In the Name of Our Savior, Dear Fellow Heirs of the Reformation,

I talked with one of our former vicars, Carlos Leyrer, last week.  He was the first vicar with whom I began coaching sports down at the local YMCA.  It made me think of the first basketball game we ever coached a couple of years ago.  I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty.  After our first two practices, I told Carlos that the group of 4th and 5th graders we had agreed to coach were far from ready for their first basketball game.  Of the ten boys assigned to our team, only three or four of them had any kind of experience.  So when we walked out onto the court for our first game, we knew we were in trouble.  Aside from the fact that our tallest player was still shorter than their shortest player, we also found out that our opponents had been playing together for five years.  Our team?  About a week and a half.  When it was all said and done, it resembled Custer’s last stand.  We forgot to dribble.  We didn’t play defense.  We couldn’t rebound.  Our shooting was a disaster.  And we lost.  We scored all of six points – not nearly enough, considering the other team scored 64!

When we regained consciousness, Carlos and I talked over our coaching strategy for the upcoming season.  We couldn’t give our team instant experience.  We couldn’t make the guys taller.  So we decided we’d have to go back to the basics.  We’d have to teach them how to dribble, how to get open for shots, how to play defense.  Nothing fancy – just the basics.  After all, if they couldn’t get the basics down, everything else would be a mess.

At the time when Martin Luther was about to make his mark in the world, the Roman Catholic Church had made a mess of things.  God’s free gift of salvation was no longer free.  It came with a price tag.  You had to earn your forgiveness – or at least pay for it through indulgences, the pieces of paper that said all your sins were forgiven because you had purchased that forgiveness yourself.  Luther tried to play this game as a loyal monk, but somehow things didn’t fit.  It all seemed so wrong.  So Luther decided to see for himself what God had to say about his salvation.  He decided to go back to the basics of God’s Word.

Today we celebrate Reformation Sunday by doing the same thing.  After all, when it comes to how we get to heaven, it’s not all that difficult to figure out.  Today let’s go back to class:

“Back to the Basics:  Salvation 101″

I. Works won’t work

II. Faith can’t fail

When it comes to our salvation, there are basically two ways for us to get heaven.  One way is to get there by ourselves.  Jesus tells us how (Mt 5:48), “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  If you take a test and get a grade of 99%, you’d feel pretty good about it, right?  But a 99% grade isn’t enough to get you into heaven.  Scripture is clear (Jas 2:10), “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”  In other words, we don’t have a case.  There’s nothing we can say in our defense when the mirror of God’s law shows us the ugly picture of how often we’ve shattered God’s perfect standard.  That’s how the apostle Paul opens the words before us this morning (v 19), “Now 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.”  We don’t have a leg to stand on.  We open our mouths to complain, to try and argue our point, but we’re silenced.  In God’s courtroom, we’re guilty as charged.  When it comes to salvation, our own works just won’t work.

It seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?  Just in case, Paul reiterates his point (v 23), “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  God has set the bar pretty high, and we all have missed the mark.  We’ve all fallen short of his “glory.”  Another way of translating this verse would be to say that we’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s “approval.”  Our lives provide the evidence that condemns us.  When it comes to keeping God’s law, we’re found lacking in what is needed.  It’s like trying to buy a $2 ice cream cone and only having a nickel in our pockets.  The result?  NO SALE!  The same can be said for anyone who thinks he can make it into heaven by his own works.  The law can not save us (v 20), “Therefore no one will be declared righteous [i.e., not guilty] in [God’s] sight by observing the law.”  No, the law serves a different purpose (v 20), “Rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.”  In other words, God’s law gives us the full knowledge of what sin is.  It makes sure that we know that when it comes to our salvation, our works won’t work.

When it comes to “Salvation 101,” here’s the problem:  Too many people are forgetting this basic fact.  We did some canvassing yesterday, and once again our surveys were littered with answers from people who were banking their trip to heaven on what they themselves could do here on this earth.  No one should have to go through life thinking this way.  First of all, it’s fatal.  It kills our chances of being with God.  Secondly, it leaves a ring of guilt around the bathtub of life.  No matter how hard you try, your life will be plagued with guilt if you think you can work your way into heaven, because deep down you’ll be tormented by the fact that works won’t work!

But thanks be to God – there’s another way to heaven!  In that familiar section of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul once again gives us the basics (Eph 2:8,9), “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that on one can boast.”  Knowing full well that our own works won’t work when it comes to our salvation, we’re given another option.  When we go back to the basics, God’s Word assures us that faith can’t fail.

Without the Bible we would never know that the righteousness – the perfection – that God requires of us has actually been given to us.  Paul tells us (v 21), “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.”  Throughout the Old Testament Scriptures (“the Law and the Prophets”), God promised to provide the righteousness he demanded.  How did that righteousness become our own?  “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (v 22).  God sent Jesus to do what we couldn’t do, to exchange his perfection for our imperfections (2 Co 5:21), “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Jesus changed everything.  Even though the fact remains that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”  now we’re also told that all people “are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (v 24).  God has declared us “not guilty” – without cost, free of charge, undeservedly – because Jesus paid the ransom price to free us from the slavery of sin.  When it comes to our salvation, everything’s been done for us.  We accept this fact by faith.  Then we’re on the right track to heaven, because faith can’t fail!

Our sinful nature tries to tell us that getting to heaven can’t be that easy.  It wants us to think that the road to heaven is a difficult one, one that we must walk on our own.  But there’s one problem:  our sins.  They get in the way.  And there’s only one way to get rid of them (1 Jn 1:7), “The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”  The writer to the Hebrews tells us (Heb 9:22), “The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”  This is where Paul paints a wonderful picture for us.  He puts it this way (v 25), “God presented [his Son] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”  The Old Testament Israelites carried around with them the Ark of the Covenant in which were found the two tables of the Law.  On the annual Day of Atonement, the high priest would sprinkle the blood of animals on the cover of the ark of the covenant, signifying that whenever God would look at his Law, he’d see instead his Son’s blood, shed in our behalf.  “Through faith in his blood” we are restored to God’s family, once again being made “at-one” with our Creator.

See how it all works together?  God can be both a just God and a loving God because of Christ.  He can be both “just and the one who justifies” (v 26).  He demanded payment for sin, but he sent his Son to make the payment for us.  In this way we see that faith can’t fail, because our faith is founded on a God who always keeps his word!

When we go back to the basics in “Salvation 101,” we can’t help but give credit for our salvation to God.  Paul reinforces this thought when he asks (v 27), “Where, then, is boasting?  It is excluded [i.e., not allowed].  On what principle?  On that of observing the law?  No, but on that of faith.”  Faith nullifies boasting, because the essence of faith is trusting in someone other than yourself.  So how can you boast if you’re forced to turn to someone else for your salvation?  You can’t.  Instead you give all glory to God.  You’re saved by his free gift of grace, and you know this is true by faith!

Amen