Romans 3:28 “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith, apart from observing the law.”

Paul wants it to be clear that we can’t purchase God’s pardon. There are no backroom deals we can make with the Judge. He is not going to find us not guilty on certain counts in exchange for a little cash or some favors we can do.

Nor are we simply out on parole or probation. God has no spiritual probation officers to whom we have to report to see how we are behaving, otherwise we end up back in hell’s prison. “Apart from observing the law” means that our behavior does not get considered.

An professor of mine once put it up on the board like a mathematical equation:

Faith-Works=Faith Alone.

Justification is a gift to be received. Christmas is a couple months away. How many people will you be sending a check to pay for the gift you receive from them? Justification by faith means we don’t pay God for his gift, either. Good works are not required.

This does not mean we are against good works. We aren’t saying we do no good works. They just don’t factor into God’s decision to forgive our sins and consider us righteous. Our new found freedom may actually move us all the more to do the right thing out of appreciation, not obligation. It’s true a person may work hard when there is a big reward for his work. But when he is on vacation and free to do as he pleases, he may work harder still.

In his introduction to the book of Romans, Martin Luther described the power of faith to inspire good works this way: “Faith, however, is a divine work in us. It changes us and makes us to be born anew of God (John 1:13); it kills the old Adam and makes altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers, and it brings with it the Holy Ghost. O, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith; and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises; it has already done them, and is always at the doing of them.”

A little later he writes: “Hence a man is ready and glad, without compulsion, to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, in love and praise of God, who has shown him this grace; and thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire.”

Which is not to say that God requires good works before he justifies us. No, he inspires good works when he justifies us. But we are still justified by faith, with no works required.

When I was a little boy, I liked to tinker in my dad’s workshop. I once tried to build some miniature furniture to use with my G.I. Joe. It turned out horrible. It wasn’t even usable. When my dad saw what I was doing, he made some little pieces for me, and they turned out very nice. I contributed nothing, but I was happy to receive his work.

If we try to tinker with salvation in our heavenly Father’s workshop, it will turn out horrible. It won’t work at all. It is better to receive the work he has already done, and be justified by faith.

Romans 3:27-28a “Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith…”

When it comes to the practice of religion, most people are inclined to rate themselves way above average. Paul tells us, “No. We all stink.” Here is the problem. First, people tend to see religion mostly as a matter of morals. Over 20 years ago a reporter walked into my office looking to dig up some dirt on a semi-famous member of the congregation. Somehow the conversation turned to whether religion has value at all. The reporter said something like, “Well, I suppose it’s okay for morals and such.” The confusion didn’t start with her. The idea that religion is mostly about good behavior is at least as old as the Apostle Paul.

The other problem is that people water down God’s holy standards in order to make his demand for good behavior manageable. We often settle for “pretty good” ourselves. We then project this same willingness on God. But it doesn’t work that way with him. He is a holy God, and we are talking about matters of life or death, eternal blessing or eternal loss.

Let’s say that Boeing came out with a new airplane, and you were going to be a passenger in one for the first time. You happen to run into an engineer, and ask him if the plane flies. “Pretty close,” he says. “We got almost all of the engineering right.” Are you still going to get onboard?

Even if religion were mostly about morals, boasting would be excluded. “Pretty good” or “almost perfect” will get you killed. And honestly, we are “not good at all” and “not nearly perfect” by the standard of God’s holiness. Then Paul tells us that there is an even more compelling reason that boasting must be excluded from our relationship with God. “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith…”

Boasting is excluded because we are justified by faith. Understand what faith is. It is not the one little work that God demands of us, as though believing God was doing something. Faith is receiving, not doing. Picture the beggar with his hand out. Whether that hand is a big paw, or dainty, delicate thing; whether it has a powerful squeeze or is weak and crippled, the Lord can still come along and slap that multi-trillion dollar check for his grace into it. It’s not about the tiny, little faith (which is only trusting someone else to get the job done). It’s about the great big God who is giving faith his great big favors.

Faith receives God’s justification. The Lord regards us as righteous, holy, perfect people not because we have actually lived that way, obviously. He is willing to justify us, he will stand up and defend us as this kind of people because Jesus was righteous, holy, and perfect for us. Because he already served the sentence for our sins, because his blood and his death expunge the record of our crimes, even the ones to come, God passes the “not guilty” sentence on you and me. Faith simply trusts that God’s promise is true. He doesn’t consider us righteous because we lack sins. He considers us righteous because in love he chooses not to look at them.

If this is how we are justified, if this is how we escape our criminal record, then boasting would be more than a little silly, wouldn’t it. I am old enough to remember the Watergate scandal. About a month after President Nixon resigned, President Ford pardoned him for all his crimes. I don’t want to get into whether that was a good idea or not. But if President Nixon had then begun boasting about what a good person he was, what a fine record of public service he had, because all criminal record had been removed, that would be more than a little inappropriate, wouldn’t it?

In the same way, it would be inappropriate for us to boast about our relationship to God because we have been justified by faith. It excludes all boasting.

2 John 1:4-6 “It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.”

 John finds great joy because he finds “your children walking in the truth.” And he concludes that the Father’s command “is that you walk in love.” And in between he urges that “we walk in obedience to his commands.” Let’s tie these all together and take our direction.

 Love, you may already know, is the great summary of everything God commands. He wants our words and actions to benefit the people around us. Everything he does serves and benefits us.

His love is contagious. It is like a good infection. Once you catch it, love starts to take over inside. It rearranges our hearts and our minds, and God’s love starts producing love in our lives as well.

But sometimes we don’t understand what our neighbor really needs. And my neighbor may want something that isn’t good for him at all. So God gives his revealed truth as a guide. We can march right through the ten commandments, and with each one our world would tell us that love is something else if our Lord did not make his will clear.

You see, sometimes love involves pain, or self-denial, or sacrifice. Sometimes love involves calling others to pain, or self-denial, or sacrifice. In the movie Hearts in Atlantis, three childhood friends, two boys and a girl, become friends with an elderly man named Ted. He has mysterious powers. Near the movie’s end the girl has been beaten up by a neighborhood bully who dislocates her shoulder. One of her friends carries her to Ted, who recognizes the dislocation and determines to set it back in place. But while correcting the dislocation will reduce her pain in the long run, the procedure itself will be even more painful. So he talks up her courage, and gives her something to bite on while he pops the bone back in place.

Spiritually, sometimes love calls us to inflict pain to relieve it. We can’t just go on feelings. We need to be guided by God’s truth. When we keep love and truth together, together they direct our lives.

2 John 1:3 “Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.”

God’s blessings of grace, mercy, and peace come from God the Father and Jesus Christ. But John says that they are with us in truth and love. Let’s see how this little list of blessings is found in this special pair.

If you know a little about the books we call “Epistles” in the New Testament, you know that the writer usually begins by wishing grace and peace to the people he is addressing. This is also why so many pastors begin their sermons with this greeting. Grace and peace are two of the most fundamental blessings God’s people can have in their lives, and to them John adds mercy as a natural companion. Paul also adds it in his letters to Timothy, and Jude uses in the greeting to his short letter.

You can wake just about any lifelong Lutheran in the middle of the night and ask him to define what “grace” is, and he will tell you it is God’s “undeserved love.” It is the attitude God has when he looks at us in our rebellion and sin, and he chooses not to destroy us. Instead he saves us. He sends his Son. He dies in our place. He forgives all our sin. He sends someone with his word. He leads us to faith. He takes us to heaven. None of this is deserved. It is all a gift. If this is how God feels about you, if this is how he treats you, then there is nothing better you or I could ever have from now until eternity.

Mercy is similar, but it emphasizes that God’s love isn’t just a cold principle, an impersonal operating procedure. He feels for us. He genuinely cares. And this care extends far beyond a solution for our failed behavior. He looks down on our lives, and when he sees us in any pain of any kind, it moves him. When our hearts break, his heart breaks. When sickness or injury give us pain, it troubles him. If he were a human father with a human body, he would get a lump in his throat to see us in our pain. At all times he is filled with a real concern for what is going on in our lives.

If this is how God treats us, if this is how God feels about us, that naturally leads to peace. We live with the awareness, and the relief, that all is well between us and our Lord. My sin may be fresh; my pain may be immediate; but I live under my Lord’s grace and mercy, and that gives me peace.

I don’t think there is any trouble seeing the connection between this and love. As far as love goes, there could be no greater. But why the emphasis on “truth?” If there were ever characteristics of our God his enemies hated, none have ever been hated and attacked more than these. This is what all the cults, all the sects, all the false teachers ultimately want to deny.

“You want God to love you? You want him to accept you? You can’t make it so easy. You have to do something. You have to be better, different, than everybody else. You have to deserve it. You have to prove that you are sincere.” Maybe they get there by watering down his commands so far that anyone could keep them. Maybe they get there by trying to motivate you to live like some super saint.

But it’s all garbage. Grace, mercy, and peace are free. We need God’s truth, the promises of his word, to assure us again and again, because these blessings are contained in truth and love. They belong together.

2 John 1:1-2 “The elder, to the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth–and not I only, but also all who know the truth–because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever.”

As members of the Christian Church, Jesus has made us part of a family of faith. Like our human families, the individual members of our individual congregations don’t always treat each other right. But at their best, they are places where others regard us the way John describes here.

Our Lord often refers to his church on earth in feminine terms. At various times in the Old Testament God described his people as a virgin, a married woman, a mother, and even a widow.  Jesus calls himself our bridegroom and his church is the bride. Paul picks up this same picture. It seems that John is using a similar way of speaking here.

The term he uses, lady, doesn’t emphasize the special relationship with God. It emphasizes the relationship the church as a whole has with its individual members, whom John calls “her children.” In John’s day, “lady” wasn’t just a polite term of respect. It was a way of referring to the leading woman of the household, the one who wielded some authority in the family. The “lord” of the house was the man in charge. The “lady” was the woman in charge.

How did this humble, motley gathering of outcasts and misfits, simple people with perennial faults, wind up with such a title, “lady”? Well, from God’s point of view she is the “chosen” lady. This is the group, these are the people, that he set his heart on for reasons that are all his own. It’s not because we, the members of the church, had some special spiritual beauty that made us attractive. God chose his church anyway. And having chosen her he called her to faith, and washed her in Jesus’ blood, and clothed her in Jesus’ love. He made her the chosen lady as a matter of his grace and love.

The “Lord” is not the only one who loves “the chosen lady and her children.” John says of her, “…whom I love in the truth–and not I only, but also all who know the truth–because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us.” John regards the church with love, and so does everyone else who knows the truth, and they all do this because of the truth. Let’s face it, the church as a whole hasn’t always given us reason to love it. Money scandals and sex scandals have shown her uglier side and filled a lot of people with disgust. On a more personal level, maybe some of you have been victims of church cliques or politics. How can we love an organization with faults like that?

The church isn’t a cold, faceless corporation. It is a body of people just like us. It’s the body that includes each of us. Our faults, my faults, are part of the church’s problem. God doesn’t treat people the way they deserve. He always treats us better. Forgiveness is the key to his love for us, and it will be the key to our love for the people he has gathered as his “chosen lady.”

Love itself, godly love, Christian love, is not a response to beauty or kindness or talent. It is a choice we make, a gift we bestow, on the object of our love. This love is the way things operate in God’s family, the chosen lady and her children. It determines how we are regarded, and the regard we ourselves have for others who are part of this body.

Romans 13:4 “For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

Paul says it twice here: “He is God’s servant.” That is not the same as saying, “He is a sincere believer,” or “he is a member of the church,” or even “he is a nice guy.” The Apostle Paul tried to convert the emperor Nero and a handful of other Roman governors and officials during his life. He had limited success, with governors on the islands of Cyprus and Malta turning to Christianity.

But one of the fascinating things about the way that God has ordered the world is the way all things, and all people, must serve him whether they intend to or not. The time at which Paul was writing is sometimes known in history as the “Pax Romana,” the “Roman Peace.” Because the Roman government was so powerful there was relatively little war going on, especially in the part of the empire where Paul was doing mission work. The Roman government had little interest in helping to spread Christianity. Sometimes it even got in the way. But if Paul had to dodge columns of soldiers and battles and sieges while he was trying to spread the gospel, he would have gotten a lot less missionary work done. The fact that the Roman government kept this all buttoned down meant that it was “God’s servant, to do you good.”

And while Paul ran into some corrupt local officials along the way, at least they still kept order and enforced the law where Paul went. If thieves and cutthroats were running all over the place, again, it would have been more difficult to get from place to place to preach the gospel. And if Paul’s own dissatisfaction with the government turned him into a scofflaw who ignored the laws he didn’t like, then he would have to put extra effort into avoiding encounters with law enforcement. That would mean less mission work done, not more.

There is no use for Christians to attract extra negative attention from a government that may already look at their message and work unfavorably. So even unbelieving, self-serving leaders at the national, state, or local level are God’s servant when they use the power of the sword, which is the power of deadly force in any form, to keep the peace. They generally make us more safe, and make it possible to get more gospel work done, when we submit to those who govern us, imperfect though they may be.

Compared to Christians in so many places around the world, we have it easy in the United States, and we have it good. I’m not saying we shouldn’t work to make it better if we can. Do your best in the election on November 5. But it is less of a stretch to see how the institutions and people in our own government, from those we elect to go to Washington, to the policeman who pulls us over because a tail light is out, are “God’s servant to do us good.”

To put it another way, consider the government under which we live a gift. Those he gives to keep us safe can do their job best when we are cooperating with them as much as we can. So remember his gifts for our bodies and our souls, and submit to those who govern us.

Romans 13:3 “For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you.”

Government wasn’t always nice to Paul. On his first missionary journey city leaders in Antioch and Iconium were involved in plots to force him from their cities, even assassinate him. In the city of Philippi he was arrested for setting a girl free from an evil spirit, severely whipped, and thrown into jail. Back home in Israel, Roman governors kept Paul in prison for over two years even though they realized the charges against him were false. They did so as a political favor to the Jewish leaders. No one understood better than Paul that sometimes those who govern are corrupt.

Even so, Paul urged the people of his day to obey the government. We Christians have two reasons we can live free from fear of the one in authority. As believers in Jesus, we have the Ultimate Authority on our side. Do you remember when Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell”? The God we worship is infinitely more powerful than all.

Then Jesus turns around and promises, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

At all times the God we call our Father has his loving eye on us. He knows how we are being treated. He has a plan to take care of us. He cares what happens to us. “You are worth more than many sparrows” is such an understatement. Our God valued us more than the life of his perfect, holy Son, and gave him up to save us. If we have done wrong, we may have a debt to pay to society. But we have no debt to pay to our God. In Jesus the whole debt was paid, and we are forgiven. So we don’t have to be afraid of anyone or anything, not even the authorities who govern us.

But Paul invites us to find another kind of freedom from fear. “Do what is right and he will commend you.” Submit to those who govern. We may not agree with every law they pass. The speed limit may seem too low on this road. The tax rate may seem too high on this income. These safety requirements may seem unreasonably burdensome for my business. We may question the wisdom of our leaders. But until they require us to actively commit some kind of sin, God’s word to us is, “Submit to the authority.” Obey the laws of the land in the place where you live. Live your lives free from fear of those who are in authority.

Of course, if the issue ever comes down to obey God or obey the authority, the choice for those who follow Jesus is clear. We obey God and face the consequences. Remember, Jesus said that the worst people can do is destroy our bodies. Our Father has already redeemed and rescued our souls. Nor is Paul forbidding us to use whatever influence we might have to get laws more friendly to our faith, or laws that better serve our neighbor. But for the sake of peace, that we might live our lives without fear, it is God’s will for us to submit to those who govern us.

Proverbs 30:5 “Every word of God is flawless.”

There is a picture behind the promise here. If you look at the inside rim of my wedding ring, there is tiny little print that says, among other things, “14 K.” “Fourteen karat gold” means that it is fourteen parts gold and 10 parts other metals. If it were “twenty-four karat gold,” then it would be pure gold, at least as pure as is humanly possible.

Before they could add the other metals to the gold in my wedding ring, they had to get the impurities out of it. It had to be refined in order to remove the other minerals in and around it. Chemicals and super-heated furnaces were used to purify the gold.

This is the picture behind the word “flawless.” God’s word is 24 karat pure truth. There are no impurities or additives. Do you see why this is important for you to know? I haven’t read all the other “holy” books of other religions, but from what I have read I know that the Bible is particularly careful to make this claim. God was anticipating the false criticism that was going to be leveled at his word. “The Bible is just a book written by men.” In other words, it is possible that it contains mistakes and errors just like any other human book. In fact, you wouldn’t make a statement like that if you didn’t think you already had found some there.

What does that do to our trust in the promises our Lord records for us here? Now it is up to us to figure out which promises we can trust and which ones are nothing but an illusion. And what is the standard by which we will judge–our own feelings? Our own opinions? Our limited experience? The findings of science and research? Only people who are grotesquely ignorant of the history of scientific investigation can believe that so-called “science” has given us consistently accurate explanations for why things are the way they are (not that they have gotten everything wrong). But each generation has to throw out large portions of the science of the generation before it and start over with new ideas about how to explain our world.

God hasn’t put us on such shaky ground with his promises. They are 24 karat gold for certainty. There is an empty tomb in Jerusalem to prove it. There are thousands of years of prophecies fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus to make us sure. There is the power the gospel has had on our own hearts and faith that convinces us, “These words aren’t just a collection of nice thoughts about God,” but the real history of how he has intervened in our world, the real description of who he is and what he is like. Trust his promises, and you will know that every word is golden.