Sermon - Trinity XI 2024 - Luke 18:9-14

Are you justified?

1. Yes, I justify myself

1. Therefore, I am not justified before God, only in my own eyes

2. Yes, because He justifies me

1. Through His sacrifice my sins are forgiven

The first of Luther’s 95 Theses reads: “When our Master and Lord says: Repent, He wants the entire life of His believers on earth to be a continuous and ceaseless repentance.” The trouble is that repentance does not come spontaneously. We tend to like ourselves, or at least we tend to think that we are good people and we do good things. Maybe we recognize that we’re not perfect, we make mistakes, but we don’t like to think of ourselves as villains who intentionally do evil. 

Rather than seeing ourselves as evil, we like to see ourselves as the hero or the good protagonist in our life. It’s common for us to look back on our lives and pat ourselves on the back, and even expect others to pat us on the back. Truthfully, many of us are offended when others don’t recognize our accomplishments. For example, when you go to a parade and veterans walk by, everyone stands in honor of them, and it would be offensive not to stand. If you go to an awards banquet, it would be offensive to not clap for the recipients of the awards. We think so highly of ourselves and our accomplishments that we expect others to recognize us.

This is why repentance does not come spontaneously to us. We think so highly of ourselves that we have trouble acknowledging our faults. So the question posed before us today is: Are you justified? Are you righteous? 

Our gut response to that question is: Yes! I am righteous, I am a good person, look at all that I do and have done, I’m good. This is the Pharisee’s way of thinking, too. He prayed: “God, I thank You that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” How tempting it is to think this way! You go to church every Sunday, you give an offering and look at your giving statements, you volunteer in various capacities, therefore you conclude that you’re a great person! Or you might claim that you pray, you read the Bible, you believe God is real, and therefore you are a wonderful person. You are righteous in your own eyes and you trust in your own works. 

To be fair, I don’t often hear those kinds of comments from people who attend church regularly, although I’m sure those thoughts can be tempting to all of us. But I do hear those kinds of statements from people loosely connected to a church, but don’t participate in it. Most commonly I hear people say: “Don’t worry pastor, I still believe in God, you don’t have to save me,” or even more commonly I hear them say: “I still pray, so I will be saved.” Both of those statements are self-justifying, work’s righteousness. 

They are trusting that their belief in God’s existence will save them. They aren’t trusting in God’s work of saving them through the blood of Jesus, they aren’t trusting in God to have mercy on them and forgive their sins, they’re just trusting in their belief that God is real. But who cares that they believe God exists?! The demons believe that God is real, and they’re not going to heaven. 

The one about prayer is even worse. They’re claiming that their actions of praying will save them from damnation. They justify themselves by claiming to pray, but they say nothing about their faith in Jesus to forgive them their sins. They claim to be saved not because of Jesus, but because of their work of prayer.

The whole self-justifying thing gets even worse when you consider that many today don’t even believe that there is such a thing as sin. They consider themselves sinless, maybe not perfect because they make mistakes, have accidents, but all in all, they don’t consider themselves sinners because they don’t even believe in sin. So when you confront them in their sin they become deeply offended, and they then think that you’re the sinner because the chief cultural “sin” today is pointing out sin.

But of course the person who is self-righteous, self-justified, is not actually saved. They only consider themselves to be saved, but that doesn’t hold any water in the eyes of God. For there is salvation in Him alone, and it is not to be found within ourselves.

When we’re faced with the question: Are you righteous? Are you justified? We should be able to answer in the affirmative, saying Yes! I am righteous, because thank God He has justified me to Himself through His sacrifice for my sins. That firm statement of faith can be found only in a repentant Christian.

We see a beautiful example of repentance in the tax collector: “Standing far off, not even lifting up his eyes to heaven, beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” This man made no self-justification for his behavior, he didn’t assume to be better than anyone else, he didn’t even think of anyone else. He considered Himself the chief sinner! It’s not clear in the English, but he calls himself the sinner. 

Additionally, he asks for much more than just God’s mercy, but He says propitiate me. Propitiation means that God’s wrath against us and our sins had to be removed by removing the guilt of sin that we have against him. In other words, God’s wrath against us was satisfied through Jesus’ crucifixion. God is not just merciful with us, as if He just ignores and forgets about all of our sins. Rather, God had to deal with all of our sins through the sacrifice of Jesus. Our sins could only be erased and removed, taken away, by the blood of Jesus Christ. The scripture says Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins.” Therefore, let it be clearly noted that we believe that we are righteous only through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The tax collector’s prayer of repentance is also ours: Lord, forgive me my sins through Jesus Christ! 

In that way we truly are righteous and justified. “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified… For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Through faith in Jesus and His saving work of forgiveness we are saved, we are justified, we are righteous in the sight of God! 

This word justification is important. Justification means to be declared righteous like one would be forensically declared in a courtroom. A man could be on trial for some crime, and he did the deed, but at the end of case the judge could declare him innocent regardless of his actions. This is what God does to us when He justifies us. Like the tax collector, we’re guilty, we’re sinners, we’ve done the crime and we deserve to pay, but instead Jesus paid the wages of sin for us so that God, the Judge, would declare us righteous. We don’t deserve to be called righteous, and yet God declares us righteous on account of Christ.

This brings us back to the opening Luther quote I had at the beginning of the sermon. “When our Master and Lord says: Repent, He wants the entire life of His believers on earth to be a continuous and ceaseless repentance.” Our salvation is only found in Jesus’s blood and righteousness. If we trust in ourselves, we will be lost. But trusting in Him and what He has done for us, there is salvation which shall endure unto the end of the ages.

Dear Chrsitians: Repent! Let’s not kid ourselves, we’re not sinless. When we repent we are forsaking all hope in ourselves, and clinging to Jesus alone. Perhaps that feels a bit daunting to acknowledge your own frailty, but it only makes you stronger because your righteousness is then founded on Him. He is the only righteous One! He is the only good One! To Him belongs the kingdom and power and the glory! When you let go of your imaginary self-made righteousness, and cling to His everlasting holiness, you shall be saved.