For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

Romans 3:28

These words from Paul’s Letter to the Romans were the rallying cry of Martin Luther and his fellow reformers 500 years ago. They fought for these words, and in some cases died for them. With these words, they changed the church, and the world, in profound ways because they believed that these words spoke an essential truth about the God they served and the gospel they believed. 

“A person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” 

Yes, but what do these words mean to us? Why were they so important, and why are they still important? What difference do these words make in our lives today?

That’s what I want to explore with you this morning, on this day in which we celebrate Reformation Sunday. 

I want to look briefly at what it means to be justified by faith. And then look in more depth at how faith accomplishes that. And along the way, I want to lift up two essential aspects of our Christian faith: The gift of our faith, and the work of our faith. 

But first, what does it mean to be justified by faith? 

Justified by Faith

To be justified means to be made right. There is something wrong with us, all of us, and the only way it can be made right is by Jesus. That is what we believe. And we believe that it is good news. Because we acknowledge that there is something wrong with us. 

We are all sinners, as Paul tells us in our second reading (Romans 3:19-28). There is no distinction – we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It is the one thing that we all have in common. None of us, no matter how hard we try, get it all right. We all fall short. 

And as Jesus reminds us in our gospel reading (John 8:31-36), everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. We are captive to sin, as we confess in our liturgy, and cannot free ourselves. There is only one who can free us, the one without sin. 

Picture all of us drowning in a sea of sin. The only one who can rescue us is the one not drowning. The one on the boat. But ironically, the only way he can rescue us is by drowning himself. That is what Jesus does for us. He does this to save us, to set us free, to make us right, to justify us. 

As Paul puts it, we are now “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” 

Martin Luther

In Martin Luther’s time, the church mistakenly taught that justification was not a gift. Salvation was not a gift. It had to be earned. Almsgiving, works of charity, acts of penance, and on and on. All to save us from our sin. 

Drowning in the sea of sin, the church taught that the solution was to swim harder. Martin Luther despaired, almost gave up. Until he discovered the good news that we celebrate today. 

Here are Luther’s own words about this discovery:

“My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant. Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven.”

It is no wonder that Luther and his fellow reformers were willing to die for the truth of Paul’s words. They were a gate to heaven for them, an invitation to stop swimming so desperately, and just cling to the life ring that Jesus has thrown us. That’s all we have to do. And the way we cling to it is by faith. 

“For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” 

The Gift of Faith

But that brings me to the great topic of faith and its importance to us today. Faith is always important to a Christian. But I think that these days, it seems more important than ever. Why do I say that? Because I look around our world and see it placing its faith in so many other things, things cannot save us. Politics, for example, cannot save us. Money cannot save us. Education cannot save us. Living a good life cannot save us. Ignoring what is wrong in our lives or in the world cannot save us. Only Jesus can save us. Believing that fundamental truth is central to what we mean by faith. 

But faith does much more than simply save us. Because faith is really about a relationship that blesses us in this life more than anything else in this world. 

Faith is God’s gift to us. 

It is a gift that helps us to trust in Jesus, even when life is not going well. We can trust in his promise to be with us always. We can believe that he will calm whatever storm we are in. Jesus wants to give our weary souls rest. He wants to strengthen our hope. He wants to fill our hearts with love. And he does this through the gift of faith. 

Our faith in Jesus is not only about believing that he can make us right; it is about believing that he can make the world right. And he will. The story of this world has a happy ending. That is God’s promise. Our faith clings to this truth. That everything is going to be okay, because Jesus promises that it will. 

The world loves to focus on bad news, doesn’t it? It fills the headlines of whatever news source we favor. But the headlines of our world are not the headlines of our faith. The headlines of our faith are that God loves this world, Jesus saves it, and the day is fast approaching when Jesus will return, just as he promised, to make it all right. The headline of our faith is that we are justified, made right, by faith. Faith in Jesus. And this is very good news.

The Work of Faith

That is the gift of faith. But what is the work of faith? What do I mean by that? The way that Martin Luther talked about this is to show us that our faith is alive. It is active. It is powerful. 

I love how Martin Luther describes the work of faith. Especially in his famous Preface to Romans. Luther writes:

Faith is a work of God in us, which changes us and brings us to birth anew from God. It kills the old Adam, makes us completely different people in heart, mind, senses, and all our powers, and brings the Holy Spirit with it. What a living, creative, active, powerful thing is faith! … 

Faith is a living, unshakeable confidence in God’s grace; it is so certain that someone would die a thousand times for it. This kind of trust in and knowledge of God’s grace makes a person joyful, confident, and happy with regard to God and all creatures. This is what the Holy Spirit does by faith. 

You see? This unshakeable confidence in God changes us, it makes us completely different. We who believe in Jesus are joyful, confident, and happy with regard to God and all creatures. This is what the Holy Spirit does through our faith. Faith is a gift, but a gift that works in us. 

But wait, you might say, there’s more. Because Martin Luther does not stop there. Faith does not stop there. It changes us in this way for a reason, for a purpose. What is that purpose? Listen again to Martin Luther’s own words:

What a living, creative, active, powerful thing is faith! It is impossible that faith will ever stop doing good. Faith doesn’t ask whether good works are to be done, but, before it is asked, it has done them. It is always active … 

Through faith, a person will do good to everyone without coercion, willingly and happily; he will serve everyone, suffer everything for the love and praise of God, who has shown him such grace. It is as impossible to separate works from faith as burning and shining from fire. 

Faith is a gift, but it is also a work, the work of God in us that changes us from the inside out. And this change leads us to live our lives in a completely new way, with a love of God that leads us to take joy in serving our neighbors. 

We do this not to save ourselves, or to save our world, but to serve the God who saves us, and to serve our world. Our world does not need more saviors, but it does need more servants. People who have been set free by the love of God shown in Jesus, and who want to pay that love forward, you might say, by serving and loving our world in his name. Faith compels us to do that.

Closing

Faith is a living, active, powerful thing, and it is what we celebrate today. As our young people confirm their faith. And as we remember both the gift of our faith and the work of our faith. This faith in Jesus that helps us to cling to him, come what may; this faith that is a gift that helps us to be filled with joy and hope, come what may; this faith through which God changes us from the inside out; this faith that leads us to begin each day filled with gratitude, and with an eye toward how we can serve our God in this new day. With the joy that comes from knowing and believing that we are made right, justified, by God’s grace through faith. 

This is the faith that began a reformation, the faith that people have lived and died for throughout the centuries. This is the faith that we celebrate today, and give thanks for, now and always. Amen.