The text for this morning’s message comes from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the fifth chapter, of selected verses:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly… but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Thus far the text.
Dear Friends in Christ,
A Jewish man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
All of the sudden, the robbers came back. They had decided they didn’t have enough fun with the Jewish man and so they wanted to beat him still. Instead, they saw the Good Samaritan leaning over the man and so they started bashing the Samaritan over the head instead of the Jewish man. The Samaritan begged them to cease for only a moment, and said to them, “Hold on. I know you are violent men and intend to do me harm. Please know that I am the most powerful man in the country. I have been trained in every martial art and no one can stand up when I wield my sword. But, I will allow you to rob me, I will allow you to beat me, I will allow you to murder me, I will allow you to mock me. Only give me your word that you will let the other traveler go. Let me take the burden of what you intend to do to him. Give me a double beating for his sake.”
The robbers accepted the Samaritan’s plea, and crushed all the bones in his body, bashed in his face, cut his skin all over so his blood flowed freely, all this they did as he laid passively on the ground allowing them to do with him what they will. They left the other man on the side of the road, bloody and suffering, but healed by the Good Samaritan’s efforts. When he awoke, he was confused by the body of a bloodied and dead man sitting by him. After sitting there for a little while, he was approached by a witness who explained everything that had happened, and explaining the situation to him, let him know that he had been spared because of the punishment the Samaritan took for the man. He nudged the man with his foot, saw he was truly dead, and went on his way.
Does this story disturb you? It should. It disturbed me. It’s not quite the ending to the story of the Good Samaritan that we are used to, is it? We are used to the Good Samaritan totally taking care of the man; we’re not used to my ending. May Jesus pardon for me for changing His parable a bit, but I do it to prove the point.
You see, the man who had originally been beaten saw all the Samaritans as enemies in his own mind. The Samaritans were enemies of the Jews. Old family ties, you see. Old family squabbles. They hated the Samaritans. They stood for everything that the Jews hated and stood against. So, the fact that it was a Samaritan and not a Jew who not only stopped to heal the man but a Samaritan who took the beating for the sake of the Jewish man is stymieing to the Jew.
Even in the original story, I don’t think the Jewish man would have felt totally comfortable. He was saved by his enemy, he was healed by his enemy, and all his bills were taken care of. In our story, the wounds were healed, but the robbers came back to inflict more damage. The man had enemies in the robbers, but he was being healed by the enemy of his mind. The Samaritan really wasn’t his enemy. Very obviously, the Samaritan loved the Jewish man. Not only did he heal the man, but he took the punishment that was intended for him.
In the text for today, we find the same thing. We find a God whom we hate. We have hated God since our beginning. We have hated Him from our conception. We have always been enemies with God, going back for generations and generations. Your parents hated God, your grandparents hated God, so did your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents, all the way back to our first parents, Adam and Eve. They hated God so much that they tried to replace His role in their lives with a new caretaker, a new gardener of the soul, Satan. Just as Satan had tried to usurp God’s power and authority, we invited that same Satan into our lives to take the place of God, leading us all even further into sin and damnation.
We are sinful people, and even though God is really never our enemy, for our true enemy is our sinful flesh, we were certain that He was. We imagine that God is our enemy. In our imaginations, we make God out like He’s like the Bloody Mary in the mirror, just waiting to jump out of that glass and grab us. You know how this goes, you go into the bathroom, turn out all the lights, and say, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,” and wait for her to show up and grab us, pulling us into her realm to kill us. Well, we know that it’s only a child’s tale, Bloody Mary isn’t real, but with God, with how we tempt God with our sin, we definitely act like it’s something real. With God, we know He’s holy, but we go out there and we sin, we lie, we cheat, we steal, and we just taunt God to come and get us. We don’t even care that He can absolutely do that. We taunt God with our sin. Come and get us!
And yet, God doesn’t. God isn’t out to get you. He doesn’t come out of the woodwork to draw you into His realm just to torture you until you beg for death just for relief. The text tells us that while we were enemies of God, while we looking over our shoulder for Him, God sent His Son, that true Good Samaritan, to die for us, the ungodly. Christ died for us sinners.
See the thing is, God could totally come out and get us and send us to eternal torture in hell. God is even expected to do that. After all, as we heard in last week’s sermon, God must judge us by His Law. He gave it to us to show us what holiness is and what it looks like. He gave it us and does expect us to keep His Law fully. God expects us to keep His Law fully.
Think about what that means. God gives us His Word and tells us, “Do this and you will be saved.” That means that unless we do it perfectly, and we have to do it perfectly from the moment we’re conceived in our mothers’ wombs, we’re failing, we’re damned, we’re going to hell.
One stray thought, one stray word, one stray deed and we’re damned to hell. If only we could keep the Law, if only we could not be sinners, we would be saved. But already, when God gives us the Law, He knows we are damned by that Law. He knows we are in trouble. So, why does He give us the Law?
It’s not to just make us better people. It’s not to just make a better world. It’s to make us look to Him for salvation. All of the sudden, we realize that we have broken all of the Law, all of the 613 commands God has given, and we beg for mercy. Oh, Lord, I can’t do it! I can’t keep what you’ve given me to do! From my very first moment of life, I have broken your Law. And this is good, this is mercy that God brings, until we get to this: Show me mercy and I’ll do whatever you want!
But God doesn’t accept that. There’s nothing a person can do. Everything a person does is filled with unrighteousness. Can you do anything perfectly? Of course not! Can you save yourself when you have sinned yourself into oblivion? Of course not! You are just like the Jewish man in our story, where he is unconsciously receiving treatment and healing; he has no say in the Samaritan taking his beating. He is unconscious. So, too, are you. You have no ability to do anything, not even to stop God’s mercy.
God, in His mercy, sent His Son Jesus Christ to take your punishment for you. Jesus is the Good Samaritan. He could have struck down sin with a word, He could sneezed at Satan and sent him into oblivion, but that’s not what Jesus did, because to do that doesn’t make you any less sinful, any less punishable. Jesus could have gotten rid of Satan and you would still be a sinner. So what does Jesus actually do?
He takes your sin from you. He removes your sin and places it on Himself. There’s nothing you can add to that, there’s nothing you can do for Him to help Him because He takes every sinful thing you have. He crucifies your sinful flesh, which is now on Him. He dies in your place, reconciling you to God and averting the punishment that was meant for you onto Himself. That’s what the word “propitiation” means, a complete diversion of the stream of God’s wrath on sin, never to be removed.
But just taking your sin, that would leave you naked before God with nothing to bring before Him. There would be nothing to show that you were a sinner, but there would be nothing to display that you are a saint. So, Jesus not only takes your ragged and sinful flesh onto Himself, but gives you His own flesh and clothes you with it. His flesh is righteous, His flesh is justified, and His flesh is the only thing that gets you into heaven. He grants you everything that He Himself has obeyed and done during His sinless life so that you can inherit eternal life with Him.
Jesus went to the cross to die for you, to take your place, to reconcile you to God the Father almighty. We are saved by His life, we are saved by His death, we are saved by His resurrection. We are reconciled to the Father. Jesus has taken the punishment that was meant for you. He was beaten, and mocked, and cut, and murdered for you.
And now we have peace with God. We are totally on God’s side because God is on our side! There is nothing you can do to earn this; it has been earned for you in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. We deserve God’s wrath, but that wrath has been completely poured out on Jesus Christ. We are no longer against God as we once were. We are no longer God’s enemies. Christ calls us His friends, and He does this now and will do this on the last day when He comes again to judge the living and dead. Christ will say, “This one is mine! Hell can’t have him! Hell can’t have her!”
Dear friends, stop looking over your shoulder for God to get you. He’s not out there to condemn you, He’s out there to forgive you. It’s true, nothing we do can be done perfectly. We will continually sin. We will continually sin against God and our neighbor. But Jesus died for that sin. Jesus died for all sin. Jesus died so that we might live. Jesus died so that we might be forgiven. Jesus died so that we might no longer be Christ’s enemies, God’s lifelong enemies, but we are now God’s lifelong friends. All that we do now is done in Christ’s name, not our own, not for our own sake, but for Christ’s, and all will be received by God as if it were done perfectly. We are sinners whose sins are no longer counted against us. All our sin was counted against Christ. You are forgiven and are God’s friends. You are no longer enemies, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now may the peace that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
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