Reckoned To Us

 

Sunday, June 8^th, 2008

Proper 5/ Ordinary 10 A/ Pentecost +4

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 4:13-25

Theme: Salvation Through Faith

 

 “¹³For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. ¹⁶For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, ¹⁷as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) —in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. ¹⁸Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.” ¹⁹He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²²Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ²³Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone, ²⁴but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”

 

Back to basics. 

 

The heart of the matter. 

 

The central truth. 

 

The core argument. 

 

They are all ways of saying – and signaling – that what you are beginning to talk about is a fundamental aspect of the issue at hand.  That is what we are touching on this morning.  We are in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, and he is stressing the equality of the gentile and the Jewish follower of Christ – it is, in fact, one of his major issues to address in the letter – he was dealing with a stratification – a separation – that had crept into the church in the absence of the Jewish believers – those who most probably first established the church – after being evicted from Rome by the emperor Claudius. 

 

The argument, in fact, cuts both ways.  Paul is trying to get across to BOTH the Jews AND the gentile members of the congregation that NEITHER is greater or lesser than the other, but that, by the Grace of God through Faith in Jesus Christ, they are all brothers and sisters. 

 

Elwood made a particularly important point last week in his testimony.  At one point, after he said the he would live on this earth as long as God let him, and then he would go live with God in heaven.  Not because of anything he’d done.  He reviewed the fact that he is a deacon here at Jerusalem, that he has served as a Sunday School teacher, Sunday School Director, served on various committees over the years, but he reiterated the fact that not a single one of those things EARNED him the right to go to heaven.  That the only reason he knows he is going to heaven is because he has put his faith and trust in Jesus Christ who died for him on the cross, and made the way for him to go before the throne of God and have Christ stand in his place and be deemed worthy because Christ was worthy. 

 

That is actually the same argument that Paul is making throughout Romans.  He is underscoring that fact to his Jewish brothers and sisters who may be thinking that there have to be some sort of thresholds met in order to qualify for entry through the golden gates. 

 

It is likewise the argument that he makes to his gentile brothers and sisters who come from any number of pagan religious backgrounds that most likely ALSO taught that there were certain offerings, certain rituals that needed to be followed in order to please the gods – whoever they were – to allow one to prosper or succeed. 

             

The point Paul is making is that in light of the action of God in Christ ALL striving for the purpose of attaining salvation is null and void.  That we can’t beat each other to the finish line when it comes to that particular race because THAT race has already been run and completed and God in Christ won hands down, or rather, hands up and out on the cross. 

 

We’ve read it so often in scripture, in studies, we hear it in sermons – “salvation by grace through faith”.  So … what does that mean, exactly?  What is grace, and what is faith? 

 

Grace in this case is the action of God on God’s own part, not prompted by anything we’ve done or asked for.  For reasons that we can wonder about and only partially understand this side of heaven, God realized what needed to be done in order to remain in relationship with humanity, and that was, to come to earth and live among us.  To be with us and teach us what he meant it to look like when he set out on the adventure that resulted in creation. 

 

Faith is what we bring to the table that God invites us to.  Even then, it is not purely ours.  It is our spirit’s response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives and in our hearts.  It is that part of us that first surrenders to the Lordship of Christ and calls the rest of ‘us’ to follow. 

 

Faith is that part of us that sees what we can’t see with our eyes; that hears what we can’t hear with our ears; that feels that which we can’t feel with our hands; that knows that which we can’t know with our minds, but only with our hearts.  It is what understands when the rest of us is confused, that believes when the rest of us is saying it can’t be so. 

 

Now, here’s the rub.  Faith is a good thing to have.  Period.  We can have faith in a lot of things.  Faith that the floor will hold us up, faith that the light will come on when we flip the switch, faith that we will still be here tomorrow to complete the plans we’ve set for the day or the week … though in truth we do not know that for certain.  But when we speak of faith in the Christian sense, we speak of a very specific type of faith – it is faith in a person, faith in that what that person said was the truth about himself, about God, about what it means to be truly righteous, about what happens to sin that we confess, about what God really wants of us is US – not our deeds, or our works, our efforts.  Those are part of it, of course --- but they come AFTER we have given ourselves to God.  NOT before. 

 

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton on June 8^th, 2008?  It means that we recommit ourselves to giving ourselves to God – hopefully we’ve all done that at some point in our lives – we’ve come to the realization that we can’t do this by ourselves, we don’t WANT to do this by ourselves, and we can ONLY do this – this LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF GOD’S LOVE – with God in us through the presence of the Holy Spirit THROUGH our faith in Jesus Christ.  And that involves a conscious decision.  A moment in which we change, in which we begin to turn control of our lives – ALL of our lives – our thoughts, our actions, our emotions, our bitterness, our resentments, our grudges, our unexposed, darkest corners – over to the light and the love of Christ. 

 

Did you notice I said ‘begin’ to turn control over?  That is because our old selves don’t vanish the moment we surrender to Christ.  That old self has been in control for a very long time, and is used to it, and doesn’t easily want to let go.  Yes, there are instances when it happens quickly – and those are the really mind-boggling testimonies we’d all like to have – where we were hooked on drugs and living on the street and eating out of dumpsters until we found Jesus; and the addiction – the desire to do drugs – vanished from one moment to the next.  We’d all like to be able to tell of such miraculous conversions, but the truth is much more … routine, much more prosaic. 

 

The truth is most of us made our decisions in the quietness of our home, or driving along the road one day, or in a quiet Sunday School room while some other function was going on in another part of the church.  And things went along pretty much as they always did after that.  So it is hard to distinguish the before from the after.  And that makes it harder to recognize the old self when it rears its ugly head and says “no, don’t apologize; they had it coming”, or the old self – that still sounds surprisingly like you yourself, convinces you that harboring that kernel of hate for that one particular person who did that one particular thing – regardless of how long ago it was – is not doing anyone any harm, but is keeping me aware of what they are capable of … that that is somehow acceptable, when Christ has equated hatred with murder … I hope you’re getting the picture here.  Our old self is going to be around for the duration.  Our GOAL is to be able to recognize and dismiss our old self when he or she tries to convince us to do, say or think what is contrary to the Gospel of Christ.                     

 

Let’s pray.