Our meditation this morning is based on the Epistle reading for this Third Sunday after Pentecost, taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. We hear these words: “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
On this Fourth of July weekend, Americans will pause to honor and celebrate the memory of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and those who served, fought and even died to preserve and protect our great nation. But even as we honor men like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, we find ourselves being reminded that in spite of their accomplishments, they and many other leaders of the American Revolution were very human and very flawed individuals. For example, we are reminded not just of the battles that George Washington won – but also of the many battles that he lost. We hear about the lasting accomplishments of Ben Franklin – writer, publisher, inventor, statesman – but we also know that he never married his common-law wife and he was the father of at least one illegitimate child by another woman. Thomas Jefferson is rightly given credit for writing the Declaration of Independence and as a loving husband to his wife Martha – but he also fathered six illegitimate children by his slave Sally Hemmings.
As much as those facts may shock and disappoint us, I suppose that they really shouldn’t surprise us all that much. After all, nobody’s perfect – right?
That’s easy enough to see in well-known criminals, villains, evil people or some politicians right here in Illinois, but that’s not where St. Paul is headed in today’s Epistle lesson. Paul is not writing about soldiers or politicians or famous criminals – but about Christians, good church-going people like you and me. In fact, there are no sweeping generalizations in Paul’s words; what he says is deeply personal. In these verses the revered St. Paul – apostle, missionary, believer and forgiven saint – writes about his own inner struggles with sin. “I do not understand my own action,” Paul writes. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” On another occasion he wrote to the Corinthians that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” making it possible for him to desire what is good and right. But even so there is still the reality of evil desire, the Old Adam of original sin, with great power in his earthly life. He knows that he is guilty of sin not only by the evil he does – what we call sins of commission – but also by not doing the things that he should do (which we call sins of omission). He even realizes that the great power of this evil desire is fueled by the knowledge of God’s Holy Law – so that he looks for creative ways to rebel and break the Law.
In other words, Paul is just like us! This morning we who gather together are baptized, confirmed, worshiping, communing, forgiven new creations of God. And yet, you know all too well the never-ending struggle between good and evil in your life. You know the difference between right and wrong, between what is pleasing to God and what is not pleasing to Him. You know what you are supposed to do, but you don’t always do it. You know what you are not supposed to do – but you sometimes still do it anyway. Original sin, the utter and complete depravity of our human nature, just doesn’t go away. The temptations never stop coming.
But hey – nobody’s perfect. So I guess we’re all in safe company, right? Well, guess again, for we’re not safe at all just because nobody’s perfect. And we either forget or don’t want to remember that there is one and only one who is and always has been and always will be perfect: God.
Not too long ago a man by the name of Rob Bell wrote a best-selling book claiming that it doesn’t matter what you believe or whom you believe in, for God will basically save everyone and take them to heaven. But what he and so many people today miss is that God’s perfection includes the absolute necessity of divine justice and judgment. If God were anything less than perfect, then perhaps He could accept our being less than perfect. If God were anything less than perfect, then perhaps he could grade on the curve and accept the best of us despite our sins. If God were anything less than perfect, then perhaps he could decide to punish just some sins – the really bad ones – but not all sin.
But God is perfect, and His law demands nothing short of perfection. The prophet Isaiah wrote: “Holy, holy, hold is the Lord of hosts,” and the writer to the Hebrews say that “our God is a consuming fire.” There’s no middle ground here – no waffle room. Perfection equals life, and anything less than perfection equals death.
In verse 24 of today’s text we heard Paul call himself a “wretched man.” The cold hard fact of the matter is that our corrupt nature, our inability to defeat evil, our inability to always do good – these do, indeed, make all of us wretched before God. On our own we have absolutely no hope of saving ourselves. We start to realize that we are unable to excuse ourselves by saying that nobody’s perfect, because that excuse just doesn’t cut it. In fact, those words hit us on the face with the condemnation we share with all people. Now the words “nobody’s perfect” remind us that we can try and try and try to do the things that we know we should do, but we’ll never succeed. We are, as Paul describes himself, truly “wretched.” As we heard in our Old Testament reading from the Book of Zechariah, we are wretched prisoners in a “waterless pit.”
But we who are not perfect – who truly are wretched – are saved – we are made safe – by the one who is perfect, our Savior Jesus Christ. We are the forgiven new creations of God. Jesus, the perfect and sinless Son of God, became our Savior by taking the full guilt of our sins – those sins of commission and sins of omission – on Himself. He offered the perfect sacrifice – Himself – as the atonement for our sins. And His resurrection proclaims the completion of God’s redeeming work.
By God-given grace the Holy Spirit has worked through Baptism and the Word to plant, to nurture and to grow faith within us. In this faith, God sees us not as imperfect wretched people, but as His own, forgiven and perfect children in Christ. When God sees us, he sees Christ’s perfect holiness. And we are safe in His perfection.
But wait! At the risk of sounding like a television infomercial, there’s more – much, much more. Since we have been saved and made safe from our own imperfections and wretchedness, we are now empowered by God to fight the evil that lies within us. The Holy Spirit is constantly at work in our lives to strengthen our will and our resolve. Not only does the Spirit work within us, but he also works within the family of faith – the Church. The Spirit works within the Church as we share prayer, as we share encouragement with one another, as we hold one another accountable, and as we walk together in true Christian fellowship.
My fellow redeemed, we have been saved. We are safe in God’s grace – not because of something or anything that we have done, but solely because of what Christ has done for us. Nobody’s perfect – not you and certainly not me – but that is beside the point, for we now live in Christ’s perfect holiness.
God provides everything we need to mature and grow stronger in our daily walk. God provides everything we need for our daily struggle against our old sinful selves. God provides everything we need for our struggle to be the Christian children of God that he has already made us to be. As Jesus Himself so lovingly tells us in the words of today’s Gospel lesson: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Note: this sermon was freely adapted from an outline that originally appeared in Concordia Pulpit Resources.
Return to Pastor page
