Trinity 6, 2024
Rev. Thomas Van Hemert
St. Matthew 5:17-26
Trinity 6
July 7, 2024
In the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Everything God does is good. When God created the world and everything in it, after every day of creation He said, “It is good.” When He created man in His own image, He looked over His creation and said, “It is very good.” All things that God does is good.
What God says is also good. In Exodus, chapter 20, God spoke all these words saying, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me…you shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain…remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy…honor your father and your mother…you shall not murder…you shall not commit adultery…you shall not steal…you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor…you shall not covet.”
The first thing God says when revealing His will to us, that is, His holy Law is, “I am the LORD your God.” This is a constitutional monarchy. God is our God. There is no other God but Him. He is the God who created us, redeemed us, and makes us holy just as He is holy. And if He is our God, if we do not reject Him as our God, then He gives us commands—instructions on how to live as His people. We have no other God’s but Him. We do not take His name in vain, but rather, pray to Him, praise Him, and give Him thanks. We worship Him by receiving what He gives to us in the Divine Service. Then we look to our neighbors. We honor our fathers and our mothers. We don’t murder but rather, we help our neighbor in his bodily needs. We don’t commit adultery. We don’t steal. We don’t slander. And we don’t covet. This is what it looks like to live as God’s chosen people, rescued from sin, death, and the devil. So it is that these commands, this Law, is good.
There is nothing bad, nothing evil about the command to not take God’s name in vain. There’s nothing inherently bad or evil in regard to the command to not slander our neighbor. God’s Law is good. It is His will for us. It shows us how we are to live. God commands it. He says it. His Law comes from Him. Thus, it is good.
The problem in all this, however, is that we don’t keep the Law. We do take God’s name in vain. Sometimes we don’t honor our parents. Sometimes we do slander our neighbor and gossip about him behind his back. Sometimes we do grow envious of what our neighbor has and we covet. The problem is not the Law. The problem is us. We are sinful. We are evil. We want to be our own gods. This problem with our human nature goes all the way back to our first parents. They were given the command, “Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” but still, they ate and this problem has been passed down to us.
No human being who ever lived has been able to perfectly keep God’s holy Law, except One. Because we cannot keep God’s Law perfectly, we need someone to keep and to fulfill that Law for us. God does not go renege on His promises. He does not say, “I am the LORD your God. Now here are my commands for you,” but when we don’t keep our end of the bargain, He says, “Well you didn’t keep My commands so I’m not going to be your God anymore.” He says, “I am the LORD your God. I will always be your God, even when you fail, even when you sin against me and blaspheme My name. And because I will always be your God, now I will fulfill that Law in your place, so that you can be restored back to fellowship with me.” This is precisely why Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law until all is fulfilled.”
Jesus fulfills the Law in our place. He does not sin. He has no other Gods but His Father. He prays to His Father, worships Him, loves and honors His parents, never murders, steals, covets, and the like. This is what we call Christ’s “Active Obedience.” This is a theological term for Jesus perfectly obeying the Law. This was necessary—His Active Obedience—because He needed to be perfect and spotless, unstained from sin so that when He offered Himself to His Father as the ultimate sacrifice for sin, His Father would accept the sacrifice. It had to be perfect.
Just as we speak of Christ’s “Active Obedience” so also must we speak of Christ’s “Passive Obedience.” Jesus actively and willingly keeps the Law. At the same time, when we speak of Christ’s “Passive Obedience,” what we mean is that even though He keeps and obeys the Law perfectly and is not guilty of any sin, He allows the Law to condemn Him and He suffers the full penalty that we should have suffered for breaking the Law. He is passive in this sense because He allows it to happen to Him. He allows men to take hold of Him, to scourge Him, to nail Him to a cross. If He didn’t you wouldn’t have been able to kill Him. But He allows the Law to do to Him what it should have done to us. He takes our place in death so that we join Him in life.
And because Jesus has kept the Law for us, died, and rose again, we now learn to love this Law. We are fellow redeemed in Christ. We have been baptized into His death and have been raised to new life. The Law shows us what is good and the Christian loves to keep the Law. We should want to strive to be upstanding citizens in our society and virtuous Christians, always wanting to do the right thing and help and serve our neighbors.
We learn by God’s Word that it is objectively good to keep the Law. The word “objectively,” as many of you know, means “in a way that is not influenced by personal feelings or opinions.” So despite what anyone might say or feel or think, no matter what, the Law is good and it is good to obey the Ten Commandments. So much so, that there are earthly benefits for keeping the Law, the Ten Commandments, as well as earthly or temporal consequences for breaking the Law. For example, it is objectively good to not murder your neighbor. The benefits of this would be that that your neighbor gets to keep his life. He gets to live and be a blessing to others. This benefits you because you won’t be arrested, tried, and convicted of murder, and you won’t go to jail. It is objectively good that you do not steal from Walmart. First, because if you don’t Walmart won’t lose product and money and then they can keep the costs down, etc. But if you steal, the consequences would be that you could get caught. You could make the news on KCRG and be labeled a thief and then you’d lose the respect of your family and peers and you’d probably lose your reputation. The same goes for gossip. No one wants to hang around a gossiper because if she’s gossiping about someone else, you can almost bet that she gossips about you and this harms reputations.
It is good that we keep the Law. The Law shows us what sin is so that we would not commit it. The Law shows us our need for a Savior, Who we have in Jesus Christ. And now, because we have the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit dwells in us—our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, we learn to love the Law. Of course, the Law always accuses us of our sin, but now, for us, the Law shows us what is good. It shows us how to live. It shows us what to love. God says to us, “I am the LORD your God,” and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand. Because of Him, our righteousness does exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. But it is not our own righteousness that we obtain by our keeping of the Law. It is by faith in Jesus, who fulfills the Law for us.
In +Jesus’ name.
