Last week, at the feast of Saint Luke, we saw that being in the church means knowing Jesus in the Gospels. Now, as we observe the Reformation, we see how the world receives the Church of the true Gospel. As our Lord says in verse 12 of our gospel reading, “From John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent men take it by force.” The truth of the gospel that we are justified through the merit of Christ, and not by our own works of the law, is contrary to the natural state of man.
I think we, as Lutherans, tend to take our understanding of the Gospel for granted. This is why, oftentimes, when we hear what other churches say and do, we are confused. For us, salvation and how we live and worship in the knowledge that we are saved by faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ changes us. The way we speak of God. The way we reflect on His word. In the way we serve the Lord with thanksgiving. It’s all because we are different; we have the fullness of the gospel. And still, Christ says the kingdom of God, that is, the church of the pure gospel, does not go along unscraped or unharmed. For Christians will suffer much to bear the truth.
I. When the Lord Jesus discusses St. John the Baptist, He, in the end, is talking about Himself and the church. Christ Jesus has professed in the preceding verses that there is no greater who has been born of a woman and a man than John the Baptist. Yet there is still one who was not born of man and woman, but only of a woman. Born of the blessed Virgin Mary, our Lord Christ Jesus.
For as John sits in prison, waiting to be executed, our Lord cannot speak of John without knowing what awaits Him also. To die unruly for someone else’s offenses. And why does John die? John bears witness to the truth: our Lord Jesus Christ, who calls sinners to repentance and to trust completely in the Lord for salvation.
And still, it is by the One who has died for the sins of the world. The one whom John said whose sandals I am unworthy to untie. Christ Jesus laid down His life so we are free from sin and become His Father’s dear children.
John the Baptist and our Lord know the price of their Gospel, their good news. It cost them their life in the most violent of ways. Because when the sinful nature realizes we cannot be justified apart from Christ, something evil is invoked.
The violent men devise to take the Kingdom of God by force on the grounds that the holy Christian Church proclaims what no one wants to hear. That we are by nature sinful and unclean and deserve nothing but temporal and eternal punishment from God, our righteous judge. We can’t pay it back. We can’t do something else to make up for our wrongdoings. There is only one way to escape God’s wrath: trust in the mercy of our Lord through the death of His Son.
This is how Christ explains the old man before they receive the gospel: futile, or against Him. We must first be crushed by the law; the selfishness and disobedience that dwell in us must be crucified so the Holy Spirit may grant a new heart of faith. So who were the violent men who are against the kingdom of God? They are us! Us before we received the true fullness of the gospel. That we have received our righteousness, not by anything we have done, but solely in the blood of the Lamb.
II. Now, as united to the Lord Jesus, who has paid the price of our transgression, who are we to say that the violent ones will not turn against us also? As the world condemned and crucified their maker and the God of all, who are we to say that they will not do the same to us? The world, with satan as their king, strives day and night to put an end to the message of Christ’s mercy for sinners and those who believe in it. This should not surprise us at all, for Christ warns us of this when He says in Matthew chapter 10, “Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.”
The unrepentant resist Christ’s message because they are more comfortable living in darkness, where their revelry is not held against them. The world would like to tell us the same message they tell themselves: that where there is no preaching of the law, there is no condemnation, yet our Lord says in John 8, “Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.”
Dear friends in Christ, that is not freedom at all, and the Lord says once again in the same place, “A slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore, if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”
In the death and Resurrection of God’s only begotten Son, you are free from sin. Still, the world and our sinful nature do not want us free. They want to persecute us. Tell us that we are fools. Say to us, how can you claim to know the truth if your church is not what used to be? The church is in decline; how are you so confident? Where are your packed churches? Where are your children’s children?
The world wants to challenge us. It wants to tell us the church is no longer in vogue or keeping up with the times. So, some of the wider church have compromised to the winds of our evil age. Some have said we must adapt our message, our worship, or our theology to make us more acceptable and nice. By doing so, they fulfill the words of Saint Paul in 2 Timothy chapter 4: “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears.”
The decline of the American Church is not because we abandoned the truth. The fault is that we have become ashamed of proclaiming the saving truth. We must not be ashamed of it, remembering Christ’s words in John 16: “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
III. It is for this reason that the church of the 16th century required the Reformation, as the church no longer believed it needed to teach the plain doctrine of Scripture. The Reformation we Lutherans inherit is not a departure from the Word of God or Church teaching. Instead, it should be seen as a restoration of what the Word of God clearly teaches in His Church.
What is true is often diminished, even when it teaches that salvation is not earned or achieved, but freely given through Christ to those who have faith in Him. The truth of God’s Word does not depend on whether we agree with it. If we do not accept the Word of God, that does not make it untrue.
Therefore, we do not accept the pure gospel freely given to us on the account that it is easy to accept. We accept these things by the power of the Spirit because it is true that we are justified by Christ apart from the works of the law. Christ Jesus says the violent men will come to seize the pure Church, and still, their violence will be brought to nothing, for the Word of the Lord endureth forever. For he who has ears, let him hear, and he will be saved. Amen
