Modern businesses understand the benefit of a good marketing. They will spend millions of dollars to find a way to get their product stuck in your head so that when you go to the grocery store you are remembering their commercial or singing their song. And it works. We are apparently a people easy to manipulate and their ad slogans and jingles get us to spend our money on their products influenced by their marketing.
These advertising methods and slogans, while popular today, are far from being new. Salesmen from past generations have also understood the value a good slogan. One such salesman was a man commissioned by the Romans Catholic church to sell Indulgences, certificates that were supposed to offer forgiveness and a reduced stay in purgatory.
And being a good salesman, John Tetzel came up with a slogan, a sales pitch that would make his product stick out in the minds of his customers.
“When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
Pretty “catchy” - don't you think?
But here's the problem. Forgiveness is not for sale. It is not a commodity. It is not available for purchase. It does not come with a price tag. Forgiveness is for free.
Tetzel did a banner business. His sales were good. If he could have been a publicly traded corporation, his stock value would have soared. After all, who doesn't want forgiveness? Who doesn't want to go to heaven? For the cost of a few small coins, God's favor could be yours as well. Things were looking up. At least until an upstart monk from Wittenberg caught wind of his operation. A monk and theology professor from a nearby town, a man named Martin Luther, heard what was happening and began teaching and preaching against John Tetzel. Cutting in to his profits and diminishing his bottom line by preaching that God gives his forgiveness away free of charge, with no strings (or for that matter no coins) attached all for the sake of Jesus.
It all stands or falls on the words of our text. Doesn't it? “There is no difference,” writes Paul, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Being “made right” with God, being made righteous and have all that sin wiped away is something that God gives for free because of Jesus. Because Jesus died for it, because Jesus paid for it. Because Jesus offers this forgiveness and salvation to us free of charge because of His great love for us. Ultimately the dispute that broke out between a salesman and a theology professor was not about business and filling the coffers. It was about faith and salvation. (And so the reformation began. An event that we recall today.)
As for us, we're all the same. Aren't we? As our text says, there truly is no difference. It does not matter if you have the few coins to buy the indulgence or if you have the where-with-all to buy a thousand of them. There is no difference. We are sinners. To sin means literally to miss the mark. And not in a horseshoes or hand grenades sort of way. Getting close doesn't cut it. You are in or you are out. It's more like jumping between skyscrapers – either you clear the distance and make it to the other side or you don't and you fall to the bottom. There is no middle ground, no consolation trophy, no good, better, best. You make it and you live. You miss the target and you die.
Tetzel was selling incremental forgiveness for incremental sinners. Mostly, but not all the way bad. Mostly but not all the way forgiven. Neither one was true and worse, neither one would do you any good. Not in an all or nothing kind of world with an all or nothing kind of God. And as Paul tells us in our text there is no difference. We have all missed the mark. We have all missed the target. We are all plummeting to our demise as the just fruit for our behavior. We are all on our way to hell.
But that is what makes the second half of that phrase so valuable. It's like gold. Better... it is life itself. “We are justified by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
We are justified. We are made right. The missed target is suddenly a bulls eye. The empty space beneath our feet is suddenly rock solid. We are standing firmly placed on the merits, the works, the righteousness of Jesus himself.
All because, as our text says, Jesus was “put forward as the propitiation for our sin.” That is a phrase that bears some explaining...
Luther had it ½ right. At least at first. Before he figured it all out. He was right about God by ½ . Luther saw God as a wrathful and vengeful God. He saw God as righteous and that righteousness terrified him.
These days we have a very soft view of God's righteousness – we think of God more as a kindly old grandfather who loves us just because and overlooks our faults just because. But not Luther. Luther saw God rightly, again by ½, because he was willing to look into the Bible to see the seriousness of sin. God is pure, intensely pure. There is and can be nothing that stands before God that is anything other than perfect and pure and sinless. Those things that come before God that are less than perfect find themselves beholding to God's justice.
To put it bluntly – sinners must be punished. Justice demands that they be punished. God is perfectly just, he allows no exceptions. Sinners in the hands of an angry God find themselves precariously balanced on the brink of damnation. Luther felt God's wrath like the hot breath of his foe breathing down the back of his neck. He was terrified. He knew he couldn't escape it. He knew he was doomed.
But again, remember, Luther was only right by half. And that's where this idea of propitiation comes in.
You see, propitiation acknowledges God wrath. There is a debt that we owe to God that needs to be paid. It is a debt that is greater than we are, it is a debt that we could never pay. That we could never fully pay off. Again, it doesn't matter if you have the bank account of a billionaire or the pennies of a pauper, there is no difference we are all sinners and fall short of God's glory.) But then, in his great mercy, God the almighty and just judge does not hold us accountable for the price for our sin, instead he pays the price himself for us. God covers the debt. He pays the price in full.
Think about that for a moment. You have sinned against God. You owe God a debt. But he doesn't make you pay it. Instead, He pays the price for your sin.
And the cost is high. Sin, sin against God, sin against a just God is expensive. And that is why Luther was only ½ right. Yes, God's justice is great. God's wrath over sin is great. But God's love and his mercy are even greater. God fulfills his great wrath and his justice for sin when he paid the price in full by sending his only Son to die for that sin on the cross. Jesus completely covered the cost for your sin when he gave up his own life and offered his own blood to be shed on the cross for you.
Eventually Luther found that out. He was reading the book of Romans, he discovered that the blood of Jesus was shed for him to cover his sin and to save him from his sin. He realized that this forgiveness was his free of charge because of the grace and mercy of God.
When John Tetzel began selling forgiveness for a fee, when he began selling certificates to cover the cost of something that God handed out with no strings attached, Martin Luther challenged this great evil. God doesn't forgive us only when we can afford to pay for it. God forgives us because he is a giving God. A forgiving God. He gives us His only Son to pay the price for sin by sending him to suffer in our place and to take all of his just wrath for our sin into himself.
God's gift is amazing, incredible. God's generosity is overwhelming. Martin Luther challenged those who diminished that gift. The reformation Christians restored to us a full understanding of what God has given to us.
This day we recall the reformation, the rediscovery of the goodness and mercy and generosity of God, the restoration of the confidence in God's forgiveness for sinners. Today we are confident of the love of God, but not because we have deserved it, not because we have the ability to pay for it, the goodness and love of God is ours only for the sake of Jesus.
Amen.
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