Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Pastor Galler is on vacation, but, for our reflection this morning on today’s Second Reading, Pastor Galler completed a sermon outlined by The Rev. Terry R. Forke, Montana District President and pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Harlowton, Montana. Rev. Forke’s sermon outline was published in the current volume of Concordia Pulpit Resources (29:3, pp.5, 30-33), to which publication Pilgrim subscribes primarily in order to supply sermons on occasions such as this, when our pastor is away and the congregation has not otherwise supplied the pulpit. The edited sermon reads as follows:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
How deep in debt are you right now? Do not say it out loud, but you probably have a pretty good idea of what your debt load is. I do not know if the following will help or hurt, but the Federal Reserve reports that the average American household is laboring under $137,063 worth of debt. That is a lot of money; it is a pretty big burden! How do you feel about your debt load, if you have one? Studies have shown that those suffering from debt may experience a combination of shame, depression, frustration, anger, and anxiety. Debt can make difficult our focusing on anything else. Imagine the relief you might feel if you woke up tomorrow debt free. If someone chose to pay off all your debt with no strings attached, what would you do? This morning we are considering the Second Reading under the theme “Canceling the Debt”, and you may have guessed that we are not talking about a financial debt of money but the spiritual debt that sin loads onto our backs. We realize that our lives changed when Jesus paid the debt of our sin and that now we are free to live in Him.
If financial debt is plaguing you, a debt counselor might tell you. “Work more, spend less, and you can pay it off.” That sounds like bad news, but in today’s Second Reading we hear the Good News that God canceled the debt of our sin through the actions of Jesus. Our individual debts have been paid, blotted out, set aside, and nailed to the cross. Now we are free to live in Jesus. Yet, first we must realize that there is a debt of sin against us, written in our own hand. What the English Standard Version translated as “record of debt” the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul originally spoke of as something “hand‑written”. Our sinful natures and our very own sins created this debt. In connection with their possessions, reputation, health, and authority, we have failed to love our neighbors as ourselves, but, more significantly, in connection with His Word, Name, and Him Himself, we have failed to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, strength, and minds. Like with a handwritten I‑owe-you, we in essence have acknowledged our responsibility for our debts. The debts are our lives. By nature we are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins, and, on account of our sin, we deserve physical death here in time and torment in hell for eternity.
In today’s Second Reading, St. Paul warns us against the ways that the world would have us think about and deal with our spiritual debt. He calls them philosophy, empty deceit, human traditions, and the elemental spirits of the world. They might suggest that we pay our debt ourselves, and we might even convince ourselves that our good works contribute to paying off our debts of sin, when we really have nothing to offer as payment, and the debt only keeps getting bigger every day. There is Biblical precedent for locking up in prison or jail debtors such as we are, and not letting us out until we have paid the last penny (Matthew 18:30, 34). Even if we are not so imprisoned, the weight of our debts is like a millstone hung round our necks. Much as with a financial debt, there are physical, emotional, psychological, and social effects of our spiritual debt. Our debts can govern every aspect of our lives. We may struggle to believe that someone else would ever freely pay our debt, or we may labor under the guilt of sin, perhaps wrongly thinking that something in our past is too great for even Christ to forgive.
In fact, God has forgiven all our sin by paying off our debt, with His Son as the payment. In the Second Reading, St. Paul says God cancelled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, that He set it aside, nailing it to the cross. Since the debt was not simply cancelled, as if God chose not to collect it, we might better say that the record of debt has been “wiped away” or “blotted out”, blotted out of the books since the Man Jesus, in Whom the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, Himself paid our debt, substituting His life and death for ours on the cross. We might say that it was as if our sin, written in our own hands, was written on Jesus, condemning Him to death by being nailed to a cross, and that, there on the cross, the record of the debt of our sins itself died, was removed as the center of God’s attention and the attention of the rest of the court, before which St. Paul describes us as standing. As St. Paul describes it, that the record of debt against us has been blotted out is clearly demonstrated by the fact that Jesus is alive. Jesus, as our record of debt, was nailed to the cross. Jesus died, but He was raised. What was not raised was the record of debt. The payment of all people’s debts is applied to individuals who, by God’s enabling, repent and believe and receive God’s forgiveness in the ways that He appoints for them to receive His forgiveness.
For example, in today’s Second Reading, St. Paul refers to the Colossians and our being circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, a putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, in other words by Holy Baptism. For the New Testament Church, Holy Baptism replaces the Old Covenant of circumcision as the entrance rite into the Kingdom on the eighth day. At the Baptismal Font, water and the Word work forgiveness of sins, rescue us from death and the devil, and give eternal salvation to all who repent and believe in the promises of God. There at the Font, God buries and makes us alive with Christ. And, with Holy Baptism and with the reading and preaching of His Word, with individual Holy Absolution, and with the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar, we are freed from debt to live in Christ.
In today’s Second Reading, St. Paul commands us to walk in Christ Jesus the Lord. Note that this is not “Footprints”-poem walking “with” Christ Jesus but a walking “in” Him, which is to say, a living of our lives “in” Him. And, while St. Paul gives us a command to do so, two of the ways that we do so—being rooted and built up in Him and being established in the faith—are things that God does actively in us as a free gift, when we do not reject His Holy Spirit’s working in us. So worked on by the Holy Spirit, we know Him as the only source of life, and His Holy Spirit has confirmed us in the faith. And, as a result, we ourselves actively abound in thanksgiving, especially the thanksgiving of the Sacrament of the Altar. As we say in the Lord’s Prayer of today’s Third Reading, we forgive the debts of those who “trespass” against us (confer Matthew 6:12). We do not completely stop sinning, but we press on to such perfection, because Christ Jesus has made us His own (Philippians 3:12).
On April first 20‑18, Elon Musk, the C‑E‑O of the influential tech firm Tesla, tweeted that the company was entering into bankruptcy. Perhaps Mr. Musk underestimated the power of debt! Stock in his company tumbled immediately, and considerable work was needed to get the message out that the original tweet was an April Fools’ joke. We very easily underestimate the impact of debt in our own lives. We may think that debt is common, that everyone is in debt, and so that our being in debt should not bother us. But, debt does bother us, we are anxious and worried about how to get out from under debt’s load, and we may even take matters into our own hands. The same is true of our spiritual debt. Our spiritual debt is constantly eating away at us, even if at times we are unaware of it. Spiritual debt is a burden no one can bear, though we try hard. In today’s Second Reading, St. Paul reminded the Colossians—and us—how our lives changed when Jesus paid the debt of our sin. For His sake, our debt has been cancelled. We are free to focus on our life in Him. Oh, the life of living debt free!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +