"The Onslaught Against the Gospel"
Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 17, 2009
John 15.9-17
You may not have noticed it. There comes a certain point where people
don’t notice what is commonplace. So you may not have noticed that
there’s an onslaught against the Gospel. Further, you may not have
noticed it because you’re a part of it.
Now, you may be thinking I don’t know what I’m talking about. That
I’ve got a lot of nerve. You love the Gospel! You’re not against it,
you’re for it! Who am I to tell you that you’re against the Gospel? I
am one who is part of this onslaught against the Gospel as well.
Don’t we latch on to the words of Christ of what we must do? Don’t we
tend to take for granted the parts He has done for us? Don’t our ears
hear the parts that command us as what must come first before He will
bless us? This is the onslaught against the Gospel.
We can’t help it. We are by nature stuck on ourselves. We say we love
the Gospel, but what we really love is some sort of command of Jesus
of what we have to do to content ourselves with. Our sinful nature is
so corrupt that we twist this into thinking that that’s the main
thing, that we should not only want to do what Jesus has commanded but
also focus on it. We feel better when we have a certain amount of
control to being in God’s favor.
Why are we in an onslaught against the Gospel? Because by nature we
are turned in on ourselves. The Gospel comes from outside of
ourselves. Jesus brings this out in the Gospel reading. His words are
dripping with Gospel. But it doesn’t seem that way to us because there
are those words in there where He points out to us what we must do.
These are the ones that really seem to jump out at us.
You hear this all the time in Christianity. You must obey God’s Law.
You must believe and have more faith. The people who say these things
are the ones who latch on to these phrases in the Gospel reading:
“Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My
love.” “This is My commandment, that you love one another.” “You are
My friends if you do what I command you.” “You should go and bear
fruit.” “These things I command you, so that you will love one
another.”
Many Christians hear these things and the case is closed. They hear
Jesus saying what we must do and then they set out to do it. And they
set out to exhort other Christians to do them as well. And they lay a
guilt trip on those who say we can’t do anything to gain God’s favor,
that we’re saved by grace. And don’t we ourselves feel pangs of guilt
that we’re not doing enough for God?
This is the assault of Satan and the world and our own sinful flesh on
the Gospel. It is an onslaught, because until the day we die we’re
going to gravitate toward those things that say to us what we must do
rather than those things that tell us who Christ is and what He has
done and what He continues to do for us.
What is more relevant to you in your eyes: being exhorted to live in a
godly way in the coming week or being exhorted to come to this altar
to receive the Body and Blood of Christ in His Holy Supper? Are you
looking for some way to get a handle on how you can bear the fruit
Jesus calls you to bear or are you realizing that you have nothing to
offer God but your sin and need the forgiveness of your sin He
delivers to you in and with His Body and Blood in His Supper? Do you
think that what is done here in worship is all well and good but where
the real work of being a Christian is done is in living out the
Christian life during the week, the bearing of fruit Jesus was talking
about, the keeping of His commandments He was referring to? It seems
subtle, but this kind of Christianity is nothing else than an
onslaught against the Gospel.
Now the words of Jesus are plain. No one can deny them. Jesus is clear
as to what He is saying. The problem is that we are taking them on
their own and ripping them out of the context in which Jesus is giving
them to us. We do this because we want the starting place to be
ourselves. That’s why and how we go against the Gospel. We convince
ourselves that we know we’re saved by grace, but that faith without
works is dead, so we still have to do something. We can’t just sit
around and bask in grace.
But that isn’t the way God works. And it isn’t the way He speaks. We
just think He does because we impose our own sinful flavor on His
words. This is all part of our relentless onslaught against the
Gospel. We want to take the good things of God and turn them into the
things by which we can feel good about ourselves.
So do we obey? Yes. Do we bear fruit? Yes. But is that what Jesus is
really getting at? Isn’t He getting at how these things are
accomplished? And it’s in the words themselves that they’re
accomplished. It is by His very speaking them to us that bring them
about. You see, God has this little onslaught of His own going on, and
it’s an eternal assault against the devil. The devil’s voice is the
voice we like to hear because his voice tells us to latch on to those
things that tell us what we are supposed to do. But God has given us
His Holy Word to tell us about what He has done.
The eternal Word of God breaks through the void and brings into
existence the universe. The eternal Word of God creates life, living
breathing beings who are fashioned in His image and who enjoy the
eternal fruits of His blessings. It’s when His creation seeks what
they have been told not to do that all hell breaks loose. Why is this?
Because they want to *do* something. They want to be able to control
their destiny. They’re not content with just basking in the glory and
grace of God. They see the green grass on the other side and think God
is holding out on them. They had everything but it wasn’t enough for
them to enjoy the eternal blessings God poured out upon them.
But God is all about grace. He is all about mercy. He is all about
love. He didn’t let them go their own way but reached out to them. His
work of creation has turned into His creating work of redemption. All
our attempts to gain favor with God are attempts in the same vein as
Adam and Eve’s attempts at going against the pure grace of God. Had
Adam and Eve done anything in the Garden of Eden to gain God’s favor?
No, they simply enjoyed all His blessings. That’s what He loves to do
and that is why He has called us to eternal salvation. Everything we
do flows from that.
All His commands and exhortations are in light of the fact that He has
created us, that He has redeemed us, that He sustains us. “As the
Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.” Love is never about what
you must do for another, otherwise it isn’t love. Love is pure
unconditional grace given to another, because the one who is loving
wants to, not because an obligation has been fulfilled. We are able to
keep His commandments because He gives us Himself, the one who alone
is able to keep them in the only way they can be kept—perfectly. He
speaks His Word of cleansing to us so that His joy may be in us and
that our joy may be full. We who consistently attack the Gospel with
our notions of attempting to turn His Word into a morality lesson are
the recipients not of rules and commands but of Him laying down His
life for us. He calls us His friends. We did not choose Him, He chose
us.
All this He has done so that we may live in the way God created it and
planned it: to enjoy His eternal blessings and bear the fruit that
naturally comes from being connected to the Vine, Jesus Christ. Amen.
SDG
--
Pastor Paul L. Willweber
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS]
San Diego, California
princeofpeacesd.net
three-taverns.net
It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything
except where the marks of the Church are concerned.
[Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian]
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