Justified: Death to Life
God Brings Us from Death to Life
Romans 4:13-25
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. June 11th, 2023
Year after year polls show the fastest growing religious demographic is not Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism, or even atheism. It is “none.” These nones are something of a mystery. What does it mean to put down your religion as simply “none”? Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the spiritual life. Many of these “nones” are likely “spiritual but not religious.” That is, they believe in the divine (otherwise they could have simply identified as atheist), but they don’t trust any given organized religion. They want to make their own path, follow their own way, satisfy their own spiritual needs.
There are many teachers and teachings on offer for the spiritual but not religious today. Most of them have been on Oprah. One can acquire crystals or do magic. Or one can practice the law of attraction and manifest one’s desires. There are apps for guided meditation and mindfulness. One of the fitness apps on my phone even has a tab devoted to “tracking my mindfulness” which I’m sure would make a number of buddhist monks laugh. Buddhist mindfulness is about self-denial, but American mindfulness has become about wellness.
It is also no wonder why people would distrust organized religion today, between terrorist bombings, abuse cases, and political division. We shouldn’t be surprised someone would be fed up. So why not be like Harry Potter and awaken your own power or connection to the universe? Why not take the first step on your own heroes journey in actualizing your true self.
I don’t mean to make an apologia for the Church, but I want to contrast the justifying grace of Jesus Christ with the quest for self-actualization or the fulfillment of spiritual need. It is easy to confuse grace with the fulfillment of spiritual need, or the life of discipleship with the quest for self-actualization. But for all the similarities there are stark differences.
In the gospel reading this morning we see two miracles. Their stories sandwiched together. A leader of the synagogue comes up to Jesus, kneels before him, and begs him to save his daughter. She has just died, but he knows, he just knows, that Jesus can raise her from the dead. On the way to the leader’s house a woman who has been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve long years recognizes him and touches the hem of his garment. She knows if only she touches him even for a second she will be healed. Jesus stops. Turns to her. And says, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”
After all that commotion he makes it to the house of the synagogue leader. There are flute players and a crowd making a commotion. It’s like a funeral in there. He tells them all to “go away” because “the girl is not dead but sleeping.” They laugh at him, thinking he’s telling a joke. It doesn’t take a doctor to tell if someone is dead. And everyone knows the dead are not merely asleep. Everyone knows the dead do not wake up.
But the crowd dutifully obeys Jesus’ command. When they walk out the door Jesus grabs the girl by the hand.
And she gets up.
Sometimes we might imagine that the account of the hemorrhaging is closest to our experience of the justifying grace of God. By justifying grace of God I mean the work of God to forgive us our sins and regard us as his child. We might imagine that while we are in our sins we are like the woman enduring a hemorrhage for twelve long years. We are weak, degraded, ostracized, regarded as unclean. But if we reach out to Jesus, then he has the power to heal. If we do our part, God will do his part. If we reach out in faith, then power simply has to come out of Jesus. And we are made well.
In this sense justification would be like meeting some spiritual need. There is some lack within us, something trying to bud. And we are sick with hunger until we find that something. We are incomplete until we are satisfied.
But Paul tells us, “the wages of sin is death.” We are not the hemorrhaging woman when we are enslaved by sin. It is not that we are sick and in need of a healer. Or hungry and in need of food. It is that we are dead and in need of resurrection. We are the little girl lying dead on the bed. Dead to all but God. To God we are asleep. Because God brings the dead back to life. God can do this because God is creator. He, in the words of Paul, “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Even death itself cannot overcome his power.
Justifying grace includes nothing of our own work. It cannot as long as we are dead. We do not reach out to God, but God reaches out to us. Calling us from death to life. Restoring us. Giving us the faith that saves.
Paul says Abraham also experienced this resurrecting power of God when he reckoned Abraham’s faith as righteousness. God made a promise to Abraham, that he would be the father of many nations. But Abraham grew old. And he saw that his body was as good as dead, and his wife Sarah’s womb was barren. Yet he did not lose faith in the promise of God. And this faith in the promise of God was “reckoned to him as righteousness.”
Paul says none of this is recorded for mere historical value. But it is written for us. That we would see in the example of Abraham the power of faith to bring life to what is dead, the power of God to bring to existence what does not exist, the resurrecting and justifying power of God.
Paul writes, “It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”
This is not self-actualization. And this is not the fulfillment of a spiritual need. It is God’s actualization of us. Taking us from death to life. And it is God’s encounter with us that fills us with faith, giving us something we were never looking for. Something we never knew we needed. So much of modern spirituality tells us what we can do, what we can seek, what quest we might go on. But again and again the Bible says we are so limited by what we see and what we can know. And what God has to offer is so much more than that. Infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, Paul says in Ephesians.
This is what sets the justifying work of Christ apart from all the spirituality of the world. In one case, we are the seeker. We are the heroes of the drama. But here, Christ is the seeker. He is the hero of the drama. He bravely strips himself for the battle and goes to the cross. He contends with sin. He descends into the bowels of the grave. He is victorious. And we are delivered. He would share this victory with us. Raising us from the death of sin, to eternal life.