As righteous as Jesus

Sermon for Trinity 6

Romans 6:3-11  +  Matthew 5:20-26

How good do you have to be to enter the kingdom of heaven? Different people have different answers to that question. “Some say, You don’t have to be good at all! God accepts everyone just as they are.” Others say, “You have to be a pretty good person, keep the Commandments as much as possible, avoid the big sins, donate to charity once in a while.” Others say, “Well, you have to practically be a saint, don’t you? And there’ve only been a handful of those. Otherwise, you’ll just have to pay for your sins in purgatory until you become a saint.” But all those answers are wrong. How good, how righteous do you have to be to enter the kingdom of heaven? Well, you have to be as righteous as Jesus. And there’s only one way to become as righteous as that.

The thinking promoted by the Jewish Rabbis and the Pharisees at the time of Jesus was that, if you wanted to enter God’s kingdom when you die, you had to be righteous by keeping the Law. And when they said, “Keep the Law,” they meant, perform all the ceremonies in the Law of Moses and keep the Ten Commandments. But when they said, “Keep the Ten Commandments,” they didn’t go far enough. They said, You shall not murder,’ and, ‘Whoever murders will be subject to judgment. So, they thought, as long as you don’t kill anyone, you can put a checkmark next to that commandment. Done. Commandment kept. Moving on. People think the same thing today. Stay away from the big sins like murder, and you have a good shot at heaven. Hell, they think, is for murderers, like school shooters, or for rapists or for pedophiles, not for decent people like us.

Oh, but hell is for many more people than that. As Jesus says, But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment…and whoever says to his brother, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire. What Jesus says here is in reference to the Fifth Commandment, but the same principle holds true for all of them. God’s commandments demand righteousness from more than our hands. They demand righteousness from our tongues and from our hearts, too. And they demand it from our whole life, from start to finish. If you murdered someone last week, but succeed at not murdering anyone else as long as you live, will you escape prison? Of course not. So, too, if you were overcome with anger toward your brother or insulted him in the past, you’ve already failed at being righteous, and no amount of good deeds going forward will erase that hellfire-deserving sin.

The same goes for the commandments about adultery and sexual immorality and all the other commandments. They demand righteousness from our hands, but also from our lips and from our eyes and from our hearts. Only with righteousness like that can anyone enter the kingdom of heaven.

Who has been righteous like that? Name the saint, name the holiest person you know, it doesn’t matter, not one of them had it. The Scriptures are clear: There is no one righteous, no, not even one. Of course, when it says that it’s talking about those who are born naturally of a man and woman. There is One who was righteous, born of a woman, but not of a man, the Lord Jesus. Jesus had the righteousness that God’s commandments demanded, in everything He did, in everything He said, in every thought and plan and attitude of the heart, toward God and toward man. His righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees, because it went all the way down to the heart. Jesus was and remains the Righteous One.

So you’ve got Jesus over here, the only one with the righteousness necessary to enter the kingdom of heaven. And you’ve got the whole world of sinners over here, lacking that righteousness, falling short of the glory of God. How can we have access to that perfect righteousness? What do the Scriptures say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. A man is justified—counted as righteous—through faith, apart from the deeds of the Law. When we repent of our unrighteousness and flee in faith to Christ, seeking to be judged by His obedience and not by ours, then God, in His mercy, counts us righteous. As righteous as Jesus.

And that righteousness of faith is sealed in God’s own Sacrament of Holy Baptism. As Paul wrote to the Romans in today’s Epistle, Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? So, then, we were buried with him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we, too, should walk in a new life. Through faith and through Baptism, Christ’s death—His payment for sins— became your payment for sins. And His life of righteousness became your life of righteousness. It’s the Father’s gift to you, the only way for you to enter the kingdom of heaven.

But now that God has made you alive in Christ, now that He has forgiven you your sins and created you anew in the image of Christ, don’t imagine that somehow God doesn’t care how you live from this point forward. Don’t imagine that you can embrace sin or choose to go on living in sin even as you claim Jesus’ death for sins as your own. No, God still commands you not to murder, for example. And He still forbids anger and hurtful words toward your brother. He still forbids pride and self-centeredness. He still forbids adultery in all its forms and every kind of wickedness and uncleanness.

And He still commands that you do everything in your power to work things out with your brother. As Jesus says in the Gospel, If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Don’t pretend to be a righteous worshiper of God if you won’t seek reconciliation with your offended brother. That’s part of the righteousness He seeks from those whom He has already counted righteous through faith in Christ, so that, in all things, you’re not only counted as righteous as Jesus, but you also make it your goal to live a life that is as righteous as Jesus’ life on earth was.

To summarize, there are two ways in which the Christian’s righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees to become as righteous as Jesus. First, by imputation, when God counts the righteousness of Jesus to you through faith and Holy Baptism. And then by walking in the new life that God has given you, walking according to the New Man who has been created in the image of Christ. As Luther writes in the Small Catechism: What does such baptizing with water signify? It signifies that the Old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die, with all sins and evil desires, and that a New Man, in turn, should daily emerge and arise, to live forever before God in righteousness and purity.

May God the Holy Spirit sustain you in that righteousness of faith through Word and Sacrament. And may you go forward today and every day more committed than ever to put to death the Old Man, and to live according to the New, making it your daily goal, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to be as righteous as Jesus in your thoughts, in your words, and in your deeds. Amen.