The heart of Reformation Day is God’s great love for His Church, preserving it in spite of man’s sin and weakness, and transforming the world and the hearts and lives of sinners through the proclamation of the Gospel.
You do not have to be at a Lutheran church to celebrate Reformation Day. I would imagine, of course, if you happen to serve a Roman Catholic congregation, doing so might get you a talking to by your bishop. If that is the case, perhaps just smuggle the readings into the lectionary for the day, or “free text” a sermon. It will do no harm (in fact, quite the opposite since the Word of God in Christ vivifies the dead and sanctifies sinners!). The heart of Reformation Day is not hero worship of stubborn European theologians with an axe to grind. The heart of Reformation Day is God’s great love for His Church, preserving it in spite of man’s sin and weakness, and transforming the world and the hearts and lives of sinners through the proclamation of the Gospel.
Meditate well on that point, preacher, and you will avoid the major pitfall of Reformation preaching. The pulpit is a place of preaching, not of superficial polemic. Do not preach a sermon on the Solas of the Reformation (sola fide, sola scriptura, sola gratia, and the like), unless it is solo Christo. Preach Christ. Save the rest of the Solas for Bible class. Do not preach a sermon that congratulates folks who can pat themselves on the back for being wise enough to be born protestant. Preach a sermon that diagnoses sin, kills the sinner, and comforts with the Gospel. Resist the temptation to preach a history lesson. Preach the Word that is delivered in the pericopes for this festival, and you will have done the work Reformation history unfolded for.
Our focus here is the epistle lesson: Paul’s summary of a righteousness which is by faith in Jesus, the conclusion of his opening salvo in Romans 1-3. If John 3:16 is “the Gospel in a nutshell,” then Romans 3:21-26 is Paul in a nutshell, or at least the core of Paul’s theology, the doctrine of justification by faith. And his conclusion? We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the Law (Romans 3:28). The entire text is a summary of what we mean by the distinction between Law and Gospel. See here the sola fide emphasis of the Reformation: Jesus plus nothing equals salvation. No works. Our boasting in what we can do to attain, perform, measure up to the righteousness of God is excluded from salvation talk, because salvation talk has nothing whatsoever to do with our own works, but only to do with what God does, what He has done in Christ.
What has God done in Christ? He has presented Jesus as the object of faith (Romans 3:22). Trusting in this Jesus makes manifest, makes clear, and actually delivers the righteousness of God in a different way than attaining it through works, and that is a gift. God did not have to do it that way, and you could not get it any other way. Thanks be to God for the gift of the Christ.
What has God done in Christ? He has redeemed sinners, counting them righteous by virtue of his own gracious, favorable attitude towards sinners, and this also is a gift (Romans 3:24). Redemption has a price. God presented Christ as the propitiation, the mercy seat, the atonement, the one who makes us one with God, and it comes in sacrifice. Blood. Received by faith. That is the cost. That is the Christ of Romans 3, the faithful one who invites your faith in His blood. The trusting son of God, who trusted His Father all the way to His passion and sacrifice for the sins of all the world, who invites you to despair of your own works, and not to misplace your trust, but to place it, instead, on His person, His works, His blood for you.
Redemption has a price. God presented Christ as the propitiation, the mercy seat, the atonement, the one who makes us one with God, and it comes in sacrifice.
The forensic vocabulary of Paul’s argument may, with just a little imagination, evoke courtroom imagery (like the judge, defendant, prosecutor, advocate, sentence, acquittal, gavels, and all). Conceiving of a sermon that points up the dramatic roles of the courtroom scene, putting your hearers in the role of the accused and literally declaring them righteous from the judge’s bench would point up the declaration of righteousness (“justified by His grace”) of Romans 3:24. What does a righteous judge do? She or he cannot simply shrug a shoulder and say, the crime does not matter, I am feeling generous today, you get to walk. The judge must be impartial, cannot be a respecter of persons (Romans 2:11), or discriminate (Romans 3:22-23), and, therefore, cannot be capricious or arbitrary, punishing some who deserve it but not all. All (Jews, Gentiles, Old Testament and New Testament folks) are found guilty before God’s holy standard, and He righteously condemns all in the blood of Jesus and righteously declares all righteous in the blood of Jesus in order that He might “show His righteousness” and “be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). The sentencing and actual execution of the sentence happens at Calvary. All die there, and the declaration of righteousness, innocence, and justification for all is also confirmed in Christ’s death on your behalf as a free gift (Romans 5:12-17).
That all is key here. It is how Paul encompasses God’s righteousness, revealed in Christ, apart from the Law, as righteous and consistent for all believers in God’s promise for all times and places (indeed, he goes on to prove his point further with the example of Abraham just a few sentences after our pericope). Christ’s blood is for all. And as a preacher, you get to deliver that in the second person singular for each and every one of your hearers individually, and in the second person plural, the all y’all, as well. It was for Abraham, for Moses, and for Adam. It is for the disciples. The promise is for you and your children, for all who are far off (Acts 2:39; Joel 2:32). You are included in that all, and so is your hearer.
The blood of Jesus is key here, too. Stick with it, preacher, otherwise you lose your ground and get into arguments and abstractions with nothing concrete to base your claims on. But the blood... that is real blood. It argues incarnation (God was made man in Christ). Blood is an actual thing. It is physical and corporeal. Blood is substitutionary, there is life in the blood, and that is what God used (Leviticus 17:11) and still uses in Christ for the life of the world (see John 6:51). The blood is the centerpiece of Christ’s person and work on behalf of you and the world. It is the gift you will not only proclaim but also distribute in the supper. It is the thing that has saved and will save your hearers. Keep a Romans 3 sermon bloody, whatever direction your sermon craft takes you.
Keep a Romans 3 sermon bloody, whatever direction your sermon craft takes you.
One final admonition, particular to the sermon crafted on the theme of faith, which the Romans 3 text invites. It will never do to talk about faith. You need to deliver the object of faith in order for faith to do what it does. Faith grips the gift. Faith, the organ of reception, receives what it is given and trusts the gift. So, do not talk about “the faith.” Rather, deliver the gift faith trusts, and that is the Jesus the text reveals. Here, the redeemer, the propitiation, the one whose blood has ransomed, has appeased, has forgiven, has counted as righteous all who receive it as the gift it is. Faith never waves its own flag saying, “Look how big my faith is.” Faith only ever talks about the one it trusts, the thing it has received. When you are crafting your sermon, notice how and when you talk about faith, trust, and belief. Is there a way to modify your manuscript such that you substitute that talk, instead, with the Lord Jesus, the gifts He gives? Try it. It will help your people!
God bless your celebration of Reformation. And thanks be to God for His continual preservation of the Gospel, which you have the great privilege to deliver to His people.
