{"id":11231,"date":"2026-03-02T11:09:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T18:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=11231"},"modified":"2026-03-02T11:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T18:12:16","slug":"the-key-to-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=11231","title":{"rendered":"The key to everything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Select here for a pdf version.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Romans 5:1-11<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How big is God? We talk about how God is infinite, and yet how he came in Jesus Christ, and he comes to us in his promises and little bits of bread and wine. How can that be? Then we remember that God created infinity itself; suddenly that changes everything. We have these limits. We think we have some kind of God in a box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get at this, let\u2019s remember Luther\u2019s journey. He was there in Upper Germany, a bright young man, preparing to be a lawyer. And then one day on his way to Wittenburg he was caught in a storm. Branches were blowing off trees. There was lightning all around, and he was he was going to die. He prayed to St. Anne: \u201cSave me, if you save me, I\u2019ll become a monk.\u201d Then he was saved, and much to his father\u2019s dismay, he turned around and became a monk, and he was determined to do it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luther was a high achiever. But the most important thing about him was that he couldn\u2019t lie to himself. He was brutally honest. When he was supposed to fast for two days, he fasted for four. When he was supposed to sleep on a bare cot, he slept on a bare cot without a blanket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried to atone for his sins, he realized: \u201cI\u2019m doing it selfishly. It\u2019s supposed to be done out of some good will. But I\u2019m always thinking selfishly of what it means for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter what he did, he ended up in spiritual pride, thinking: \u201cI\u2019m doing this; I\u2019m a good person.\u201d Or in spiritual despair: \u201cI\u2019m just flattering myself that I\u2019m a good person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He would go to his confessor and try to get it right. His confessor, Staupitz, who happened to be the head of this Order of Augustinian monks, got really tired of Luther. He said: \u201cYou\u2019ve gotta get over this; you gotta get on with it.\u201d Finally, Staupitz said to Luther: \u201cGo and become a professor of the Bible.\u201d Get your mind on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, Luther, bright guy, became a professor of Bible, and as he was doing that, he came to this matter of God\u2019s justice. He came to the fact that God is just, and God\u2019s justice is just something we cannot face. God\u2019s justice demands, and God\u2019s justice is just too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then somewhere around 1514 while he was studying, he said it suddenly came to him that God\u2019s justice is not what God demands but what God gives. He said it was as if the gates of paradise opened to him. Everything changed. That meant not only that everything changed about his thinking about salvation, but it was like a light went on about the whole Bible itself. The key to the whole is that justice is not what God demands, but justice is what God gives, and that makes all the difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, out of the Reformation came a slogan about God\u2019s justice: \u201cJustification by faith,\u201d and it comes from Romans 4:5, which we had last week, where it says: \u201cAnd to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That slogan \u201cjustification by faith\u201d is well-known. There is a lesser-known slogan, \u201cjustification of the ungodly,\u201d which means the same thing. Only the lost can be found. Or as it says in Mattew 9:12: \u201cOnly the sick need a doctor.\u201d The justice God gives is \u201cto the ungodly.\u201d And as we noted last week, \u201cungodly\u201d doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re not pious enough or not doing something you\u2019re supposed to do. It means something foul and abhorrent; something cast into outer darkness, into the pit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who want to be godly are on their own to fulfill the law.  But for all the rest of us, righteousness is given apart from works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We may ask: But isn\u2019t faith our response to what God has done, and thus a kind of work? As in: \u201cYou must believe.\u201d Or \u201cYou gotta have faith.\u201d The word \u201cfaith\u201d can be used that way, but that\u2019s not what Paul means here in Romans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, faith is something God gives us, and the symbol of that is, as you know, infant Baptism. The tiny baby who is baptized, doesn\u2019t realize it, doesn\u2019t feel it, doesn\u2019t make a decision for it. God does it. It is like Ephesians 1:4: \u201cHe chose us in him before the foundation of the world.\u201d Faith is given to us, like being marked with the cross of Christ forever. It\u2019s done to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We get a little trouble with this because in Romans 3:24 it says: we \u201care justified by his grace, as a gift,\u201d and we think: \u201cWell, yes, when a gift is given, it must be received, and we should say: \u201cThank you.\u2019\u201d So, a gift has two sides to it, and that\u2019s where this metaphor of faith as a gift goes wrong. \u201cBy his grace,\u201d really means it\u2019s one-sided. He does it to us and in us, and that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One more thing. It\u2019s important to add the word \u201calone.\u201d The slogan is not \u201cjustified by faith,\u201d but \u201cjustified by faith alone.\u201d In Romans 3:28 Luther added the word \u201calone\u201d so it would read: \u201c. . . a man is justified by faith alone <\/strong>apart from works of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has come out acutely in our lifetime in the official Dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This august group of scholars first came together after Vatican II ended in 1965. Buoyed by the hope of Christian unity, both Roman Catholic and Lutheran officials assigned their best scholars to this Dialogue. The two teams of about 10 scholars each met twice a year. In the 1970\u2019s and 80\u2019s this Dialogue gained international attention as the arena where the big questions were being taken up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[One of the Roman Catholic scholars said that if his superiors cut off his travel fund, he would pay out of his own pocket to attend the Dialogue meetings.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These scholars spent about five years discussing \u201cjustification by faith.\u201d Could Lutherans and Catholics today agree? If not, could they clarify where the basic differences lie?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lutheran team asked the Catholic team: \u201cCould you get rid of the word \u201cmerit,\u201d or find a way of getting around it, find a way of saying salvation is not by merit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intense discussion followed. They even produced an extra volume of essays just on justification in the New Testament. Finally, the Roman Catholics said: \u201cNo.\u201d They couldn\u2019t do that. They said they had to stick with the word \u201cmerit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means that \u201cjustification by faith alone\u201d is not something Catholics hold. To be sure, Catholic do hold to \u201cjustification by faith,\u201d but not \u201cby faith alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, in the end, after five years, they concluded that they couldn\u2019t agree, but they could say where a basic difference lies. It lies on this matter of faith \u201calone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s helpful to see that this same problem arises between Lutherans and evangelicals for a different reason. Because of how we use the Bible, specifically because of how the Book of James differs from Paul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In James it says faith without works is dead. It talks about Abraham and says: \u201cAbraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.\u201d But it doesn\u2019t stop there. It goes on to say this is because Abraham worked, he did good works, and it says: \u201c. . . [A] man is justified by works and not by faith alone\u201d (James 2:24). This means that the only place where it says justification \u201cby faith alone\u201d in the New Testament is where it rejects it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In James it says that Abraham was a friend of God.  But Paul says it\u2019s \u201cjustification of the ungodly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, we have a real contradiction, and it can\u2019t be dodged because the key to everything is \u201cjustification of the ungodly.\u201d God gives his justice. He does not sit there demanding of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can help to see how Paul develops this in Romans 4 and 5. It is like a fireworks show that builds to a grand finale. As you know, Abraham and Sarah grew very old, and that blessing of being a father of many nations hadn\u2019t even started. Then at 100 years old they have Isaac. That\u2019s the beginning of the fireworks. Impossible!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then it goes on in Romans 4:17 to say the Lord \u201ccreated out of nothing.\u201d Stupendous!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And not only that. Then says he creates life out of death, and finally, even more than that, the grand finale: \u201cHe was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification\u201d (Romans 4:25). Boom! Boom! Boom! That\u2019s the biggest blast of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should have trumpets blasting because that\u2019s what it\u2019s all about: Holiness, the holiness of his cross by which he redeems us from the pit. As Paul writes in Romans 5:10: \u201cFor if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest problem of all is our sin, our rebellion, and yet he takes care of it all. How big is God? He not only can bring life out of death, but also holiness instead of our trespasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luther puts it well in the Smalcald Articles. He says: \u201cWe cannot pin our hopes on anything we are, think, say, or do\u201d (Tappert 3\/3\/26, p.309; a better translation here than Kolb\/Wengert, p.318).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank God, because if it depended on us, our work, or our decision, or our belief, we, like Luther, would never get beyond spiritual pride or despair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But because it is in spite of anything we are, think, say or do, because it\u2019s his doing, we can be certain. Because it is, and because \u201cjustification by faith alone\u201d means the same thing as the lesser-known slogan \u201cjustification of the ungodly,\u201d we live forgiven and free. This is the key to everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Romans 5:1-11<\/p>\n

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent<\/p>\n

How big is God? We talk about how God is infinite, and yet how he came in Jesus Christ, and he comes to us in his promises and little bits of bread and wine. How can that be? Then we remember that God created infinity itself; suddenly that changes everything. We have these limits. We think we have some kind of God in a box.<\/p>\n

To get at this, let\u2019s remember Luther\u2019s journey. He was there in Upper Germany, a bright young man, preparing to be a lawyer. And then one day on his way to Wittenburg he was caught in a storm. Branches were blowing off trees. There was lightning all around, and he was he was going to die. He prayed to St. Anne: \u201cSave me, if you save me, I\u2019ll become a monk.\u201d Then he was saved, and much to his father\u2019s dismay, he turned around and became a monk, and he was determined to do it right.<\/p>\n

Select here<\/a> to read more or here <\/a>for a pdf version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11231"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11238,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11231\/revisions\/11238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}