The Sixth Sunday after Trinity

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The law of God is good and wise. It is God’s eternal and unchangeable will for creation. The law curbs our steps, lest we fall into the depths of sin. It guides our lives and leads us into the fullness of life in Christ. But the law also chiefly functions as a mirror, showing our sinfulness and revealing the total corruption of our hearts. And so it is that today’s Gospel text reveals to us the full extent of the law and thus confronts us with the full extent of our sin. Our Lord says: “I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Hypocrites though they were, the scribes and Pharisees were some of the most upstanding members of society. Their righteousness before men and their pious living was far greater than anything you or I will ever achieve. Simply put, our Lord’s point in the verse just read is that you need to be perfect if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven. Before this truth, our human efforts crumble. We have nothing of ourselves. For our sinful corruption is complete and total. Therefore, today we will consider more fully our Gospel text. And as we do so, we will come to the conclusion that: Jesus is the only hope of sinners.

Our Lord spends the bulk of our text discussing the Fifth Commandment as a paradigm for the other nine commandments. In other words, with the Fifth Commandment as an example, Christ teaches that each of the commandments is about more than externals. “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’” (Matthew 5:21). These words are none other than the very words of the Fifth Commandment. Now, it seems on the surface that this commandment is fairly straight forward. If you haven’t murdered anyone, then you have kept the Fifth Commandment. And the same kind of thinking goes for the other commandments. If I haven’t had an extra-marital affair and I haven’t robbed a bank at gunpoint, then I have kept the Sixth and Seventh Commandments as well. In this way of thinking, one can understand how the Rich Young Ruler would say of the commandments: “All these things I have kept from my youth” (Matthew 19:20). If externals are the only standard, then we’re all doing okay by the commandments.

But our Lord makes clear in today’s text that there is more to the commandments than mere externals. He says of the Fifth Commandment: “I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:22). All of a sudden, we are not feeling quite so good. When the measure is externals, we often do okay. But our Lord will not let us stay on externals. He says that our words, yes, even our feelings can cause us to break the commandments. When you say hurtful things to a family member, you are murdering them. When you insult a friend, you are murdering them. Yes, when you harbor hatred in your heart toward another, you are murdering them. It’s not enough to refrain from physically taking a life. Our Lord demands more of us. He demands perfection, not just in our deeds, but also in our words and thoughts.

Therefore, we all stand condemned by this law. Whether or not you have physically killed someone, you are a murderer. Whether or not you have had an extra-marital affair, you are an adulterer. Whether or not you have robbed a bank, you are a thief. Whether or not you have engaged in pagan worship rituals, you are an idolater. The list goes on. You are guilty of breaking every single commandment because your heart is sinful. And our Lord is clear: “I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). As we said before, the scribes and Pharisees were hypocrites, but they did their best to curb sin, and by human standards they were more successful in curbing their sins than most. But not matter how good you are at curbing sin, no matter how pious and godly your life looks, no matter how generous you are toward others and how many places you volunteer, God always expects more of you. For our Lord says at the end of Matthew chapter 5: “You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). And so it is that before the law we stand condemned. We are guilty. We deserve eternal condemnation and death.

This is why the first verse of today’s Epistle is such a beautiful truth: “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” (Romans 6:3). We, who are deserving of death, have been baptized into the death of Christ in the sacred waters of the font. There, you are joined to Christ. You are in Him and He is in you. Your sin and condemnation becomes His, and His righteousness becomes yours. This is why the blessed waters of the font are so beautiful. They are life-giving waters. They are the waters of God’s promise. They are not a place for a public declaration of faith, nor are they applied by human choice in any way. While it may appear that we choose to be baptized or to have our children baptized, what’s really happening is that God the Holy Spirit is the sole actor in Baptism. When you come to the font, you are merely coming to receive. You are coming to receive the benefits of the cross. For the blessed waters of the font are one of the places where you are joined to Christ’s cross. There, on the cross, Christ Jesus atoned for human sin by suffering and dying in our place. Here, at the font, we are joined to Christ in the “blessed exchanged.” Your sin is exchanged for Christ’s righteousness. For He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:21).

This, dear friends in Christ, is the answer to all our needs. For we stand guilty under God’s law. We deserve eternal death in hell. Of this there can be no dispute. And our Lord says quite clearly: “I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Here, in the waters of the font, Christ offers us the only righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Here, He offers us the perfect righteousness—His perfect righteousness, which covers all our sin and grants us the right to enter the kingdom of heaven. Here, we are joined to His cross and death, and all our guilt and sin is taken away.

And so, dear friends in Christ, let us cling to this hope and promise, never letting it go and never compromising for anything less. This is our confession: Jesus is the only hope of sinners. If the Christian life isn’t all about Jesus, then we have become nothing more than a pathetic, secular self-help group. This is why generic evangelical Christianity is such a farce and disgrace. If you listen to people from the “big box” churches who are relevant and thriving by worldly standards, you will notice that they talk a lot about God. They will talk about how “God loves us.” They will pray to “God” (or my favorite is when they pray to “Father God”). They will sing their praise songs to God. But where is Jesus? Where is the cross and the atonement? These things are largely absent. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that these groups don’t believe in Jesus or the cross. They just don’t talk about it much. And a failure to talk about Jesus and the cross regularly is a delight to the devil. For he knows that Jesus is the only hope of sinners. And when we don’t constantly hold the truth of Christ before our minds, we will easily slip into pride and arrogance, depending upon ourselves like the scribes and Pharisees, and believing that externals and human efforts are enough.

This is why our unique Lutheran confession of the Christian faith matters. We are, sadly, one of the only Christian denominations that boldly preaches Christ crucified as the only hope of sinners. Far too many Christian churches today are content with generic evangelicalism, with its Christian platitudes and generic God-speak. But we preach Christ crucified. He is the only hope of sinners. “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin” (Romans 6:6).

Peer pressure is always tempting. And because the generic evangelical Christians don’t understand what they’re missing, they beckon us to join them. If we don’t hold firm to our confession in the face of such pressure, then we will slowly loose the confession of Christ crucified in favor of guitars and drums, up-beat songs, and “relevant” preaching. But Christ is the only hope of sinners. So-called “relevancy” and watered-down music or theology is no replacement for Christ as the comfort of sinners. “For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Thanks be to God that such a righteousness is ours through our baptism into Christ!

In Jesus’ name. Amen.