My Only Comfort
Romans 4:1-9
What is the best gift you have ever received? I’ll give you just a moment to think about it. Maybe it was for your birthday, maybe it was for Christmas, maybe it was something you got “just because.” What was the best gift you ever received? I’ll give you just a moment to visualize it. I hope that thinking about that gift brings a smile to your face.
What makes certain gifts so special? What makes us remember some gifts and forget so many others? I think at least some of it has to do with how easily or how willingly we can obtain that gift on our own. At least in part, the best gifts are things that we could never get as a result of our own effort. Let me share a quick example. During my study this week I came across a story that was published in the old Magazine Moody Monthly. When he was asked the same question, A young lawyer said, “The greatest gift I ever received was a gift I got one Christmas when my dad gave me a small box. Inside was a note saying, 'Son, this year I will give you 365 hours, an hour every day after dinner. It's yours. We'll talk about what you want to talk about, we'll go where you want to go, play what you want to play. It will be your hour!' "My dad not only kept his promise," he said, "but every year he renewed it—and it's the greatest gift I ever had in my life. I am the result of his time.” That hour a day was an extravagant gift, the precious gift of time. Inside of that box was something that that boy could never have gotten by his own efforts. No amount of work or searching would have ever been enough for that boy to obtain an hour of his father’s time each day. The gift inside that box could only be given willingly and freely by that boy’s father. There was no other way to get it. The gift was otherwise unobtainable.
Yes, the best gifts are things we can never earn or acquire by our own effort. We take joy in them, we find comfort in them because they tell us that someone loves us so much that they would give us something we could never get on our own. Over the course of the next few Sunday Evenings we will be going through a series looking at “Windows on Spiritual Formation.” Tonight we begin with the foundation of our Spiritual Formation; that foundation is the most extravagant gift ever given. It is a gift that provides us with, as the Heidelberg Catechism says, our only comfort. That gift, that source of comfort is God’s grace. The foundation of our only comfort is faith in God’s gift of Grace. Everything that we do in spiritual formation rests upon that foundation, that gift. The foundation of our comfort is faith in God’s gift of Grace.
Before we specifically address our text tonight, we need to understand a bit of the background of the Roman Christians. Paul writes this letter, in part, because the Christians in Rome were trying to find comfort in their own works. They thought that somehow they could find spiritual comfort by trying to please God through signs of piety or through demonstrations of their faithfulness.
Many of the Christians in Rome were Jewish. The Jewish scholars of the day put their confidence in obedience to the Laws of Moses. They believed that by obeying the law of Moses they would receive God’s blessings and would be righteous before Him. In fact, many rabbis believed that to be truly righteous, individuals also had to abide by human religious traditions that they added to the Law. We see this attitude when the Gospels describe the Pharisees. Luke gives us an excellent example in Chapter 18 when a Pharisee describes himself in verses 11 and 12. “The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘ God I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’” Now the Pharisees have gotten a bad reputation in the Christian Church and rightly so, but we need to understand that the Pharisees were serious about their faith. Let me put it like this. If you were a Jewish father it would have been your best dream come true if your daughter brought home a Pharisee for dinner. These men were well respected and from all outward appearances Godly men. As one commentator puts it, “They were sincerely and fearfully trying to earn God’s approval.” So the Jewish Roman Christians were influenced by all of this. They believed that they must earn God’s approval through righteous living. They were trying to work for their salvation.
Paul also writes this letter to Gentile Christians, that is, people who were not Jewish before they became Christians. And the Gentile Christians had the same problem. They were trying to earn God’s favor by their works. Many of these Gentile Christians came from pagan backgrounds, which believed that the gods had to be appeased. The pagan religions of the time thought that the Gods could be persuaded not to punish a particular individual or could be manipulated to bless a man or woman who gave something worthwhile to one of the gods. Pagan religion of the day was, in modern terms, a service for payment rendered. Let’s say for example that you wanted to make that cute guy or girl in math class fall in love with you. Well then, you would go to the temple of Aphrodite, the Goddess of love and marriage, and you would offer her some token of appreciation – usually a hefty amount of money, or an animal sacrifice. If Aphrodite was pleased with your offering then she would make that cute guy or girl fall madly in love with you. It was a service for payment rendered. If you pleased the gods they would give you what you asked for. Gentile Christians brought this mentality to their Christian faith. They were under the impression that they had to please God to avoid His wrath or to be blessed by Him.
One of the problems with this kind of religion is that it creates grounds for boasting. A works based religion causes people to take pride in their own actions rather than to truly worship God. Paul gets at this in verse 2. He says, “If Abraham was justified by works, then he had something to boast about.” By seeking God’s favor by works, people don’t boast about God, they boast about their own actions, their own righteousness, their own works. But boasting is no righteousness at all. It is simply a way to try and impress other people with how great you are. Deep down such people are still full of sin. In Matthew 23 Jesus tells the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, you are “white washed tombs.” He tells them, “On the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” The danger for the Romans is that they would put their confidence in their works. They would look righteous on the outside, but on the inside would be full of boasting and sin.
The Roman Christians thought they could, or thought that they had to earn God’s favor. Paul tells them in verse 4 “When a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.” That’s Paul’s way of saying that an employee deserves to receive a paycheck. The employee doesn’t receive a gift, but he or she gets what is coming to them. When you work, weather as a farmer, as a nurse, or as a pilot your employer or your client owes you a wage. Whatever you get, you get because you earned it. Wages don’t really provide comfort, they don’t communicate any kind of love. We’ve earned them. That is totally different from a gift. Gifts are unearned. But sometimes we get this mixed up. Let me give you an example. We tell children that Santa Claus only gives “gifts” to “good” children. But that’s not true. If only good children receive gifts, they aren’t really gifts at all. Those children by being good have earned a gift. They deserved it. It is no longer a gift, it is a wage. Real gifts are unearned, undeserved. Real gifts communicate love, and care, and favor especially to people who don’t deserve it. They bring joy to our lives they bring comfort.
The Roman Christians sought to work for God’s grace, and by doing so they nullified the Gift. They sought comfort in their own works. But sadly we are not much different. We do the same thing. We try to find comfort in our own works, in our own accomplishments.
We see it in the way we interact with each other. We define ourselves, at least in part, by our work, by what we do. Think about it, when you meet a new person, after asking their name (which most of us forget anyway) what do you ask them? “So what do you do for a living?” We think of each other in terms our work. We think of ourselves that way too. We say, “I am a teacher,” “I am a housewife,” or “I am a lawyer” instead of saying, like in the some cultures “I am the son of Fred,” or “I am an American.” We define ourselves by our work. And we try and take comfort in that. So we work hard to earn enough money so we can invest in an IRA or a 401K. Or we work hard so that we can put a wholesome meal on the table, or have well behaved children. And when our work doesn’t bring us comfort we turn to Self-Help experts who will help us feel better about ourselves. Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Martha Stewart would have us believe that with a little effort, and with a few simple steps you can fix any problem that faces you. As David Wells points out, the self-help movement is simply a secularized way of seeking salvation. In his book Losing our Virtue he writes, “the growing body of self-help literature; ever inspirational, has nevertheless succeeded in minimizing the complexities of life and reducing its remedies to techniques. The self-help literature assumes that healing is possible because the self carries within it the means of its own healing. What is needed is simply the right technique to tap into this potential. It therefore offers a secularized form of salvation.” Finding this salvation on our own and putting it into practice is more reason for us to boast in our own accomplishments. We can look back at how we overcame the problem.
Sadly, we bring that works based, self-help mindset to our faith. We take pride in what we can do to make ourselves better. We do the things that Christians are supposed to do. We pray, we go to church, we give money, and we try to be genuinely nice to others. Many of us read our Bibles daily and we try and have regular family devotions. And when life gets especially difficult, often we will try to get extra serious about those disciplines. We try to become even more pious. We pray more read our Bibles more, we avoid sinful behavior in our lives, and promise God that if He will get us through this trial we will be more faithful. That’s a work-based mentality. It is the same problem that the Romans had. It is also the problem the Galatians had. After they had become Christians, they lived as if they could gain their goal by their own efforts. Paul writes in Chapter 3 of Galatians, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? After beginning with the Spirit are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” As we will learn in the next few weeks, spiritual disciplines are helpful in our spiritual formation, but they will not in any way make us better before God. If we are not careful the things we do for spiritual formation become works that we do to try and obtain things from God, they become grounds for boasting.
The end result of this works based Christianity is that working to please God, is not very comforting. It means a lot of work. We treat God like a cosmic vending machine, hoping beyond hope that when we really need something we have earned enough credit by our good works to buy what we want. In works based faith we can never be certain if God is for us. What is even sadder is that we never truly enjoy worship. We can never let ourselves worship God in spirit and truth simply because He is God. We cannot enjoy the gift of His grace because we are too busy trying to earn it. We are too busy seeking God’s blessing to let go and enjoy Him.
But Paul has Good news for the Romans. He points to Abraham. He reminds them, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” He tells them that not only Abraham knew this comfort but David did too. Paul quotes David in Psalm 32:1,2 “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.” David and Abraham knew a special comfort. They knew they belonged to God. They knew they didn’t have to earn His approval. They simply had faith in God’s promise. Abraham believed that God would provide him an heir. David believed that God forgave him from his sins. And both of them were justified before God. They weren’t justified by what they did, but by who they put their faith in.
Paul explains this in detail. Earlier we saw that verse four reminds us when we work for God’s free gift, we actually nullify it. When we work, we get what we deserve. As sinful people, that is not very comforting to think about at all. If we always got what we deserved, we certainly would not feel very blessed. But the good news comes in verse 5, one of my seminary professors said that verse 5 is the best one-verse explanation of the Gospel in the Bible, and I tend to agree. Paul says, “to the man who does not work, but trusts in God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.” That’s the essence of the Gospel. The most important thing in this passage is to notice what this says about God. Who does God justify? God justifies the wicked. It is the ungodly, the hypocrites, the sinners of the word that are made right before God. In the Gospels Jesus put it this way, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Until we admit that we are wicked and can never become righteous on our own, then we won’t be justified. This is what the Catechism teaches us. Question two asks, “What must you know to live an die in the joy of this comfort?” We must “first know how great my sin and misery are.” We cannot be like the Pharisees, sincerely and fearfully trying to earn God’s approval. We must instead admit that we are wicked and we need forgiveness. Since God justifies the wicked, we had better identify with the wicked. If we don’t we can never be justified.
Now, notice what it says to us. It says two things. First, we cannot work for righteousness. Righteousness is a gift that we receive. It cannot be earned. It is designed for “the man who does not work.” This verse is not condoning laziness, but it is telling us that we must give up trying to earn God’s favor. We must stop working to please Him as if He could be controlled by our actions. Second, it tells us that righteousness comes to those who believe in God. This is the great principle of the reformers, “Sola Fide.” We are saved through faith, not works. The way to receive God’s gift, is to believe that He has given it to us. All that is required of us is to have faith in God’s promise that Jesus has paid the price of our sins, and we are made righteous in Him. Let me try to illustrate this. Remember that story about the dad who gave his son 365 hours of his time one Christmas. Imagine that the boy does not believe his father. Suppose that when His father comes to spend time with him after dinner the boy says, “Dad I know you don’t really want to spend time with me. You’re just going to get distracted and do something more important. I’ll just go play video games instead.” In order for the boy to enjoy the time with his dad, he needs to believe that his dad is really giving him an hour of time each night. The boy doesn’t have to take it, but his father has offered it to him willingly, the boy only has to have faith that his dad will give him a full hour of his time. That’s the way it is with God’s forgiveness. He has freely given it, and all you have to do to receive it is believe that it’s yours. We can’t work for it, we can’t earn it, it is there for the receiving. The only requirement is to believe. When we do that we will be blessed, and happy. We will find comfort in God’s promise, comfort in His grace.
So how is God doing this today? What does it look like for god to justify the wicked? For God to transform the life of someone who has been working for their faith. Let me share with you my wife’s story. I have her permission to share this with you. My wife grew up in a strong Christian home. Her family has a strong commitment to Christ. And at an early point in her life Jenny gave her life to Christ. But her faith was not real to her. Jenny didn’t feel the comfort of following Christ because she was working so hard. Throughout High school and into college she was involved in many activities. She was in the band, ran track and cross country, and was an excellent student. Jenny lived by what she calls her rulebook, which was a long list of good works she thought she had to do. It was a list that actually placed her running, her grades, her friends, and her family ahead of God. When she went away to college at Indiana Wesleyen, things began to change. All of a sudden she couldn’t run fast in competitions any more. She was faster than ever in practices, but never improved on her high school times in the meets. She was struggling with her grades. She almost failed a chemistry class, something that was very difficult for her to handle. And she was missing her friendships from High School. Although she didn’t hang out with a wild crowd, her closest friends were not Christians. Then her family moved from Ohio back to Nebraska. Jenny realized that God was stripping away her rulebook. He was forcing her to put her faith in Him and receive His grace instead of earning it. Her freshman year of college Jenny prayed with a suitemate to receive the Grace of God in her life. She surrendered, she became “a woman who doesn’t work, but believes in the God who justifies the wicked” and she received the comfort of knowing that she was forgiven. She opened the gift of God’s grace and knows without a doubt that she is a Child of God. The gift of God transformed her life. The gift of God can transform your life. He takes those who are working for salvation and turns them into people who receive his grace.
Think once again about that best gift you have received. Imagine it. Now imagine a new gift. This one is from God. Inside is the gift that will bring you comfort, joy, and fulfillment. The gift is God’s grace, God’s forgiveness. The only thing necessary to receive God’s grace and to receive this comfort, is believe that God has made it available to you. All you need is faith. Maybe you have been a Christian for years, you’ve been faithfully coming to church reading your bible and praying, but you don’t feel like you belong to God. You feel like you have to work your way back to Him. Tonight God is offering you His son Jesus. He is offering you forgiveness and mercy, and blessings. Receive it, it is there for anyone who will stop working and believe. My friends, our only comfort is faith in God’s Grace. Receive it, open it up, delight in it.