Pastor Steven Thiel's Sermon

 REFORMATION DAY
Romans 3:19-28
“Distinguished”

    In ancient times, before television underwent the first of its many reformations from the dark ages of black-and-white pictures to color pictures, using remote controls, digital picture technology, flat-panel giant screens with ultrahigh definition images, and so on, I watched a particular commercial that made a lasting impression on me. I don’t remember what product was being advertised, but the commercial ran frequently between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day in the late 60s and early 70s. A rather curvaceous blond-haired lady wearing a slinky black, floor-length evening gown and a big, fuzzy boa around her shoulders danced while she sang to a bunch of guys about how they were men of distinction because they spent their hard earned money on the product she was pushing.
    For whatever reason, in my mind, that commercial must have been quite distinctive. As an impressionable teen, maybe I just liked being told I could be a man of distinction! In reality, however, I would just be a regular guy. There really is only one true Man of Distinction: Christ Jesus Is the Man of Distinction Who Distinguished Indistinguishable Us.
   Now more than ever, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, commercialism wants you to part company with your money. The pitch is often to buy things it insists will distinguish you from, well, the rest of the world! “Why be ordinary? Why be like everyone else? Be distinct! Be different from everybody else!” The implication is that if you’re different from everyone else, you will also be better than anyone else. If you can’t be a superstar, an icon, or a living legend at something, then distinguish yourself with your pocketbook. That’s why we shop at the same stores with millions of other people – to drink that special vintage wine, to wear that exclusive clothing label, to be seen using that electronic technology gadget guaranteed to set us apart, from and above, everyone. And we fall for that line, not just every Christmas season, but all year round, all our lives. We’ve come a long way from the platitude of Henry Ford offering us any paint color we want on our car ... as long as it’s black. Or have we?
    Verse 19 in today’s Epistle tells us right away that we have been an easy mark for a slick sales pitch almost since the beginning. Since Adam and Eve tried to distinguish themselves with their sinful pride, to be like God – to in fact, be the same as God – mankind has instead been separated from their Creator. “We know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world held accountable to God.” Paul makes it clear that all mankind is indistinguishable from one another since sin has made every single human totally corrupt to our very core. Whether one straps bombs to his chest before going to a busy marketplace or donates a hundred pints of blood to help others, God’s Word in today’s text tells us that we are all accountable, not to ourselves and our sin-tainted ethics and morals, but to God and the sin-free, perfect, and holy ethics and morals in his Law. Every mouth must be silenced – or, literally, shut. Absolutely no one has any right even to think about arguing his or her innocence before God, much less do it. “No one will be declared righteous in the sight of God by observing the law, Paul says in v20, “rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.”
    But Paul brings this up since it is exactly what we try to do. By default, we try to justify ourselves before God. We frequently have the nerve and arrogance to present all our “works of the law,” our good deeds, to God, thinking they will move him to ignore our greater sin. This, of course, is the very error Martin Luther came to see as so devastating to the Church in his day; man trying to justify himself by prayers to the saints or indulgences to reduce one’s time in purgatory, or offering a specified number of “Our Father’s” and “Hail Mary’s.” When we try to justify ourselves before God, we are actually trying to substitute our pathetic self-righteousness for God’s perfect, sin-forgiving, and saving righteousness in the crucified and risen Christ Jesus. We delude ourselves into thinking we can distinguish ourselves above everyone else on the basis of God’s Law. We forget or ignore the fact that all this sinful effort actually just makes us less distinguishable from the rest of humanity. In our sin against God’s holy and just Law, we are all the same. “There is no distinction,” our text says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (vv 22b–23)
    “But now,” we are reminded, “a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known ... thru faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” The Gospel HAS distinguished us, apart and distinct from God’s Law, which makes us painfully aware of how indistinguishable we are in our sin from everyone else in the world. We are distinguished thru faith in the gift of Christ’s right-standing, his righteousness, before God. When Christ Jesus gave this entire world his undeserved love, sacrificing his sinless lifeblood on Calvary’s cross, God forgave all the sin of the world. He gave us Jesus’ righteousness: “to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (v 26) It distinguished Jesus as this world’s Savior from the damning power and guilt of sin. It distinguished Christ as he who is called “the Lord our righteousness.” (Jer 23:6) Furthermore, it is by his gift of Holy Baptism that the Holy Spirit has made us children of the heavenly Father thru faith in Jesus. As such, we have, in God the Father’s eyes, been distinguished from the rest of the world that does not believe. We are those who have life – now in time and next in eternity – thru the righteousness earned for us by Christ Jesus.
    As Lutherans, sons and daughters of the Reformation, we rejoice in this! This is the truth Luther again discovered in the pages of Holy Scripture – the truth that sets us free. Not that we boast in it, for we have nothing of which to boast: “For we maintain that [everyone] is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (v 28) Boasting is for those who live under the Law, better yet for the One who fulfilled the Father’s perfect Law on our behalf, Jesus, “the Lord our righteousness.” In other words, Christ Jesus has made us righteous before God by his justification on Calvary’s cross. What’s more, in Baptism the Holy Spirit has created in our hearts faith that trusts in this Gospel promise. Thus, we live by grace, thru faith, rather than works of the flesh. We live in the righteousness of Christ. He did all the justifying; he did all the distinguishing. He distinguished himself as the distinguisher of us. Solely thru the Sacraments we have been distinguished by faith. We are distinguished in God’s eyes, in this faith and solely thru the Scriptures, which testify that Christ himself has made us just.
    As surely as that television commercial left a distinct image in my mind, so, too, has Christ Jesus, with his atoning sacrifice on Calvary’s cross, as our only Savior from sin. It is he and he alone who has distinguished us who have trusting faith in him. Yes, sin made us indistinguishable from the world, and that’s what we always would have been were it not for Christ. But by making himself accountable for our sin, he has made us different; he has made us distinct before God the Father. He is the Man of Distinction, as the One who spent his all on Golgotha’s cross. He is the Man of Distinction, as the One who distinguishes us. So there is a distinction, for we who have sinned and fall short of the glory of God are justified by God’s grace as a free gift thru Christ Jesus. We are, thank God, men and women and youth and children of distinction! Alleluia! Amen.