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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
You may know, as I wrote in a newspaper column back in February, that, in the Roman Catholic Church, this year of 20‑25 is a “jubilee year”, when you can get what is called a “plenary indulgence”, what is said to be a full removal of temporal punishment for sin through Christ’s merits. You get the 20‑25 indulgence not by paying money for it, as was the case with the jubilee indulgence of the year of 15‑10 that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther addressed with his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, more-popularly known as his Ninety‑Five Theses, but you get the 20‑25 indulgence by such things as pilgrimages, eucharistic visits, and works of mercy and penance (National Catholic Register). Nevertheless, in general the Ninety‑Five Theses are just as applicable today as they were 508 years ago this day, when Luther “posted” them both by “nail” to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg and by “mail” to his “ecclesiastical supervisor”, Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz! For example, the twenty‑first thesis rightly condemns indulgence preachers for the error of saying that one “is absolved from every penalty and saved by papal indulgence” (AE 31:27), and, the sixty‑second thesis positively states the truth that “The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God” (AE 31:31). In support of that thesis, Luther, in his Explanations of the Ninety‑Five Theses published nearly one year later, used, among other verses, John 1:18, which says, “From His fulness have we all received” (AE 31:231). Although we usually consider that verse at Christmas as part of its surrounding passage, the so-called “Prologue” to St. John’s Gospel account, I have chosen that verse as a “free text” for this sermon tonight, giving this sermon the theme, “From Christ’s fullness we receive grace upon grace”.
As at the time of the Reformation, so also today: Roman Catholic teaching makes un‑Biblical distinctions between such things as guilt and punishment, both temporal and eternal. For example, indulgences were thought to cut short a penitent sinner’s punishment, potentially both on earth and in an imagined “purgatory”. Furthermore, an imagined “treasury of merits” from Christ and the saints who were said to have done more than God had required of them, supposedly could be applied either to individuals who purchased indulgences or to their deceased family or friends. The Roman Catholic preachers then may have stated the official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but their approach misled ordinary Christians who could not readily make the distinctions that their preachers made. That same sort of confusion no doubt occurs with Roman Catholics in our time, even if, as appears to be the case with the 20‑25 jubilee indulgence, the merits in view are only Christ’s, and the indulgence is not sold but earned.
Of course, as soon as one says that one must do something in order to receive Christ’s merits, salvation by grace has been turned into salvation by works. Some of Christ’s glory for doing all that needs to be done for salvation is taken, as it were, and given to the person earning the indulgence. If not in that way, then we may lessen the glory that Christ should receive for our and other people’s salvation in other ways. For example, we may think wrongly that we are not as sinful as we are and so that we do not need as much help from Christ as we do need. We may think wrongly that we or other people are able without God’s help to decide whether or not to believe in Jesus. We may think wrongly that we or other people are generally pretty good people and so that God will let us into heaven because we try to live good lives. We may think wrongly that God does not seriously demand that we at least want to and try to stop sinning. Because of these and other actual sins, as well as because of our sinful nature, we are guilty and deserving of temporal and eternal punishment, unless we are sorry for our sin and, enabled by the Holy Spirit, trust God the Father to forgive our sin by grace for His Son Jesus’s sake.
As I wrote in my October newsletter article, the first of Luther’s Ninety‑Five Theses is that when Jesus said “Repent”, He willed our entire lives as believers be those of repentance (AE 31:25). When we repent, then God forgives us; God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. All the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in Jesus, St. Paul writes to the Colossians, continuing that through Jesus to reconcile to God all things, making peace by the blood of Jesus’s cross (Colossians 1:19-20; confer Colossians 2:9). Or, as St. John wrote a few verses before our sermon text, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Then, as the text says, “from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” Jesus died on the cross for us, in our place, the death we deserved, and then He rose from the dead. God forgives us as a free gift that we receive in faith, which faith is itself a free gift (Ephesians 2:8-9). We freely receive faith and forgiveness through God’s Means of Grace, His Word and His Sacraments.
The former C‑E‑O of Intel and now Executive Chairman of a technology company called Gloo, a man by the name of Patrick Gelsinger, wants to use technology such as Artificial Intelligence, abbreviated “A‑I”, in order to hasten the coming of Christ (as if that were possible), and Gelsinger likens A‑I’s development to Johannes Gutenberg’s movable‑type printing‑press, which we would say God used to help spread the Ninety‑Five Theses in particular and the Reformation in general. Yet, Gelsinger seems to overstate A-I’s potential as what he called “a powerful embodiment of the church” and “the expression of the church” (The Guardian). To be sure, the Holy Spirit “expresses” the Gospel both through God’s Word read and preached to groups such as this group and through the Gospel applied to individuals with water in the grace of Holy Baptism, with touch in the grace of Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are Christ’s Body and Blood in the grace of the Holy Supper. We not only see the Lord’s fullness but receive inexhaustible grace from it and touch it (1 John 1:1‑2). Pastor and people gathered around God’s Word and Sacraments are the only “powerful embodiment” of the Church, humble and hidden as it is, in this world.
In the Ninety-Five Theses, Luther sees not only the Gospel but also the Keys of the Church—exercised in the reading and preaching of the Gospel, in Holy Baptism, in Holy Absolution and Excommunication, and in the Holy Supper—he sees those also as the treasure of the Church (#60, AE 31:31). When the Gospel is applied in these ways and received by those who are penitent, Luther sees as coming forth from people good works of love and mercy, for example, people’s using what God gives them for their family needs and not squandering it on indulgences (#41-47, AE 31:29). Similarly, neither indulgences nor anything else is used for a fund-raising scheme, as if to pay for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome or any other church building, but we voluntarily give a sacrificial first portion of the earthly treasure that God gives to us in order to help share with others our heavenly treasure that we receive for Christ’s sake (confer Teuscher).
“From Christ’s fullness we receive grace upon grace.” We neither place our trust in indulgences nor try to earn indulgences. We trust only in the merits of Christ given to us freely through His Means of Grace, and so, no matter what happens, we have peace and joy already now, as we will have for eternity. As Luther describes in the final two of his Ninety-Five Theses, we are “diligent in following Christ [our] head, through penalties, death, and hell; and thus [we are] confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through [a] false security of peace” (#94-95, AE 31:33).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +