Bible Text: Luke 18:31-43 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Lent 2020 | The Bible’s full of commands telling us to mimic our God. You shall be holy as your Father in heaven is holy. That’s what Jesus says in His Sermon on the Mount. St. Paul copies Jesus and says, “Imitate me as I also imitate Christ.” He says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” This is the Bible’s command from beginning to end. Moses says it repeatedly, and St. Peter quotes him too, saying, “Be holy, as the Lord your God is holy.” Now we Lutherans have a clever way of getting around these passages. We categorize them as law passages and then say they show that we’re sinners, because we’re not holy – we just confessed that, right, “I a poor miserable sinner confess unto you all my sins and iniquities” and we meant it, the Christian confesses, I have not been holy, I’ve coveted what’s not mine and wasted God’s good time, I’ve been obsessed with myself instead of with others, I’ve let anger rise and stir in my heart, I’ve been anxious and worried as if God weren’t in control, we mean it when we confess that we’re not holy – and so when Jesus tells us to be holy or to imitate Him, we insist with all our hearts that this accuses us, shows us that we haven’t been holy as our Lord is holy, puts the fear of God into us, because we have broken this command, we have deserved his temporal and eternal punishment, and this then leads us, as our tutor, to Christ, our dear treasure, who alone is holy, who alone has lived the perfect life, who lived it for us and suffered to win us the forgiveness we heard spoken to us this morning and the reconciliation with God we will receive shortly in His body and His blood and enjoy forever in heaven.
Now this much is most certainly true. You’re not holy of yourself, and every command to imitate Christ or to be holy will reveal your sin. We call this the law’s theological use. It shows you your sin. But that’s not the only reason God gives these commands. He gives them also because you’re his children. And children learn to be like their father. They want it. Look at our Epistle. It describes love. Paul isn’t just condemning our sin here, our lovelessness; and he’s not just describing what Jesus is and does, the One who loved perfectly for us. He’s also giving us a guide to live by. He’s encouraging us to love one another. He says it’s greater than faith, greater than hope. It’s our life’s goal, the goal of eternity, this love. He actually wants it to form our daily lives. Love is patient. So husbands, be patient with your wives. Love doesn’t insist on its own way. So wives, be submissive to your husbands. Love isn’t irritable or resentful. So workers, be content with your job and thank God he’s given you the strength and skill to support yourself and your family and your church. Love doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth, so don’t go gossiping on Facebook or believing gossip as if it were true, if you see good men slandered, defend them, and defend your fellow Christians for Christ’s sake.
The command to love, for the Christian, is never simply accusation against a life lived badly. No, I agree with it, I want to live it, that’s what the Christian feels and confesses, as St. Paul says, “Now if I do what I do not want to do I agree with the law that it is good.” And again, “I delight in the law of God in my inmost being.” I actually want to love my wife, to be a loving father, to spend time with my children, discipline them, teach them God’s word, to speak well of other people, even people who annoy me, even people who say all kinds of evil about me falsely, I want to be content with what I have and stop dreaming about being rich and what I would do with the money, I actually want to be patient with people at work, I want to be kind and gentle even when I’m dealing with people who are nasty to me, I want to bear the crosses God gives me, and fight against temptation. This is the Christian confession. And this wanting to love is accompanied by action, by exercising our willpower enlivened by God’s own Spirit to imitate our Father in heaven.
And this is not at all to leave faith behind. People think this way. That we have to choose between faith and our practical life. Stop talking so much about sin and Jesus and give me some practical advice for my life. It’s as if we have to choose between hearing only about Jesus crucified for us or hearing some self-help Joel Osteen sermon. But that’s nonsense. Now, I suppose this complaint could be made if a pastor does nothing but tell you that you’re a filthy sinner and that Jesus took on your filth and suffered for it to forgive you. But the pastor’s job is also to tell you what this means for your life. And it means everything for your life – first and foremost that you have a God in heaven who isn’t angry with you but because of Jesus He loves you and forgives you and has prepared a place for you in heaven. But this central fact, that faith saves, as Jesus says today, that we receive by faith all that Jesus has lived and suffered to win us, that by it we are justified and our sins are forgiven, this central fact of the Bible is never separated from your life. The two can’t be separated. Never.
Look at our Savior in our Gospel lesson. He’s ridiculously humble and ridiculously confident at the same time. And this is why He has mercy on the blind man, whose faith saves him. So for us to have faith in this Jesus, to see that He humbled Himself for us to be spat on and beaten and mocked and crucified, to see that He confidently declared the truth of the Scriptures that these things must be so, that God had to become a man and die to redeem us from all sin and death and the power of the devil, to see that Jesus has mercy on the blind beggar who calls on His name, that He cares for sinners, for their bodies and souls, this is all the realm of faith. Faith trusts this Jesus. Clings to Him. Finds in Him a Savior and in His blood the guarantee of eternal life.
And at the very same time, faith loves this Savior, admires Him, wants to imitate Him. This Savior wins our hearts.
First, Jesus is confident. This isn’t some jock-confidence in our own abilities. Some “I’m better than you” are confidence. That’s what we call cocky, which is literally to act like a rooster, right, which is to look ridiculous. No one likes braggarts. No, Jesus’ confidence is in what? In the Bible. He knows that what it says will happen, without fail. He knows and asserts its truth, even if it goes against what the people around him want to hear. This is what we mimic. This confidence in God’s Word. First of all, a confidence that what the Bible says about us is true, that we have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Then, that what it says about our God is true, that the Father has sent His Son to take on our flesh and live our life for us and die our death in our place to win us His Spirit and inheritance as God’s sons. And then to stand on everything else this Word says. That God created us and everything in six days, that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, that marriage belongs between one man and one woman, everything that is so unpopular in this world we live in, to be confident it is true. As St. Paul says, Let God be true and every man a liar.
And this gets us to the second thing faith wants to mimic in Jesus. His humility. He’s willing to suffer God’s will. That’s what the Bible says of Him, what He’s so confident in. That He will suffer, be mocked and spat upon, and die. The atheist philosopher Friederich Nietzsche ridiculed this about Christianity. He saw it as the great trick the Jews pawned off on the rest of the world, that it is a good thing to be humble, to submit. No, Nietzsche insisted, only strength, only power is good in the end. But, of course, willingly or unwillingly, Nietzsche and the rest of mankind had to submit. We all have to submit to death, no matter how we kick and scream going into it, and no matter how we pretend it doesn’t bother us. In Nietzsche’s case, by the way, he had to submit to the madness and paralysis brought on by syphilis. The question is not whether we will be lowered, whether we will be humbled. We will be. The question is only if we will humble ourselves under God when it happens.
And this is ridiculously applicable to your lives, to my life. What did Jesus endure? Not just physical, bodily suffering. He endured mockery and slander, people he loved abandoning Him and turning against Him. He suffered people telling lies about Him. And He endured it. Love suffers long, our epistle says. Jesus suffered it all because He knew His Father would work it out for good. And He has, and He will. All Jesus’ pain and the lies He endured and the betrayal, in the end worked to destroy all pain and lies and betrayal forever, with all sin and death. God worked it all for good. And He will work it out for good when we suffer the same things. A disciple is not above his master, Jesus said, what they did to Jesus they will do to his disciples and to His Church. They will slander her, lie about her, mock her, call her a cult, there will be those within her that betray her, those outside of her that ridicule her and wish her evil, but she will endure, because she knows how to suffer, she knows that her God has brought about the world’s salvation through His own suffering, she knows that He collects her tears in His bottle, she knows that He is in control and He will work His beautiful and good will to good for us who love Him and have been called to be His children.
And this, finally, gets us to our last point. Jesus heals the blind man. He’s merciful. I can’t stress how important this is for us in our daily lives. Obviously Jesus really did give sight to this blind man. It happened in history. But Jesus is also making a point here. His disciples were blind to the facts of the Bible. They couldn’t understand that Jesus would have to suffer and die. Their eyes, their senses, deceived them, they could only see Jesus’ suffering as a bad thing. But then comes blind Bartimaeus, and he can’t see, he can’t use his senses to judge what’s good or bad about Jesus, and he’s the one who sees Jesus clearly, blind as he is. He calls on Him as the Savior, as the promised Christ, the Son of David, come to suffer and die for his sins, and he calls on Him to have mercy. This is who our Lord Jesus is, who our God is. This is what faith trusts and knows and humbles itself under. This mercy forms our hearts, it’s what we live by. And we need to give it to other people. This means we forgive as we have been forgiven. We don’t harbor hate in our hearts for those who sin against us. We pray for their repentance. And it means that we too use Jesus’ word to open the eyes of the blind. That means to tell people the truth. That’s what our epistle says again, Love rejoices in the truth. To defend Christ and His Church when they are slandered. To teach our children God’s Word. To let Jesus be merciful through our words and through His Word and Sacrament. Because this is what the world needs, it’s what our friends need, and it’s what our enemies need.
Let us ever walk with Jesus, that’s how we began our service. Confident, humble, merciful, knowing that what He says will come to pass, and we will see Him with our own eyes, resurrected from the dead, the God-Man who suffered for us and for whom we gladly live and laugh and cry and suffer and die.
Let us pray:
Most heartily, I trust in Thee, thy mercy fails me never. Dear Lord, abide; My Helper tried, Thou Crucified, from evil keep me ever. Amen.