Trinity 4
Beloved. In today’s Gospel we hear Jesus telling us: Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Even if a person knows nothing else about Scripture, they will often throw up these words at the Christian and use them against the Christian. When? How? In particular when the individual Christian or the Church proclaims God’s holy word of Law. The point many people want to make by quoting these words is that they can do whatever they want and no one—especially a Christian—can say anything against it; they can live in/ commit any sort of sin they want to and not be called into account for it. The logical conclusion of all this—is ultimately no standards, lawlessness, chaos. Of course, when Jesus says in today’s Gospel Do not judge, and you will not be judged, He is forbidding a judging that is arbitrary and loveless. And as Jesus unfolds His words even more in the following verses, we see Jesus’ call for each of us to live a life of repentance: Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? Or how can you tell your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck in your eye,’ when you do not see the beam in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck in your brother’s eye. When we examine our own hearts and lives, we will see much sin in our life that needs to be repented of. This makes us humble as we deal with the people around us; it makes each one realize that yes, the other person is a sinner—but so I am: we both need God’s forgiveness and grace. Realizing this, how can we be arbitrary and loveless in our judging? Love and forgiveness characterize our dealings with others.
Do not judge, and you will not be judged, though, does not mean whitewashing wrong; it does not mean calling right what is wrong. The point is in judging that we not use our standard—because what will happen? We will come out smelling like a rose/ come out as a saint but the other person will be the world’s greatest sinner, worthy only of condemnation. Instead, yes, we are to judge and rebuke wickedness/ call sin sin, but not according to some individual standard we come up with but we are to use God’s holy Law, His standard—the same one that judges and condemns our sin! When we judge and rebuke wickedness in another, calling sin sin, a transgression of God’s holy Law, we, however, are only declaring God’s judgment, pronounce what God pronounces in His Word, in His holy Law.
And again—the whole purpose of this? Not to make the other person look bad; not to make ourselves look good, but the purpose of calling sin sin is the salvation and improvement of the other. And on the flipside of this—when we sin, may we as Christians, be grateful when a fellow Christian, in love and mercy, shows us our sin so that we may repent and turn from that sin.
Really, behind all that we do as Christians—even when we in love rebuke another —is mercy. That’s what Jesus says at the beginning of our Gospel: Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Our text, which is the Lord’s words He spoke through the OT prophet, St. Zechariah, is a commentary on these words of Jesus at the beginning of our Gospel. As we examine our text, we will see that because mercy is a characteristic of God, mercy is also, then, a characteristic of His Christians.
Whereas God’s grace is that He gives us what we do not deserve—the holiness of Christ, eternal life, heaven, etc.; God’s mercy is that He does not give us what we really earn and deserve—His wrath, punishment now and forever, hell, etc. When it comes right down to it, God’s mercy—that He does not give us what we really earn and deserve—is the foundation of all of His work for us. All that He has done for us flows from His mercy. It was in mercy that God gave us His holy Law—so that we could recognize and turn away from our sin and seek a Savior from that sin; and so that now, as Christians, we would know the works that please Him. It was in mercy toward us sinners that God sent His only Son to be our Savior from sin, death, devil and hell. It was in mercy that God gave us His Holy Word. The Lord says in our text: They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the LORD of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Notice, the Lord sent His word, sent His prophets, sent His Holy Spirit all so that the people could be brought to recognize their sin and rebellion against the Lord and repent and have life. Very easily, the Lord could say to all of us—us sinners—“Forget it! Have it your way! You earn and deserve nothing but My wrath and punishment now and eternally in hell.” But what? God is merciful. We don’t deserve that He calls us sinners to repent, back to Himself, so that He may continue to have mercy on us and give us the forgiveness of sin and eternal life in Jesus—but He does! As Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel: your Father is merciful. That Divine mercy is a most wondrous characteristic of God. Because God is merciful, He is merciful to us sinners; and now we have the forgiveness of sin and a glorious eternity in heaven, soul and body, awaits us!
God’s mercy is also shown us in a different way in our text: do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor–perhaps today we could include the unborn as well. Here in this list we see the weakest of the weak in any society. And what does God do? He gives the command not to do them wrong. The weak have, if you will, a special place in God’s heart. That, too, is an expression of His mercy. Usually it is the powerful, the high and mighty that people flock to and pay attention to. But God’s eye and concern are on the weak and lowly—that’s mercy. So often we see in our society that the weak and lowly are seen as being in the way, obstacles, and are easily trodden over. But that is not how God regards them. With His Law there is a concrete expression of God’s mercy on those who need mercy— do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor. That flows out of that characteristic of God—mercy.
Now we take it a step further—since God is merciful to the physically lowly, the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, the unborn, doesn’t it also follow that He is merciful to the spiritually lowly—the lost and condemned sinner, us sinners who can do nothing to save ourselves, to us who are as Luther describes: lying fast bound in Satan’s chains, with death brooding darkly over us, tormented day and night by sin, conceived and born in sin. Aren’t we—all people as we come into this world—the spiritually lowly who need God’s mercy? After all, we are conceived and born in sin; we daily sin and rebel against God’s perfect, just and holy law; we daily by our sin earn hell and damnation. But what? God is merciful! He doesn’t give us what we deserve. In mercy He sent His Son into the world to be our righteousness by obeying for us His holy Law—that very Law we break day in and day out; in mercy He gave His only Son to suffer His wrath and to die on the cross in place of us and on account of our sins. In mercy, He sends His Holy Spirit to us in the word to create and preserve us in the faith—faith that divine gift and creation that receives and holds fast to Jesus and his saving work, the forgiveness of sins and eternal life He won for us.
It is precisely here in showing mercy that God is glorified. He is merciful—He doesn’t give us what we deserve. If God were simply to give all of us what we earned and deserved—where would His praise be? How/ why could we praise Him? But He is merciful to us sinners, forgiving us our sin, cleansing us from all unrighteousness, and opening heaven to us where we will one day give Him all praise, glory and honor eternally. And for that we praise him now in our lives.
So yes, we are all now the recipients of His mercy. As long as we have life even the unbeliever is the recipient of God’s mercy—Jesus died for his/ her sins, heaven stands open to them, the Lord is calling them by His Spirit in the words of the apostles and prophets. Do not let this time of mercy pass. St Paul tells us [2 Co 6.2]: Behold, now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation. What a glorious motivation we have to tell the Good News about Jesus—God is merciful and His mercy toward us stands!
But for us, dear Christian, it is even better! We are Christians—we in Spirit worked faith receive Jesus and His gifts; we are fully enjoying God’s mercy. As our Lord’s dear Christians, mercy now characterizes us! Why? Hear again Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel: Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Through faith, God is now our dear heavenly Father. And as children of God, aren’t we to resemble Him, have the same characteristics? After all, doesn’t a child resemble, take after, have characteristics of its parents? Absolutely! How much, then, as children of God by faith in Jesus, children of God born of water and the Spirit should we then resemble our heavenly Father! Shouldn’t our lives be filled with mercy—mercy toward others? Shouldn’t mercy be our characteristic, as it is God’s?
How much more so should this be the case when we realize that in baptism we were baptized in Jesus? We are in Him and He is in us. Certainly that union cannot be without fruit, without us being influenced/ impacted by Christ. And what about the Lord’s Supper? There Jesus comes to us and unites with us as we receive in our very bodies His own body and blood. How can this union with Christ be without effect in us? How can His mercy not become part of us? The wonderful thing is that our lives as Christians, our lives of mercy are really Jesus living and working in and through us.
How can we not be merciful? Not only is there that glorious/ mystical union between God and us—that He is in us and we are in Him [Jn 14.23], but also, even more basic—how can we who have received such great mercy from the Lord not show mercy toward others? In other words, our mercy flows from our faith. By faith we believe that God is merciful to us, not giving us what we deserve but the greatest, heavenly and spiritual gifts in Jesus. We know by faith that everything we are and have and will be and have is all because of the mercy of God toward us. Realizing that, not only will we love our Lord all the more, but we will love our neighbor all the more and show him/ try to show him all the mercy we ourselves have experienced.
This mercy that we have experienced from the Lord not only leads us to live lives of mercy but it also leads us to humility. That humility is expressed by the recognizing our sin, confessing that sin and following our Lord’s will. Our text describes what happens when there is no humility flowing from mercy: But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the LORD of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets.
To put it all together—God’s mercy reigns and is supreme. We are the recipients of that mercy—we don’t get what we deserve/ earn by our sins. By faith, which God in His mercy, has created in our hearts, we receive that mercy and its blessings—forgiveness of sin, life and salvation. Enjoying and reveling in that mercy—realizing that we ourselves are in continual need of God’s mercy—our hearts are softened and we are merciful to others. By faith united with Christ and as children of God, we Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and [do not] devise evil against another in your heart. May God’s mercy to us be increasingly reflected in our lives. INJ