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Romans 7:1-6

“Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?” And Paul is right. By your birth, you are under the law. You are bound by it. It has a claim on you. You are subject to its accusations and condemnation.  Continue reading “Released from the Law”

Luke 5:33-39

It wasn’t easy for some to jump on board with the gospel. At least not fully. It seemed to run against their entire religious upbringing. It seemed too fast and loose. Wouldn’t people use the gospel as an excuse to sin? How would the common people behave if they didn’t have to do good works? Wasn’t a big part of the job of religion keeping good order and producing obedient subjects?

It still isn’t easy for many to jump on board with the gospel. Paul heard the same concerns Jesus did. Luther heard the same concerns Paul did. We hear similar concerns today, even among people called to preach the gospel. We can get nervous with the good news of Jesus Christ, with free forgiveness, with unconditional absolutions, with salvation entirely as gift, with the law preached primarily to kill and the gospel preached as if every last hearer already has two feet planted firmly in heaven.

Jesus had just called a tax collector to be a disciple. This surely didn’t sit well with many. He had healed a paralytic, but only after forgiving his sins, something that some in the crowd grumbled only God could do (the whole point). He had called the first disciples earlier in the chapter, fishermen, and with a miracle that illustrated their new calling. He told them to cast down their nets for a catch (this was indiscriminate fishing). He had healed an unclean leper (it says something that the unclean dared to approach him and that He let them).

Now, in the midst of all this, a religious question, an objection, was raised. Was Jesus holy enough? John’s disciples fasted. So did the Pharisees’ disciples. Jesus’ disciples, however? Well, they ate and drank. What was up with that? Where was their religion? Didn’t they care about the laws and customs of their people? They were getting out-religioned!

Jesus’ answer was clear. The Savior has come. The Bridegroom is here. It’s no time for dour faces and asceticism. When the Bridegroom arrives, you feast. The days for fasting and dour faces would come, with Jesus’ death, soon chased away again with His resurrection. But not now. The kingdom of God was at hand.

Even more, Jesus’ wasn’t coming to inaugurate a kingdom of law, Human Religion 2.0. Jesus’ kingdom was a kingdom of grace. His disciples would have to break with the legal scheme of their neighbors and the other religions of the world. Jesus came to preach good news. Jesus is the good news. They were to be gospel people. Jesus told them, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.” Jesus had come to make all things new. He came to make us new. This wasn’t the same old religion.

There is a problem, though. We like the same old. The old Adam, the sinful nature, is a religious fellow and he loves religion so long as it’s not the gospel, Jesus’ religion. Jesus added, poking the bear, chiding the Pharisees, “And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’” We can’t by our own thinking or choosing jump on board with the gospel. Christ must kill us and make us alive. The gospel must do the work. That’s why Christ’s kingdom is a kingdom of gifts, not of wages.

Enjoy the new wine. Live by Christ’s unconditional absolution. Receive salvation as a free gift, bought with Christ’s precious blood, bestowed upon you free of cost and not as a reward. Will people sin? People will sin either way, but no one will offer true obedience, the obedience of faith, without this gift. No one will do truly righteous deeds unless they are first declared righteous for Christ’s sake—washed, pardoned, enlivened. Sometimes the old wine sounds good, but it will burst the wineskins. In the end it leaves us in self-righteousness or despair, without hope and without God as He came for us to have Him, in Christ, for free, and with free salvation for all.

Wade Johnston

For more content like this, check out the podcast, blog posts, and devotions at www.LetTheBirdFly.com.

You can listen to our latest episode here. You can find our latest installment in the Wingin’ It series on Luther here. 

For more writing by Wade, you can find his books here and more blog posts here.

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Many of us know the deep gratitude and lasting connection we can develop for and with those who have brought us the gospel, whether when we came to faith or in the dark moments of despair. This is a beautiful thing. God puts a face on His message, on the absolution. And this is how God has promised to work, through people, for us. Few in history have heard this message directly from God or even from one of His holy angels. Such experiences are limited, especially to the ministry of Jesus and the experiences of the prophets and apostles. But God has spoken to us nonetheless and no less, through people. We should cherish that, and those people.

How sad, then, when the devil twists this gratitude and these connections into causes for divisions. How unfortunate when the devil leads us to lose our focus upon the very one to whom those gospel voices pointed us, the One of whom they spoke, the One on whose behalf they served as ambassadors. This is what happened, however, among the Corinthians, and it has happened throughout church history. Paul, Apollos, even Christ were used to this end. And Paul here objects most vociferously to it. He was a messenger, not the message. He proclaimed another, not himself. His absolution had no power but that which Christ gave to it. Christ, not Paul, was to be the object of faith, and not Christ as a self-serving or sectarian rallying cry, but Christ as God in the flesh who came and died and rose to give us heaven, to make us one with Him and each other in His grace and mercy.

The church and Christians aren’t called to woo and persuade, to market and bait, but to proclaim and to point. Christ is the substance of our faith. Our message is the good news of Christ, an actual person and not an idea, a person for us and for all, not just for some. He is a person for us and for all for the forgiveness sins, and not for scoring points or drawing lines where God hasn’t set any boundaries. The gospel’s power doesn’t rest in the one who proclaims it, or in how the person proclaims it, but in Christ Himself.  “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”

Thank God for Paul. How can we not feel connected with him when we read his epistles, through which the Spirit has worked for centuries, for millennia? Thank God for those who have put a face on the gospel for you, who have spoken to you God’s mercy and grace, who have absolved you. How can we not feel connected with them for having done so? They’ve been vessels of God to bring us to faith and preserve us in it. But our faith isn’t in those messengers. Our faith is in Christ or it’s of no value at all. Paul knew that. He wants us to know that, too, because the devil would like few things more than for us to forget.

Christ died for your sins. Christ rose for your justification. You are absolved. And that is true no matter who proclaims it to you, no matter who was there when your faith began or who has been there in your darkest hour. And that is true no matter how flowery the language or how persuasive the plea to believe. Christ is a person, for you, and as sure as His grave is empty, so sure is the word of forgiveness, no matter who has brought it or brings it to you. So sure is it when we are those people for others, too. That is the power of the cross. And thank God for that!

Wade Johnston

For more content like this, check out the podcast, blog posts, and devotions at www.LetTheBirdFly.com.

You can listen to our latest episode here. You can find our latest installment in the Wingin’ It series on Luther here. 

For more writing by Wade, you can find his books here and more blog posts here.

The college at which Mike and I teach recently suffered a great loss as a student’s time with us in this life came to an end. This devotion sprang from the conversations, Scripture study, and prayer that resulted from this news. It is being shared here because we know that we have many readers and listeners among the campus family who mourn and pray with us, but not as those without hope. We at LTBF ask that you would keep the student’s family and friends, the college and campus ministry staff, the faculty, and all impacted in your prayers. Christ is risen and Jesus is ever Jesus, He who saves, for us.

Isaiah 45:15

“Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”

God’s omnipresence, that He is in all places, can be both law and gospel. I shudder at the thought of God being present for my every sin. I am terrified at the fact that I have sinned even though I know full well He is present.

God’s omniscience, that He knows all things, can be both law and gospel. It makes me sick to know that God can read my mind. I know the thoughts I’ve had, unintentional and intentional, and they are anything but pretty. How hollow my works must seem if, more than simply seeing their visible appearances, He knows my motivations, which are often much less impressive than appearances would indicate.

Sometimes we like the thought of God’s absence. We can compartmentalize things that way. There are God-things and not-God-things. It helps us avoid paradox, inconsistency, and tension in life and between life and faith. It helps us stay sane. It helps us feel somewhat clean. But God isn’t absent. He hides, but He is never absent.

How does that make you feel? Are you comforted? Is that law or gospel? “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”

Friends, it is gospel. God hides for us. He wants us to find Him where He reveals Himself, and that is in the gospel, in Word and Sacrament, where He is beyond a doubt there for us with grace and mercy. He wants us to know Him by the crucifix, not by a natural disaster, sickness, or inexplicable tragedy. And yet, even in those things, He is there. He is just hidden.

God knows all things, but He also knows you. He really knows you. He knows you beyond intellectual knowledge. He has descended into the flesh and become you. He knows you and He loves you. In Baptism you have, together with the Church, become His bride. He knows you and nothing He knows keeps Him from being for you grace and mercy. He is present in all places, but in Word and Sacrament, in Christ crucified for sinners, He makes plain that the presence that He wants to define Himself by with you is for you and not against you.

Surely He is a God who hides Himself, but that God who hides is always present, and always present as the crucified and risen One, for us even when everything seems against us, even when it seems for sure that He couldn’t be farther away. Why doesn’t He make His presence known in the natural disaster, in sickness, in the inexplicable tragedy? Because that’s not how He wants us to know Him, even as He promises that none of those things shall separate us from Him.

We live in a fallen world. Sad, terrible, heart-rending, thoroughly fallen things happen here, and we shouldn’t sugarcoat it, theodicize it away, or pretend it isn’t so. Platitudes ring hollow. We live in a fallen world. It is so, and it’s that indisputable, if unacceptable, fact that brought God from heaven to earth, into the mire, and put Him on a cross and brought Him out of His tomb.

Where is God? He is where He promised to be. Find Him, like the thief, on the cross. Find Him, like the frightened women, sprung from the tomb. Find Him, most importantly, in the preaching of the gospel, in Word and Meal. He cannot but be there, because He’s wed Himself to these Means. He cannot but be there for you, because that is the only way He would have you know Him there. In the meanwhile, we take up our crosses, not for salvation, but as those saved through the cross of the One who came to make God known, and to make Him known as compassion, life, and hope, even in the midst of hatred, death, and darkness. “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”

Wade Johnston