation]? It is excluded. By what principle? Of works? No, but by the principle of faith. Therefore we conclude that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. The simple fact of the matter is that if we are to be saved, it has to be by God’s grace through faith; it cannot be by our works. And why? Because our works, no matter how good we may think our works may be, are never good enough. That’s because God doesn’t just expect us to be/do good some of the time, or most of the time, or even just tip the scales a little bit on the side of good; God does not use a sliding scale or “grade on a curve” and give us heaven because we’re better than a lot of people. Instead, what God demands of us is absolute holiness, absolute perfection—that we obey His just and holy will perfectly and at all times. And who of us can do that? Who of us is without sin? None! So no matter how “good” our works may be, no matter how much better we are than the people around us, no matter how many more “good” things we have done than bad things—none of us has measured up to that standard of perfection God demands.
If we are honest with ourselves, we will all hear the accusing voice of God’s holy Law in His holy word, the Scripture, or feel it in our conscience. Sometimes we will feel guilty right away for something we have done wrong; sometimes it will come much later. But each pang of conscience is a reminder to us that we are sinners; that we have, no matter how hard we have tried, sinned, and are far from that perfection God demands of us and so we have earned and deserved by our sin, no matter how seemingly insignificant, nothing but God’s wrath.
The blessed result of Lent, as we use it as a time especially to look at our hearts and lives in the mirror of God’s holy Law, is that we will see and recognize our sin all the more clearly. We will come to realize that our lives and works cannot earn/ merit us salvation and heaven. And then as we feel and are sorry for our sin, this serves the glorious purpose of pointing us away from ourselves and our works and toward Jesus and His saving work for us. The more that we recognize and feel our sin, the more we recognize our need for, and desire a Savior from our sin.
Praise God that in His plan for salvation there is no room for our works; that they don’t enter the picture. Otherwise, we would be done for! It’s a good thing for us and a great grace of God that our salvation is not by what we do, our works, but by God’s grace through faith. Where, then, is there any room for boasting [in God’s glorious plan of salvation]? It is excluded. By what principle? Of works? No, but by the principle of faith. Therefore we conclude that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
Not our works, what we do or don’t do, but faith in Christ Jesus and His work alone saves us from sin, death, devil and hell and opens heaven to us. Faith is not a good work that we do; it is not an act of our will. It’s not as if faith is such a good thing that we do, something we produce, conjure up in ourselves that God then “rewards” us with forgiveness of sin and eternal life.
In reality, faith has no value in and of itself. The vital thing with faith is what faith believes, what it holds to, the object of faith. A person is justified [declared righteous] by faith. It’s not the act of believing but what faith believes and receives that makes faith true and saving. True saving faith trusts in Jesus and His work for us; it trusts in the grace of God to forgive us our sin for Jesus sake. Faith is the “receiving instrument”; it receives Jesus’ holy righteousness; it receives the forgiveness of sins He brought about.
Here we come to the great mystery of God. God is a holy and just God who demands perfect righteousness and holiness from us and must punish sin; and He is also a merciful God who wants to forgive us and save us from our sin and bring us into heaven. So as a merciful God, the Father sent the Son into this world to become also true man—one of us—and to do for us what we cannot do: to be perfectly holy and sinless. That’s what we read in today’s Gospel. Jesus went out into the wilderness specifically to be tempted and to overcome the temptations and to do what we cannot do. We read in the Gospel: Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time. Throughout His earthly life Jesus was tempted just like we are and yet He did not sin. The point? Because Jesus was tempted and yet didn’t sin, that means He kept every part of God’s holy Law for us, in our place. He gave God that perfect holiness and righteousness that God demands of us. So how do we get the benefit and blessing of Jesus and His work? Faith! Faith “connects us with” Jesus and receives His perfect holiness and righteousness and makes it our very own. That’s why faith saves. That’s why God declares us righteous without, apart from, the works of the law—faith receives that perfect holiness of Jesus making it our very own. When God sees us, He does not see all of our sins and wretchedness, just the perfect holiness of Jesus.
Faith is the means, the instrument, through which we receive Jesus’ holiness. The righteousness that we now have as Christians, that faith receives, is a foreign, an alien righteousness; it’s one that is not our own, but Christ’s! And therefore it is perfect! Faith saves because it receives Jesus’ righteousness; and faith alone saves us because it is the only way we can receive that holy perfection of Jesus and make it our own. Our works do not enter into the picture when it comes to God saving us. That’s a good thing! If our salvation in the least depended on our works, our supposed righteousness, we would forever be unsure: did I do enough? It’s a good thing that our works, no matter how good we think they may be, do not come in consideration before God because they are always, at best, lacking something, impure, tainted with sin and incomplete.
Because our salvation is by God’s grace through faith in Christ alone, it is certain and sure. Jesus alone did all the work to save us. He alone drank the cup of suffering; He alone paid the price for our sins to reconcile us sinners to the holy God; His alone is the one work that avails before God.
2. So, then, since faith alone saves, since the essence of the Christian faith is that we are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ, does that mean that our works do not matter? When it comes to God justifying us, declaring us righteous, our works do not enter the picture. That’s a good thing! Therefore we conclude that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. But that does not mean that we Christians should not be busy and active in striving to do every good work. Our text: Does it follow that we nullify the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we uphold the law. Faith alone saves—but faith is never alone because every sort of good work follows faith; truly good works are the fruit/ result of faith. Where there’s smoke there’s fire; where there’s good works, there’s faith.
Our works as Christians do matter! Our good works are not the cause of our salvation—we’re not saved because we do good works; but because we are saved, because we are Christians, because we have faith in Christ, we do good works. That’s because as Christians we have the Holy Spirit.
What makes a Christian a Christian is faith in Christ. But remember, faith is not something we can conjure up in our hearts by our own will. That true, saving faith is a gift of God, worked in us by the Holy Spirit. As St. Paul [1 Cor. 12.3] writes elsewhere: No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. Where there is true faith in Christ in the heart also in that heart is the Holy Spirit. Dear Christian, we have the Holy Spirit in us and He is leading us and empowering us into a life of good works, of filling us with godly desires so that we want to do the Lord’s will.
The very fact that we have faith and are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ alone does not mean that we don’t care how we live and so sin as much as we want. How nonsensical is that? How can we willfully and deliberately go against the will of the gracious God who did everything to save us from our sins and their just punishment—eternity in hell? Instead, we all the more strive to live a life of good works. We uphold the law, what God demands, because we, in Spirit-worked faith, know Him rightly and what He has done for us and His love for us. We uphold the law because by the continued work of the Holy Spirit on our hearts we grow more and more in fulfilling the law of God, striving to do His holy will.
Will we do it perfectly? Certainly not! We will daily sin and fall far short of carrying out God’s will. We are daily tempted and we have our old sinful nature. That’s what Lent will show us—even though we are Christians, even though we have the Holy Spirit, even though we are through faith in Christ declared righteous before God—we are still sinners. Our righteousness that we have by faith—the righteousness of Christ—is perfect; but our own righteousness, our own lives of good works are far from perfect. So, yes, Lent’s examination of heart and life will show us our sin and how far we are from keeping God’s holy Law, but as we see our sin and sorrow over it, faith comes and receives from Jesus His forgiveness and perfect holiness. And in faith and by the Holy Spirit’s leading and power, we will then all the more strive to fulfill it the Holy will/Law of God—lead a life of good works.
That’s how we as Christians uphold the law. We willingly strive to fulfill it; and truly fulfill it—from the heart. The Christian has no hypocritical, merely outward keeping of the law, striving to do good works. Instead, led and empowered by the Holy Spirit in our heart, we in faith love the Lord and from our heart strive to do His will and live a life of good works. Even as Christians our attempts at keeping God’s holy Law are feeble and inadequate, but whatever is still weak, imperfect, tainted with sin is forgiven and covered with Christ’s perfect righteousness and for Christ’s sake they are pleasing and acceptable to God.
—Praise God! Faith alone, not our works, saves! But that faith is never alone—the good works always follow faith to the praise of our gracious Lord. INJ