Can I Ask That? – Part Eighteen – What is Justification?
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians%202%3A1-10&version=NLT
Head/Mind – Helpful Information
This morning, I would like to tell you about my friend Marty. Marty suffered from a psychological condition known as scrupulosity, a conditioned characterize by obsessive guilt about moral or religious failings. He was a Roman Catholic during this part of his life and he would go to confession several times a week, each time bringing an exhaustive list of everything wrong he had done and everything good he had failed to do. He would stay for hours, driving his priest to frustration. Sometimes his priest would interrupt, saying “That last thing you confessed wasn’t even technically a sin.” Finally, the exhausted priest would say, “Why don’t you wait a few weeks until you have actually committed a few sins before coming back?”
But secretly, Marty was afraid to do that, because he feared that if he died without confessing a sin, a God of severe justice would throw him into hell.
In between visits to the confession box, Marty was so religious in his behavior that he drove everyone around him nuts, including other devout Christians. Marty was pretty sure that he had to earn God’s love if he ever hoped to go to heaven.
Let me tell you about another person who suffers from this problem. Her name is Sharon. Sharon was actually a secular lady, but she too suffered from scrupulosity. She had a constant fear of being a bad person. She quit eating meat because she didn’t want to harm animals, but then immediately started feeling guilty that people like her might be driving cattle farmers out of business. She bought an electric car to help the environment but then started worrying obsessively about the people forced to mine rare earths for that kind of technology. She even worried that she might be a hypocrite for calling herself an environmentalist, because she sometimes liked to take unnecessary trips.
In conversation, she would apologize constantly, sometimes even for things the other person did, such as apologizing for the person who interrupted her mid-sentence. She would then walk away from the conversation obsessing over how poorly she performed, and worrying about whether or not the only slightly offensive joke she told would cause the other person to hate her.
A neighbor was doing a door to door solicitation to get neighbors to sign a potion over a county ordinance, and the Sharon became so obsessed over whether or not to sign it, that eventually her neighbor got tired of waiting for an answer and left. Sharon was so embarrassed that she went out of her way to avoid that neighbor for over two years. Sharon also spent the next two weeks Googling about the petition to make sure that she had done the right thing. She never could decide.
At work, Sharon always cleans the microwave in the break room and feels miserable if she forgets anyone’s birthday. In the event that she does, she brings that person coffee every day for the next two weeks.
Sharon and Marty, even though they do not know each other, and even though one is religious and the other an agnostic, each lie awake at night sad and frustrated that they are not better people than they are.
Thankfully, Marty had a very sensitive, very thoughtful priest, who was also his mentor and friend. The priest’s name was, Johann von Staupitz, and he encouraged Marty to focus less on minor sins and more on trusting in God’s grace. Thankfully, Marty took the advice to heart, and began reading the scriptures through the lens of grace, one day re-reading Romans 1:17, “The just shall live by faith,” and Romans 5:6, “At just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”
It was right there, right at that moment that Marty, a Roman Catholic monk, had a breakthrough discovery: The good, holy, and just God is also merciful and slow to anger. And though he loves us to much to leave us in our sins, he absolutely loves us on our worst, most awful, crummy, messed up day. And that, was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation and the Western Church’s re-discovery of salvation by faith – because my friend Mary was none other than Martin Luther.
Martin Luther helped the Western Church rediscover the doctrine of Justification, that we are made right with God through the finished work on the cross.
Heart – The Personal Connection
Almost every story Jesus told dripped with this one message. If you are far from God, you can come home. And when you do, you will be met with grace; and then challenged with the truth we all so desperately need. Let me tell you one of these stories.
There was a young girl who grew up on a cherry orchard just outside of Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, who were a bit old fashioned, tended to over-react to her nose rings, music, and short skirts. They grounded her a few times. And then, one night, her father knocked on her door after an argument to try to reach out to her, and shed screamed, “I hate you.” Later that night, she ran away.
She headed for Detroit, a place she had been to only once before on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Since the papers were filled with lurid details about gangs, drugs, and violence in downtown Detroit, she thought that would be the last place her parents would look for her.
On her second day in the city, she met a man who drove the biggest car she had ever seen. He offered her a ride, bought her lunch, and arranged for her to have a place to stay. He was just so nice. He even gave her some pills to make her feel better than she’d ever felt before.
She thought that she’d been right all along. Her parents had been keeping her from all the fun and from the good life. That good life went along for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car taught her a few things that men like; and since she was under age, men paid a premium for her.
Every now and then, she thought about her parents back at home. But their lives now seemed so boring, plain, and old-fashioned, that she could hardly believe that she grew up there.
She had a brief scare when she saw her picture on a billboard with the headline “Have you seen this child?” But now she had blond hair and with all the makeup and jewelry she wore, nobody would mistake her for a child.
After a year, the first sign of the illness began to appear. It amazed her how fast her boss turned mean. He told her that he couldn’t risk having anyone around who was sick like that, and he threw her out of the street without a penny to her name.
She found that she was able to turn a couple of tricks at night, but they didn’t pay much and all of the money went to support her drug habit. When winter came, she found herself sleeping on metal grates outside of the large downtown department stores. Sleeping is the wrong word though. A teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard.
Soon, dark bands circled her eyes and her cough worsened. One night, as she lay awake listening for footsteps that might harm her, everything about her life suddenly looked different. She felt, for the first time in a year like the little girl that she was; lost in a cold and frightening city. She began to cry. Her pockets were empty and she was hungry. She needed a fix. She pulled her legs underneath her and she shivered under the newspaper she’d piled on top of her coat, trying to stay warm.
Suddenly a memory came into her mind of the month of May and springtime in her hometown, with a million cherry trees in bloom and her golden retriever chasing a tennis ball, and she said to herself, “Oh God, why did I leave?” And she started to cry and knew that more than anything else in the world, she wanted to go home. So, she tried to call her parents. Three straight calls, three straight connections to voicemail. But on the third one, she finally left a message.
“Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m going to catch a bus your way and it will get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, I get it. I guess I’ll just stay on the bus.”
It took about seven hours for the bus to make all of the stops between Detroit and her home. And during that time, all she could think about was the flaws in her plan. What if they were out of town or didn’t get the message? What if they were home, but she didn’t give them enough time to be at the bus station? What if they didn’t even want her back?
Then she began to rehearse what she would say. “Dad, I’m so sorry. I know I was wrong and it is not your fault. It’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?” She said the words over and over, practicing.
When the bus finally rolled into the station the driver said, “Traverse City, Michigan. Fifteen minute stop.” Fifteen minutes for her entire life to be decided. She checked herself in a compact mirror, smoothed her hair, licked the lipstick off her teeth. She looked at the tobacco stains on her finger tips and wondered if her parents would notice, if they were even there.
She got off of the bus and walked into the terminal, not knowing what to expect. But, not one of a thousand scenes that entered her mind could have matched what she saw; because there, within the confines of those concrete walls and plastic chairs in that bus terminal, stood a group of forty brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, a grandmother, and even a great grandmother. They were all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise makers. And taped across the entire wall of the bus terminal was banner that read “Welcome home!”
Then out of the crowd stepped her dad. Through tears she started to say, “Dad, I’m sorry. I know…” Then he stoped her. “Hush child. We’ve got no time for that. You’ll be late for the party. A banquets waiting for you at home.”
Luke 15, as retold by James Emery White in Christianity for People Who Aren’t Christians.
Hands – The Practical Application
John Wesley was almost in despair. He did not have the faith to continue to preach. When death stared him in the face, he was fearful and found little comfort in his religion. To Peter Böhler, a Moravian friend, he confessed his growing misery and decision to give up the ministry. Böhler counseled otherwise. “Preach faith till you have it,” he advised. “And then because you have it, you will preach faith.” A wise Catholic once made a similar statement: “Act as if you have faith and it will be granted to you.”
John acted on the advice. He led a prisoner to Christ by preaching faith in Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins. The prisoner was immediately converted. John was astonished. He had been struggling for years. Here was a man transformed instantly. John made a study of the New Testament and found to his astonishment that the longest recorded delay in salvation was three days–while the apostle Paul waited for his eyes to open.
The Moravians assured John that their personal experiences had also been instantaneous. John found himself crying out, “Lord, help my unbelief!” However, he felt dull within and little motivated even to pray for his own salvation. On this same day, May 24th, 1738, he opened his Bible at about five in the morning and came across these words, “There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of the divine nature.” He read similar words in other places.
That evening he reluctantly attended a meeting at Aldersgate Street.
The leader was running late, so someone read from Martin Luther’s Preface to the epistle to Romans.
About 8:45 p.m. “while the reader was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ,” John Wesley said, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
It took him some time to learn how to live the life of faith, for he was not always possessed of the joy he thought came with being a Christian, and sometimes, he thought he had fallen from salvation. It took time for him to see that it is not Christ and good works, but Christ alone who saves, resulting in good works.
As time went on, John Wesley was used mightily of the Lord to reform England. His Methodists became a national force. John rode thousands of miles (as many as 20,000 a year) preaching as only a man filled with the Holy Spirit can preach, telling the gospel to all who would listen.
He acted “as though he were out of breath in pursuit of souls.” Wherever he preached, lives changed and manners and morals altered for the better. It is often conjectured that his preaching helped spare England the kind of revolution that occurred in France.
This is the power of the gospel. It is the power of salvation for all who believe.