Scripture reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34.

Sermon text: Romans 3:19-31.

“What must I do to be saved?” Since the Philippian jailer first asked that question in an incident recorded in Acts 16, people have wondered just what they must do to achieve their salvation. I tend to think that the answer depends on the intent of the questioner. Anyone asking the question to learn the absolute minimal requirements probably needs to ask the question another way. However, anyone asking the question from his heart, with a true desire to seek a relationship with God, will find St. Paul’s answer a great comfort: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

Unfortunately, lots of people today will tell you belief alone doesn’t cut it. They’ll give you a long list of additional requirements and expect you to keep every one of them. History records this has happened before, during the Middle Ages.

The Church will formally celebrate it tomorrow, but we’ll celebrate it today here at New Hope: Happy Reformation Day! On All Hallows Eve in 1517, German monk Martin Luther nailed a list of 95 points he wished to debate regarding accepted practices in the Roman Catholic Church of his time. The list of the points, now known as the 95 Theses, spread throughout Europe and spurred conversations throughout the Catholic Church regarding the nature of salvation. We know today that the Catholic Church refused to change many of the practices Luther charged with corrupting the Christian faith, leading to the Protestant Reformation.

Many people today look at the state of the Church in the West and mourn the Reformation. In spite of Luther’s intentions, the Church split and today more resembles a kaleidoscope of denominations than a unified body. However, Luther’s original intent — the recovery of the importance of grace and faith in Christianity — was definitely worth the cost. In 1999, the Roman Catholic Church signed an agreement with the Lutherans that stated, in part, “By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works” (“Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” 3.15)

Today’s passages remind us of the Scriptural basis of grace and faith in our salvation. The passages, separated by over 500 years, both remind us that we cannot do enough good to merit salvation; in fact, we can do nothing to merit our salvation. Only confession of Jesus as Lord of our lives, believing in His resurrection, will guarantee our eternal salvation in the presence of God, our Creator and Father.

In the Old Testament reading, Jeremiah wrote in a time of great turmoil in Judean society. Nebuchadnezzar had just taken several thousand Jews into captivity in Babylon, Jews who would never see Judah again. Jeremiah had written to these people to tell them to settle into their new homes because God had decreed they would spend 70 years in captivity. This fact threatened to cast the entire nation into despair, because most of the captives came from the upper crust of Jewish society. In one swoop, Nebuchadnezzar practically decapitated the Jewish nation.

The Jews thought they faced Nebuchadnezzar’s wrath, but in reality they faced God’s just wrath for their sins; they had broken the covenant God “made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt,” leading God to fulfill the penalty phrases in the covenant.

God had not forgotten the Mosaic covenant — the covenant that brought curses as well as blessings — but He had also not forgotten His covenant with Abraham. God would fulfill the blessings He had promised to all humanity through Abraham, but He would use a “new covenant” to accomplish His redemptive plan.

In the Mosaic covenant of Mt. Sinai, God had inscribed the Law on tablets of stone; in the new covenant, God would inscribe it directly on their hearts. In the Mosaic covenant, the priests and Levites would teach the Law to the people; in the new covenant, everyone would innately know the law, with no teacher required. In the Mosaic covenant, the people received forgiveness of sins only by faith that God would accept their sacrifices; in the new covenant, God would forgive their “iniquity,” or their perversions of the Law, and their “sin,” their failures to follow the Law correctly.

When would God send this “new covenant”? We have to go over 600 years after Jeremiah to find the answer. The Son of God, Jesus, came to earth as an infant, grew up as a Jew under the Mosaic covenant of Mt. Sinai, and lived a life that perfectly fulfilled the Mosaic Law.

However, in the 600 years between Jeremiah and Jesus, a group of Jewish scholars had derived a series of 613 additional rules and regulations that defined “righteousness.” Jesus not only ignored those rules; He refused to follow them. This refusal led to His death.

Before His crucifixion, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with His disciples. Jesus gave a cup of wine to His disciples with the words, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Jesus instituted the new covenant with His crucifixion and His resurrection.

Under the new covenant, Jesus has made the only sacrifice necessary for the covenant.  We no longer have to make regular trips to a temple for sacrifices. We also no longer need to keep the entirety of the Mosaic Law, because Jesus based the new covenant of only 2 laws: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In the new covenant, the Holy Spirit helps us to live these commandments.

Unfortunately, in every religion, someone tries to say, “Well, yes, you can get in by doing this, but you also need to do…” and then proceeds to give a list of other things they think just as necessary as the really important things. The “other things” may vary from person to person, but the people who think they’re important will strenuously insist we follow them to prove our devotion to the religion.

Christianity’s no different. At first, Jewish Christians insisted all Christians follow the Mosaic covenant rather than follow Jesus’ 2 commandments. The Jewish Christians refused to accept that Jesus’ commandments fulfilled their law and freed them from its requirements.

In today’s sermon passage, St. Paul reminded the Roman Christians that the Mosaic covenant could never have achieved their “justification,” or their right standing before God. Instead, the Mosaic covenant brought “the knowledge of sin” that condemned everyone who tried to follow it. Rather, “apart from the law, God’s righteousness has been revealed—attested by the Law and the Prophets—that is, God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ, to all who believe.”

Did you follow that last line? Faith in Jesus Christ; “all who believe;” our faith in Jesus achieves everything the Mosaic covenant could not accomplish: A relationship with God, our Creator.

When we believe in Jesus, we “uphold the law” of faith in our lives, through worship and our interactions with others. We also come to understand more about why we need this new covenant in the first place. This, I believe, points to the importance of Reformation Day, of the recovery of salvation “by grace through faith.”

First, we live in a world where no one will ever completely fulfill Jesus’ commandments, much less the commandments of the Mosaic covenant. As St. Paul wrote, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Every one of us must admit that we fall short of God’s requirements for us. Regardless of how hard we try, we either fall short of God’s expectations or, even worse, intentionally refuse to even try. We put our own desires before others’ and let our own pride run amuck in our lives. God created us for relationship, with Himself and with others; our pride breaks those relationships.

Secondly, we need reminding that we cannot work our way out of the hole our pride causes. We can’t take back our hurtful words. We can’t always correct our mistakes. We can’t make things right, no matter how much we try. Every time we sin against another person, we sin against God, and His record of those sins will continue to accumulate as long as we live.

If we continually fall short of God’s expectation, we “are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Only through Jesus will we find redemption from our sins.

Martin Luther lived in a time when the Catholic Church had forgotten grace. Jesus had given the Church only 2 “sacraments,” or outward symbols of His grace given to us through our faith: Holy Communion and Baptism. In an effort to insure the salvation of the faithful, the Catholic Church had instituted additional “sacraments” that the hierarchy insisted everyone follow. Unfortunately, the sacraments had become ritualized so that most people believed salvation consisted only of performing the sacraments. Again, someone had added requirements to salvation by grace through faith. Somewhere along the line, the Church had replaced relationship with ritual.

Luther reacted against the replacement. Luther had lived in terror of God’s justice, constantly seeking to confess his sins to achieve God’s grace. Then, Luther had read Romans and realized that following a series of ritual could not replace a living relationship with a living God. As Luther wrote,

1. I began to understand that “the justice of God” meant that justice by which the just man lives through God’s gift, namely by faith. That is what it means: the justice of God is revealed by the gospel, a passive justice with which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: “He who through faith is just shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates (Quoted in Theology of the Reformers, Timothy George, p. 62).
   

Do you live in fear of God’s justice? Believe in Jesus, and find redemption from the penalties of sin. Do you live in despair of your failures? Believe in Jesus. Do you live in fear of loneliness? Believe in Jesus and enjoy a relationship with God. This relationship will lead you to join His people, the Church, and enjoy the fellowship you’ll find only in a congregation of broken but redeemed people.

None of us can earn a relationship with God. St. Paul’s good news, proclaimed by Martin Luther, is that we don’t have to earn the relationship. God has done everything to make possible the relationship through a new covenant. Jesus did everything necessary to give you this relationship. Believe in Jesus and receive all the blessings of a living relationship with a living and loving God.