In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Just because a person claims to be a true child of God that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are one. Take, for example, what we see happening in our Gospel lesson today from John chapter 8. That’s the account of Jesus’ tense interaction with the Jews. They had the revealed knowledge of God in the Old Testament Scriptures. They had the blood ancestry of Abraham, and the covenant of circumcision. They had the witness of the temple, the daily sacrifices, and the direct promises about the coming Messiah. And yet, in spite of all that, Jesus said that they were liars and enemies of the truth. Even though they considered themselves to be God’s special people, Christ had to forcefully show them that wasn’t the case.

A true child of God has to love Jesus. It doesn’t get more basic than that. As our Lord said to the Jews in verse 42 our reading, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came from God and I am here.” The easiest way to tell if someone is on God’s side is by asking them what they think of God’s Son. What do they think about Jesus? Do they love Him? Do they even believe that He exists? Do they confess Him as their Lord and Savior? If the answer is “no,” to any of those questions then the case is closed. We don’t need to do this whole thing about how only God knows what’s going in their heart. Of course, only God knows what’s going on in their heart, but we don’t need to see inside a person’s heart when we can clearly hear what’s coming out of their mouth. When people tell us openly and plainly that they don’t love Jesus, we should take them at their word.

The Jews in our text today said that Christ was a Samaritan and that He had a demon. They made fun of Him, and called Him all kinds of terrible names, even accusing Him of being the offspring of infidelity. They argued with Him over every single point of His teaching, and then, in the end, they even tried to stone Him to death. Now, if you can do all that, and still be God’s child, and have His blessing and favor, then what on earth do you have to do to lose it?

No! All those who openly reject Christ and do not love Him are not part of God’s family. That doesn’t mean that God didn’t create them in His own image and likeness, or that doesn’t want them to be saved. But it does mean that in their current spiritual state, they’re not His children. In fact, they are the children of the devil. That’s what Jesus literally says in our reading today. He says to the unbelieving Jews, “You are of your father the devil.” Everyone who denies the divinity of Christ, and doesn’t acknowledge Him as the only Savior of sinners is on Satan’s side. That includes the atheists and the agnostics. It includes the Muslims and the Mormons. And, yes, it includes even the present-day Jews, who do not accept Him as the Messiah.

Sometimes, because of our context today, and especially the ongoing war with Iran, we hear all sorts of rhetoric from Evangelical Christians about how the Jews are God’s special people. They make it seem like supporting the modern nation state of Israel isn’t just a good political move, which maybe it is, but that its some sort of a theological necessity. They point to passages like Genesis 12, which say, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you,” and they make it seem like that is about present-day Jews who reject Jesus as the Christ. But Jesus’ words are clear as day, “If God were your Father, you would love me.” The true children of God are not those who can simply trace their ancestry back to the likes of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s those who love Christ. 

As John the Baptist tells us in Matthew chapter 3, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.” Who you’re related to in this life, and who’s in your family tree, doesn’t do you any good if you reject the true Tree of Life, Jesus Christ. As Saint Paul also writes in Romans chapter 9, “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” What Paul is arguing here is that you can be descended from the man Israel, and still not belong to the true Israel. You can be a biological Jew, but not a real child of Abraham. And that’s because the true children of Abraham are those who share the same faith as Abraham. They are those believe in the same Christ. You and I, the Church, we are the true Israel of God because we are to ones who actually believe in Jesus. As Saint Paul also writes in Galatians 5, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” A true child of God is first and foremost someone who loves Christ. And loving Christ starts with actually saying and acknowledging that we do. 

But, that, of course, isn’t’ where it ends. As Jesus also tells us in our reading, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God.” A true child of God listens to God’s Word. They don’t just say that they love Jesus with their mouth, but they bear witness to that love for Him with how they live their life. They want to learn from God, and grow in their faith. They care about what the Bible teaches and they want to do what it tells them. Just looking at someone’s outward confessing, and whether or not they say that they believe is Jesus, is definitely a good place to start to know whether they are a child of God, but we should remember that that’s the floor and not the ceiling. Plenty of people are willing to pay lip service to Christ, and say that they believe in Jesus. But when push comes to shove, what they do, and how they act, reveals something different. 

You know how this goes. “So and so” doesn’t go to church. They don’t pray. They don’t read the Bible. And they don’t give. They don’t even try to keep God’s Commandments. More or less, their life is completely indistinguishable from that of their heathen neighbor. They sleep around and get drunk. They take God’s name in vain. They hold grudges. They gossip. They lie. They cheat. And they steal. They do what they want to do when they want to do it. But because they were brought up in a Christian household, and because when they get asked if they love Jesus, they nod their head along and say that they do, we say about them, “Well maybe deep down they really do believe.” Dear brothers and sister in Christ, we have got to stop doing this. It’s dishonest, and worse than that, it’s unbiblical. True faith in Jesus is living and active. It’s shows itself in real fruit, no matter how meager that fruit might be. It’s not just about what you say you believe, but about what you do because you believe. No, good works will not save anyone. But we should not image that true faith can exist without them. That’s literally what Saint James tells us in His epistle, “faith without works is dead.” What he means by that is that it isn’t true faith at all. And that’s what Jesus is getting at in our text today too, when He says, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God” and “The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” The Lord is reminding us that His true children, that is, true believers, want to hear what He has to say and they want to do it. They want to live by it, even though sometimes they fail. And when they do fail, they repent and seek God’s forgiveness. They trust in Christ as their Savior, not as their enabler. They look to the Him for forgiveness, and the strength to do better in the future.

They reason why we need to be so clear about who a true child of God is, and why all of matters, is because of what Jesus tells us at the end of our text today. He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” Now, that, of course, isn’t a promise about how true believers won’t physically die. That sort of thing happens every single day. Rather, it’s a promise about living eternally with God even if we do die. Yes, as the Jews pointed out somewhat correctly, Abraham died, as did the prophets. But where they went wrong was in assuming that because they died, they were truly dead. That’s not true. In fact, its blasphemous. Christ wasn’t talking here about a when a person’s lungs stop breathing and their heart stops beating. He was talking about the eternal nature of the soul. He was talking about how anyone who believes in Him will never experience everlasting punishment; how His true children will reside with the Him in heavenly bliss, even as they await the resurrection of their bodies.

A true child of God will never see hell. They will be spared from the agony of eternal judgment because they trust in the One who already suffered that judgment for them. They believe in Jesus and love him, because they know that He loves them, and that in that love He died to save them on the cross. As Christ said to the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” When Abraham took his son Isaac up on the mountain to sacrifice him, and God intervened at the very last minute, providing him with a ram to kill instead, he was given a picture of what the Messiah would do to rescue the world from their sins. He was given a picture of how God would provide His only begotten Son, as a spotless lamb and substitute in our place. Abraham saw Jesus’ day by faith, and God counted that faith to him as righteousness. Therefore, Abraham is not dead, but is alive with the Lord. He is alive because he believed. And the same is true for all our Christian friends and family who share Abraham’s faith too.  

Being a child of God is the greatest blessing we could ever have in this life. It’s a blessing we should want not just for ourselves, but all those around us too. We pray that God would open the eyes of everyone who reject His Son. We pray for all those who are hostile to the Christ and critical of His Word. We pray for our enemies who curse Jesus and mock the Scriptures. We pray for those who have walked away from their Confirmation vows and abandoned their first love. And we pray for the Jewish people who though they had the right and privilege to hear the Gospel before anyone else, have still refused to believe it. We pray for their salvation. But we don’t act as if they, or anyone else, will somehow be saved apart from the Savior. We don’t act as if it’s possible to still be a true Child of God with loving God’s Only Begotten Son. 

What makes us God’s children is not the blood that runs through our veins. It’s the blood of Christ that cleanses us from our sin. It’s Jesus, who not only loosens our tongues to confess His Name, but equips us in this life for every good deed. He is our treasure. He is our inheritance. He is our Lord and Savior. He is the eternal Son of God. And it’s only in Him that we are God’s children too. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Bible tells us that after the feeding of the 5000, the people from the crowd tried to take Jesus by force and make Him their King, but our Lord would not allow it. As we read in verse 15 of our Gospel lesson: “Perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.” 

Now, obviously, the reason why our Lord didn’t allow the people to make Him their king that day, wasn’t because He isn’t a true king or that He doesn’t really want to be known as one. On the contrary, the Scriptures repeatedly teach us that not only is Jesus a King, but He is the greatest King of all. As it says in 1 Timothy 6, “He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords.” And remember what Jesus Himself once said to Pontus Pilate when he was asked whether or not He was a king at His trial? Our Lord did not deny it, but openly declared, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth.” And, of course, very importantly, Jesus also specified to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” So, no, it’s not that Jesus isn’t a King all, it’s the kind of King that He is.

And the problem with the people in crowd who tried to make Jesus their king by force was that they didn’t recognize it. They wanted Him to be their king on their own terms. They didn’t want to receive Christ’s Kingdom for what it is, or have it in the way that He chooses to give it. Rather, they wanted Him to be a part of their Kingdom, and do their own bidding instead. Literally, they wanted Jesus around so that He could do more miracles, and give them more free food. But that’s not what His Kingdom is about! It’s a spiritual Kingdom where the main focus is the eternal salvation of our souls.

In the same way that the crowd at the feeding of the 5000 tried to make Jesus their king on their own terms, and for their own purposes, many people still try and do the same thing today. I’ll give you two different examples in this morning’s sermon. One of the ways this happens is when someone tries to claim a Christian identity, at the same time that they refuse to repent of their sins. They want to be known as member of Christ’s Kingdom to others, even though they aren’t actually interested in what His kingly reign is supposed to be for. They don’t want the forgiveness which Christ purchased for them on the cross, instead, they want God’s blessing and approval to keep on committing their sin instead.

The most obvious expression of what this looks like in our time comes from those who falsely assert that it’s okay for Christians to live as open homosexuals and adulterers, even though the Bible says otherwise. Recently, I listened to a sermon from an ELCA pastor who stated that his church affirms and accepts the whole LGBTQ community without exception. The basis for his argument was that each individual Christian has the “right of conscience” to interpret the Bible differently. But that makes each individual person, and their own personal opinion, the ultimate source of truth instead of God’s Word. It literally lets people ignore God’s Word, and be their own judge of it instead. It encourages them to try and take Jesus by force, and make Him the kind of king that they want Him to be. A king who apparently allows them to live in their sexual sin without repentance.

But, that, of course, isn’t the only instance where this sort of thing can happen. What about those who claim that they don’t have to go to church and worship with the rest of the Body of Christ because they can “do Christianity on their own?” Have you ever come across someone who thought that way before? I know I have. You tell them that they need to be in God’s house because that’s where God promises to be present to give us His Word and Sacraments, which strengthen our faith, and they respond by saying they already have a strong faith. In their mind, they’re still on good terms with God, even though they’re literally despising His means of grace. But it’s a lie! They aren’t on good terms with Him. In fact, they are doing exactly what the crowd did in our reading today, and trying to take Jesus by force and have Him on their own terms. But what did Jesus do in response? He slipped away from them and would not allow it to happen. So, those who will not have Christ in the ways that He chooses to give Himself, namely in His Word and Sacraments, will lose Him. Even if they think that they currently have Him, they will find out someday that they don’t.

And the same is true, by the way, for those who do come to church, but are secretively living a different life on the side. This is even more dangerous than the other situation because it’s easier to convince ourselves and those around us that we aren’t in danger. “I listen to the sermon. I sing the hymns. I take Communion.” Okay, but do you repent of your sins? Are you sorry for the ways that you offend God, and do you want the help of His Holy Spirit to do better in the future? Do you mourn your anger, lust, greed, and pride, and do you want to be rid of it? Why are you even here in Church today? Is it because your parents made you? Is it because you want other people to like you? It is just because that’s part of your Sunday morning routine? Or, is it to get the forgiveness of your sins from Jesus, and be strengthened to do God’s will? If it’s not that last one, you’re here for the wrong reasons, and you’re trying to take Jesus by force too.

Now, as I mentioned earlier on in the sermon, I said I was going to give two different examples of what it looks like to act like the crowd from the feeding of the 5000. One of them, again, is when people want to be known as a Christian, but refuse to repent of their sins. You can’t have Jesus that way. The other one, though, is when people try and turn the message of Christianity, or the focus of the Christian life in general, on temporal things instead of eternal ones.

The crowd in our reading today wanted to take Jesus by force and make Him their King because they liked getting free food from Him. They didn’t want to have to work for what they ate, and they thought that Jesus would be a kind of short cut to making their life easier here and now. They assumed that their greatest needs were physical ones, and so that’s all that they looked for when it came to Christ. But they completely missed the point of His ministry. As our Lord said to the same people later on when they followed Him all the way to the other side of the sea of Galilee, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.”

The question is always, what do you want from God? Why do you want to be a Christian? And if the answer isn’t, first and foremost, “because I know that I need salvation for my soul, and its only Christ who has to power to give it to me,” then nothing else that you get from Him will make a difference. In fact, all the other stuff in your life might only get in the way of you entering into eternal life.  Remember what Jesus tells us in Mark chapter 8, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” And remember what He says in Matthew 6, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”  No, it’s not that we Christians should completely ignore the needs of our bodies and neglect them. After all, the same Christ who told us to not worry about what we will eat, drink, and wear, also tells us that we can pray for those things. That’s what it means in the Lord’s Prayer when we say “give us this day our daily bread.” But the point is that there are more important things in life than food and clothing, and material possessions. What we need to get through this day is not as significant as what we need for the Last Day. And when the order of those two things gets mixed up, or reversed, we can end up missing out on the real treasure.

For instance, if the expectation is that when we become a Christian, Jesus will immediately take away all of our problems, and whatever struggles we’re going through will just disappear overnight, we’ll soon find out that that’s not how it works. That is a false version of Christianity. Sometimes being a Christian is hard. Sometimes we even end up suffering more in this life because of it. As the Bible tells in Acts chapter 14, “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” So, those who seek only good days in God’s Kingdom, and won’t receive from Him the bad one’s too, have it wrong. Their faith is a sham, and it won’t result in the blessing that they think it will. Eventually it will cause them to walk away from Jesus completely, and give up on His Kingdom entirely.

The fact of the matter is that regardless of how we try and do it we can’t take Jesus by force and make Him king on our own terms. Jesus will always slip out of our grasp, and so will our eternal life. Rather, God’s Word tells us that we need receive His Kingdom in another way. We don’t make Him our King at all. He already is the King. We don’t force our way into His Kingdom. His Kingdom comes to us by itself. As we learn in the Small Catechism, “God’s Kingdom comes when our Heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.”

That’s how you enter into God’s Kingdom. That’s the right way to receive Jesus as your King. It happens through the power of the Holy Spirit who brings us to repentance and faith. What was the first message that Jesus ever preached in the New Testament? He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” When you listen to God’s Law, and turn away from your sins, and when you listen to His Gospel, and believe that for Jesus’ sake all of your sins truly have been forgiven, that’s when God’s Kingdom comes to you. That’s what makes you part of it. And that’s what His Kingdom is all about.

It isn’t about health, wealth, and prosperity. It’s about forgiveness, life, and salvation. Yes, Jesus fed the crowd in the wilderness with food for their bodies, and He promises to take care of your bodily needs too. But in His Church, He takes care of your greatest need. He saves your soul. Just like the baskets were overflowing with bread, in His Word and Sacraments, you have access to the Bread of Life. You have a never-ending supply of God’s grace and mercy. You have everything that you need to strengthen your faith so that one day you can make it to your heavenly home. God will heal you from your diseases. He will bless you with joy, happiness, and long life. But the place where that happens completely is not here in this life. It is only in the life of the world to come.

So, don’t try and take Jesus by force and make Him king on your own terms. That won’t work. Instead, listen to His decree. Repent of your sins, and trust in Him for forgiveness. Be content with what you have below, and set your minds on things above. Recognize that you already have everything that you could possibly need when you have the righteousness of Christ through faith. Because, in that case, even if you have nothing else, you still have a place in the Kingdom of God. In Jesus Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the things that I think we’re very good at doing in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is communicating to people the fact that we’re all sinners. From our confession of sin on Sunday mornings, to Catechism class with our youth, to the kinds of sermons that we usually hear preached from our pulpits, it’s more or less impossible to be a member of one of our congregations and not know that you’re a sinner. And that, of course, isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, it’s a very good thing. The reality that we remain sinners until the day we die is a fundamental truth of the Scriptures that if rejected or denied, makes someone no true Christian at all. As Saint John says in his epistle, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

The problem, though, and there is a potential problem here, is that if this is the only description of sin that we ever hear about, we aren’t getting the full picture from God’s Word. Let me explain. When all that people hear over and over again is that we remain sinners until the day we die, sometimes this can confuse them into not taking their sin seriously. Sometimes it can make them think that there’s no difference between repentant sin and unrepentant sin and that true believers, who have the Holy Spirit, continue to live in sin, without remorse, just like they did before. In the worst cases, it can even make people think that they are able to commit certain sins on purpose, and that this will have no effect on their faith, because after all, aren’t we all just sinners.

I want you to compare that, though, to what Saint Paul tells us about certain sins in our epistle lesson today from Ephesians chapter 5. He writes, “But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” Now that is fuller depiction of sin and much more than the mere statement, “we’re all sinners.”

First off, these words clearly show us that some sins do have the ability to put us outside of a state of grace, and cause us to forfeit our salvation. That’s what Paul literally says in verse 5 of our text, “Everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” This is very similar to what the Bible also says in 1 Corinthians 6 and Galatians 5. And to prove that point, and demonstrate that this is not an isolated teaching of the Scriptures, I’m going to read both of those passages too. Here’s the one from 1 Corinthians, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” And this is the one from Galatians 5, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” 

But what do these verses mean? Certainly, they do not mean that if a person has committed one of the sins from these lists in the past, that it’s impossible for them to go to heaven no matter what they do. Saint Paul himself, at one time, was guilty of the sin of murder and persecuting the Church. We can also think of the example of king David who committed the sin of adultery with the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and then tried to cover it up by orchestrating his death. Those were terrible sins. They grieved the Holy Spirit, and put both men in a state of grave spiritual danger. In fact, if either of them would have died in that condition, there is no doubt that, according to the Bible, they would have been lost forever. But what happened was they repented. After Paul was confronted by Christ on the road to Damascus, he turned away from his former life, and stopped killing Christians. And after David was approached by the prophet Nathan, he confessed his sin too, and accepted the temporal consequences for what he’d done. That’s why their sins did not condemn them. That’s what made their sins different from other kinds of sins, even though they were on this same list. It’s because they turned away from them, instead of embracing them. They put those sins away, and looked to God for forgiveness.

The Bible doesn’t just teach us that true Christians shouldn’t be ruled by their sin, it tells us that they can’t be. As soon as someone accepts his sin, and doesn’t even want to be rid of it, he ceases to be a Christian at all. That’s what God’s Word means when it says in Romans 6, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions… for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” To let your sin have dominion over you means that you to do it on purpose, without any intention of trying to stop. But those who have the Holy Spirit, however weak their faith might be, want to stop sinning. Even if they fall into sin sometimes, they are upset with themselves over it, and don’t excuse their bad behavior by simply saying, “we’re all sinners.” On the contrary, when they fall, they confess. When they sin, they repent.

To give an easy illustration of what this looks like so we can better understand it, think about a person whose traveling through some dangerous part of a big city. If that person gets attacked by a mugger, what are they going to do at the first opportunity to get away? They’re going to take it. We Christians are traveling through a dangerous world on our way to heaven. Sometimes we get attacked by the devil and succumb to his temptations. But that’s not because we want to. It’s because we’re weak. And when it happens, we quickly confess our sins to God, and He forgives us for Jesus’ sake. However, when a person doesn’t do that, and takes sides with his or her captor, then they prove that they are not on God’s side at all, and not a genuine Christian no matter how pious they might pretend to be.

Let’s apply this directly to some of the sins that Saint Paul mentions in our reading. He talks about sexual immorality, impurity, and idolatry. Obviously, there are very few of us, if any, who can honestly say that we’ve have never had an impure thought enter into our minds. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 5, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” In that sense, then, we are indeed guilty of breaking the 6th commandment. No one should deny it. But the question is, what is your attitude toward that sin? Do you like it? Do you think that it’s an okay thing to do, and do you look for opportunities to keep on doing it more and more? Are you proud of the fact that you can’t always keep your mind clean and that sometimes you haven’t? I hope not! But there are some people who are. There is literally an entire month of the year in this country called, “Pride Month,” where individuals celebrate their sexual sins. That is not the same thing as the Christian who struggles against his sin and wants to be free of it. And that’s what Saint Paul is talking about in our text.

This, by the way, is the reason why in the Lutheran Church we have always treated things like moving in with your boyfriend or girlfriend, and sleeping together before marriage, differently. On several occasions when I have counseled couples to stop doing this, and even refused to give them Communion until they quit, I’ve been met with a similar excuse. “Pastor, don’t we all sin, so how is this sin any different? Why can’t I have Communion when there are other people in the Church who sin too, and you give them Communion anyway?” I always respond the same way, “The issue is not with your sin, per se, but with your unrepentance. Yes, we all sin. But that doesn’t mean that we’re all unrepentant. And you need to be repentant before you can take Communion. You need to want to be forgiven of your sin, and be willing to bear fruit in keeping with repentance over that sin, before you can receive the gift that’s intended to take it away. Because if I gave you Communion now, you would not learn to repent. You would become even more secure in the sinful thing that you’re doing, and have an even harder time giving it up.”

And again, this doesn’t just apply to willful sins against the 6th Commandment, it applies to willful sins against every other Commandment too. Paul mentions idolatry, which he says is a form of coveting. It’s bad to want things that don’t belong to you and to not be content with what you have. That shows a lack of trust in the Lord, and that you are worshiping a different god than Jesus. But is the Christian who mourns this reality, and recognizes their weakness, fighting against it daily with the strength of the Spirit and the aid of God’s Word, in the same category as those who literally worship at a Buddhist temple, or call Allah “god,” instead of Christ. Of course, not! They would be if they refused to admit the sin and plead with Jesus for forgiveness, but that’s exactly what we do, isn’t it? Every time that we sin, we come to church and ask God to have mercy on us. Even for the sins we are unaware of, we pray that for the sake of His only Begotten Son, He would not count any of them against us, and help us to resist them in the future. 

The danger in conflating repentant sin with unrepentant sin is that it deceives people. As Saint Paul says in our reading, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” When we give the impression in the Church that you can live in your sin on purpose, without even trying to stop, and that all sins are the same regardless if a person is even sorry for it, we lead people astray. We cause true Christians to not take their sins seriously, and risk falling away from the faith, and we embolden false Christians to think that they are going to be saved even though they’re not. But they will soon find out when they die that they were lied to, and despite what they were led to believe, they cannot go into God’s Kingdom.

I hope you see by now just how important this distinction from God’s Word is, and why it’s insufficient to simply say, “we’re all sinners,” without any further explanation. The difference between repentant sin and unrepentant sin is all throughout the Bible. The Holy Spirit teaches us about it, first, so that those who are living in unrepentant sin would quickly turn away from it, and second, so that those who are sorry for their sins, and want to do better, would not despair of their salvation. In either case, the goal is always the same: that we would have the forgiveness of sins that comes from Jesus.

Are you doing something that God’s Word forbids? Have you committed one of those sins that the apostle Paul names in our reading, or are you committing one of them now? Then listen to what he says, and put it away. Don’t lie to yourself, and pretend that sin is no big deal. That won’t do you any good. It will harden your conscience, and may even lead to you going to hell. Rather, as often as sin should rear its ugly head in your life, no matter what that sin is, don’t coddle it, or feed it, but put it to death through contrition and repentance. Turn to Christ in heartfelt sorrow, and ask for His forgiveness. Remember your Baptism, which still has the power to give you cleansing, and come to the Lord’s table where God promises you His grace. “Walk as a child of light,” as Saint Paul says, and let Jesus, who is the Light of the world, not only expose the darkness of your heart, but cover it with His perfect righteousness. That’s the entire reason why He came into the world. He came to save sinners. And when you are repenting of your sins and looking to Him for salvation, you have nothing to fear, and don’t have to be in doubt at all about your place in God’s Kingdom. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.