Reflections...

Title: Outlaw God

My goal this morning is to model for you a movement of three steps: 1) from the natural knowledge of God in creation, 2) to the active knowledge of God in the revealed law, 3) to the passive knowledge of God in the spoken gospel.  It is my conviction that we must distinguish between the word of the law and the word of the gospel to find assurance of God’s acceptance, that is, of the forgiveness of sins. This conviction ultimately stems from Martin Luther’s paradoxical assertion in the first thesis of the Heidelberg disputation: “The law of God, the most blessed doctrine of life, cannot advance a person on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them.” Let me explain. 

Creation

We begin with creation, with the natural world around us in all of its grandeur and all of its terror, and with what nature can and cannot tell us about the One behind it all, the Absolute, the Ground behind and in all things. “The heavens are telling the glory of God…day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; they their voice goes out through all the earth, and the their words to the end of the world” (Psalm 19:1-4a). Luther would have explained this verse in a fairly tradition way and in light of Romans 1. Natural theology can tell us that God exists, but you cannot derive the God of Israel, nor the Christian Trinity from it, let alone the knowledge that such a God if it exists is for us. The Psalmist uses the metaphor of incomprehensible speech to indicate this. There is no speech, yet there is speech. Therefore, to arrive at an understanding that God is in fact the one who delivered Israel from Egypt, or that this God is the same one who rose Jesus from the dead, or that such a God accepts us, there must be some kind of further communication by God in a kind of speech that is more comprehensible to us. 

The Law

The Psalmist then moves from nature to the revealed Law of God, the commandments revealed to Israel at Sinai. The law of God is superlative: there is nothing better. It is perfect, right, pure, true, and of utmost desire. And yet, for all of its perfection, the Psalmist doesn’t seem convinced that one can be safe in its blinding light. Yes, in keeping the law there is great reward, “but who can detect their errors” and the Psalmist pleads “Clear me from hidden faults” (11-12). Before the mirror of the glory of God in creation and the perfection of the law, we come to see our own blemishes. We come to worry that at the end of the day, despite all of our striving, deep down we are not acceptable. The law, after all, came with some pretty severe conditions: if you keep it, you will be blessed and live; if you don’t keep it, you will be cursed and die. The Hebrew Bible tells the story of this crushing, killing power of the Law. There is also the problem of the exclusive nature of the law. One of its purposes was to function as a boundary marker of who was in and who was out, and to be honest the majority of the world, were on the outside. 

The Gospel

Centuries later a Jewish Pharisee whom we know as the Apostle Paul wrestled with his own righteousness based on the revealed law and came to the conclusion that he could not ultimately find acceptance in its light. He eventually arrived at the conviction—maybe through a miraculous vision, maybe through years of trial and error—that he had to find a basis for his acceptance outside of the law. It is here, with Paul, that we transition to the third movement of our progression from natural theology, to the revealed law, to the gospel, the word of God’s forgiveness that comes to us outside of ourselves and outside of the law. 

The text we read from Philippians today contains an “ego document,” that is, a first person account of Paul’s life and experiences. Paul boasts of his pedigree before the law, even daring to call himself blameless, a claim which of course needs to be taken with a grain of salt and understood in the context of his polemic against the so-called Judiazers, those who are telling the Philippian Christians that they need to take on the boundary markers of the law, such as circumcision. Here two of Paul’s chief concerns meet: 1) that the Gentiles, the not-people of God, are a part of the people of God; and 2) that acceptance by God comes outside of the law by faith. Paul demonstrates these convictions in his own life. He has forsaken all things to be found in Christ, "not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteous of God based on faith” (Phil. 3:10). The active righteousness of the law transitions to the passive righteousness of the gospel. The bases of Paul’s acceptance is not found in some kind of assurance from the law that he is cleared from hidden faults, but outside of himself in Christ. 

Assurance

The theological heart of this threefold movement is assurance: how do we know, truly know deep down, that God accepts us as we are? All of us, if you live long enough, know sin. We know what it is like to look into the mirror and find ourselves lacking. We know what it is like to search for acceptance and be found wanting. More often than not we do not even accept ourselves, let alone find genuine, unconditional acceptance from those closest to us.  So we try a myriad of coping mechanisms: the acquisition of accomplishments, the acceptance of loved ones, doing what’s right, or numbing the pain through substances, or constant digital distraction.

Who, at the end of the day, can clear themselves from hidden faults? Jesus summed up the law perfectly: love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength; and love your neighbour as yourself. This is the goal; the calling. But, if we take Paul as our guide, our love should not the basis of our acceptance by God. Do we ever really love God purely for God’s own sake; do we ever really love our neighbour as ourselves? We try and maybe with God’s help we make some progress, but we never really arrive at this kind of pure, divine love, and this is okay because the bases of our acceptance by God is not our active ability to fulfil the law but in our passive acceptance of the gospel by faith. 

I will make one last point and then conclude. If the word of God’s acceptance is something that comes to us outside of ourselves and outside of the law, then it does not come to us by way of our own voice. One caricature of a Lutheran that I find amusing is a person alone in their room trying to convince themselves that they are forgiven by God. “My sins are forgiven. No they are not. My sins are forgiven. No they are not.” Etc. But this is a misrepresentation of what the gospel actually is: a message of good news that one human being speaks to another human being. In the church service, this movement is performed in in the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist, and the performance of the promise of absolution. These words and rites come to us as gifts to be received. Outside of the church, we perform this movement when we come alongside another person and speak a specific word of comfort and acceptance. Most everyone knows what it is like to be found wanting; true acceptance in the name of God is a pearl of great price. 

I do not know about you, but I have had numerous angels of God, ministers of the gospel, who have come alongside of me when I needed it the most and spoken God’s acceptance and forgiveness to me. We come to accept acceptance through the words of another person. May we, in turn, be people who in turn come alongside others and speak words of comfort, words of promise, and words of acceptance in God’s name. 

Amen.