First become righteous. Then keep the Commandments.

Sermon for Trinity 6

Exodus 20:1-17  +  Romans 6:3-11  +  Matthew 5:20-26

As you know, we still believe the Ten Commandments. We still believe that they provide an unchangeable standard of right and wrong. Many don’t, and not just atheists. Many so-called Christians also reject some or all of the Ten Commandments as being outdated at best, callous and unloving at worst.

But even many of those who do believe the Ten Commandments as written get them all wrong. They push the Ten Commandments on our nation and insist that if we, as a nation or as individuals, keep the commandments, then we will earn God’s favor and blessing. Keep the commandments in order to become righteous before God!

That’s directly opposed to what Jesus teaches in today’s Gospel. His message is, First become righteous. Then keep the commandments.

Yes, it’s true, the Ten Commandments teach us what righteousness looks like; they show us the path to the kingdom of heaven. But showing us the path to life isn’t the same thing as providing a way to get there. A NASA scientist could show you the exact trajectory and the exact steps you would have to take to arrive at the moon. But that doesn’t make it possible for you to get there, does it? Knowing the way and being able to follow the way are very different things.

The truth is, it’s much harder to keep the Commandments than most people think. Jesus reveals just how hard in today’s Gospel. As He says, For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

The scribes and Pharisees were famous for their outward obedience to the Commandments. They thought they were following the path that leads to life. They had no idols—no statues of foreign gods—in their houses. They didn’t even speak the name of the LORD, Yahweh, for fear of misusing it. They did absolutely no work on the Sabbath day. They were obedient to the authorities. They didn’t go around murdering people, or committing adultery. They didn’t steal other people’s money (like the tax collectors did!). They didn’t usually give false testimony in the courtroom (until they put Jesus on trial, of course). So, according to the bare text of Commandments 1-8, they looked like they were righteous people.

Of course, it gets a little harder once you get to the 9^th and 10^th Commandments: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, servant, maid, animals, or anything that is his. Coveting happens only in the heart. It’s hard to prove to other people whether you’re coveting or not. Those commandments about coveting reveal that there’s more to the rest of the Commandments, too!

Jesus goes on to demonstrate that, that outward obedience to the bare text of the Ten Commandments isn’t even close to righteousness yet. True obedience comes from the heart, and it includes thoughts and words as well as deeds.

For example, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. So unrighteous anger—which occurs in the heart—makes a person guilty of breaking the 5^th Commandment. Or as St. John puts it in his First Epistle, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” Jesus goes on, And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. Harmful words, according to Jesus, are also forms of murder in God’s sight.

In the words right after today’s Gospel, Jesus gives an example from the 6^th Commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.” He says that adultery includes a man looking at a woman to lust for her.

The same goes for all the commandments. They all require true fear of God, true love of God, true trust in God as the starting point, as Luther’s brilliant explanations to each of the commandments make clear—“We should fear and love God, that…etc.” And then, from there, they all require righteous thoughts, righteous words, and righteous deeds, which must all flow from perfectly righteous desires which flow from a perfectly righteous heart. To be righteous in God’s sight, you have to do all of that perfectly.

But, as you know, no one does that. Not the scribes. Not the Pharisees. Not anyone else. Not anyone here.

What to do about it? Someone might think, well, I’ll try to make it up to God. I’ll bring a gift to His altar, for example. No, Jesus says. Therefore 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. In other words, you can’t do something good for God to erase all the bad you’ve done to your neighbor. God doesn’t want your offering until you’re first reconciled to the one whom you sinned against. First take care of your sins. Then approach God’s altar with a gift.

That’s fine when it comes to your neighbor. Maybe you can bring a peace offering. Maybe you can make up for some wrong that you’ve done, although there are certainly some wrongs too big to atone for.

But your neighbor isn’t the one holding the keys to the kingdom of heaven, to let you in or to keep you out. God is the one who gives entrance or not. What if God is your adversary who is taking you to court? What if God is taking you to task by His holy Commandments for all of your unrighteous thoughts, words, deeds and desires, not only against your neighbor, against the Second Table of the Law, but against the First Table of the Law, against Him? As David prays in the Psalm, Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight. If you get all the way to the Judge—all the way to the end of your life—without working things out with God, you won’t get out of jail. So, as Jesus says, Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him.

How do you come to an agreement with God? How do you take care of your sins? What gift will you bring? What work of penance will you do?

Well, you can’t do anything, of course. You can’t take care of your sins. You can’t come up with an agreement with God or effect a reconciliation with God. That has to be done by God Himself.

And that’s the Gospel. God made an agreement, a covenant, a new Testament in the blood of Christ. Jesus made atonement for the sins of all by shedding His blood on the cross. His blood was the atonement price, the cost of reconciliation. And now God promises to count faith in Christ as righteousness, as perfect obedience to the Ten Commandments, as if you yourself had obeyed them all. This He promises to give to all who repent and look to Christ for righteousness.

And where does He give this righteousness and the forgiveness of sins? Where does God open the doors of the kingdom of heaven? Paul reminded us in the Epistle today. As many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

United with Christ in Baptism, where we first put on Christ as a garment of righteousness, through faith. First you become righteous in God’s sight, and this is the only way.

Then keep the Commandments. As people who have been made righteous through faith alone in Christ, as people who have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, promised to all who are baptized, see the Ten Commandments in a new light, not as the things you have to do to earn God’s favor or to pry open the doors of the kingdom of heaven, but as the works to be done by those who have gained God’s favor for Christ’s sake, through faith. Now we can begin to fear God, to love God, to trust in God.

That’s exactly the point Paul makes as he goes on in the Epistle: Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Then he goes on: Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

The Ten Commandments are still our guide for presenting our members as instruments of righteousness to God. We still have to obey them. But with a “new obedience,” which is really, throughout our whole life on earth, only the beginning of obedience, since even now we don’t keep the Commandments perfectly. But where Christians falter, where our sinful weakness gets the better of us, where our good works are still imperfect, God’s forgiveness in Christ covers us and God accepts our beginning of obedience as good and God-pleasing things.

Why? Because we have already become righteous in God’s sight through faith. And now our works of obedience to His commandments are also the beginning of righteousness.

You know the Ten Commandments. But you can know them better, can’t you? Study them more. Keep your Small Catechism close at hand and read it and meditate on it weekly. (I’ve given you little slices of the Small Catechism to review every week; we just started a new round with the First Commandment a couple weeks ago.) Then reread Luther’s Large Catechism at least once a year, together with your regular Bible reading. Use both Catechisms as tools to guide you in keeping the Commandments.

We still believe the Ten Commandments, and we’ve been shown how to use them rightly. First become righteous through faith in Christ Jesus, through Baptism and preaching and absolution and the Holy Sacrament. Then keep the Commandments, even when it’s hard, knowing that your obedience as baptized children of God is well-pleasing to your Father in heaven, for the sake of our Savior Christ Jesus. Amen.