“Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2008
Text: Galatians 3: 16-22
The Rev. Jerry D. Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church
Montrose, Colorado
“Absolutely Free!”
“Brothers, let me give you an illustration from ordinary life: Even though it is only a man’s will and testament, when it has been duly ratified, no one can subtract or add conditions to it…What I’m saying is this: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate the covenant that was previously ratified by God in Christ, so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is on the condition of keeping the law, then it is no longer of promise.”
It’s an age-old maxim: You can’t get nothing for nothing. Have you noticed how expensive it’s gotten to get something “absolutely free”? A while back when I was looking to buy a cell phone I was very interested to follow the ad-wards in the newspapers between the various wireless companies. Here’s one I found from Cingular. It says, “Free Phones… Available on 1 year contracts!” Here’s another one from Cingular: “ Free color flip phone…. After $50 mail-in rebate with 2-service agreement.” Here’s one from Verizon: “Get a FREE camera phone... when you buy one for only $99.99... after $70 mail-in rebate ($169.00 activated price per phone)... New 2-year agreement required per phone… Shipping charges may apply.”
Now maybe each of these companies offers you a good deal on a cell-phone, but do they offer something that is truly free? No, of course not. There are all kinds of strings attached. But, you see, we’ve come to expect that getting something for free means you have to meet certain other conditions. With most of these companies you can get “free” roaming and “free long-distance.” But if you read the small print you learn that these “free” service are available on their more expensive rate plans. Again, it may end up being a good deal, but is it really free?
American consumers are daily being fleeced by the very shrewd marketing ploys of advertising agencies who know that we have come to understand that free doesn’t really mean free; that free means less... for a while... after you’ve met certain other requirements. Because, after all, you can’t get nothing for nothing.
Unfortunately, because we’ve been trained by the world to believe that free doesn’t really mean free, it’s very easy to doubt that the gospel’s offer of free grace is really, in the end, absolutely free. The world teaches us expect that free grace is given only to those who meet certain other obligations.
For a lot of us, this is how the gospel first came to us. We heard an evangelist tell us that Jesus came to save sinners just like us and that we could have forgiveness of all our sins and eternal life absolutely free just by believing in Him. And - praise God! – that is the gospel. But the gospel message was only ever given to us when we were still unconverted sinners. There was plenty of free grace for us then. But as soon as we were converted, the whole weight and burden of the Law was piled on. You had to your get-out-of-hell-free card, but now you were introduced to the fine print – the not-so-subtle suggestion that now you would have to meet certain behavior requirements to really qualify for the free gift. If you were really a Christian on your way to heaven, you couldn’t drink, dance, smoke, or chew, or go with girls who do. Right?
But even if it wasn’t as legalistic as all that, you may have still had the impression that now that you’d received the free forgiveness of all you past sins, you’d still have to somehow earn God’s ongoing approval by living a righteous life – by keeping the Law.
I’ll never forget someone saying to me that if he were driving 57 miles an hour in 55 mph zone and the Rapture came, he’d be left behind because he didn’t get a chance to repent of his sin. Think of the guilt and the fear he must have been living under. But this is no different from the way people used to live back in the Middle Ages before the rediscovery of the gospel at the Reformation. People used to live in terror of dying “unshriven,” that is, without being purged of their sins by making confession to priest. If you died unshriven, your soul was lost and you went straight to hell.
It reminds us of Martin Luther when he was still a monk and hadn’t yet discovered the gospel, how he would spend three or four hours a day in the confessional booth confessing his sins and wearing out his confessors, because he was absolutely terrified that if he died with even one sin unconfessed he’d go to hell.
There’s no free gift in that system. The law comes in a steals away the free-ness of the gospel message and replaces peace and assurance before God with terror. Many of us experienced it just that way, because the world taught us to believe you can’t get nothing for nothing.
Many Christians interpret the Bible that way. They read that God by sheer grace promised to Abraham and his seed an eternal inheritance and an eternal blessing – justification and the forgiveness of sins – absolutely free, by faith alone. But then he slipped in the fine print in the Law of Moses – the fine print engraven on tables of stone. So, in the end, God’s promise of free grace really only goes to those who qualify for the it by keeping the requirements of the Law. In other words, God’s grace is only for the righteous.
That’s the way the Jews of Jesus’ day read the Bible, and that’s the way the Judaizers in the Galatian church read it in Paul’s day. And, unfortunately, that’s still the way many evangelical Christians it today. Even if they haven’t worked it all out into a full-orbed theological system, it’s the way they feel deep down - that somehow they’ve got to be worthy of God’s grace.
But to be evangelical means we believe the evangel – the good news of the Gospel. If, however, we believe in a gospel that is in any way qualified by the Law, if we believe in a gospel that’s for the righteous, we’re really not evangelical at all, because we don’t have any good news. We have only the old tiresome news of what every other religious system has: works righteousness – you get what you pay for; no free rides – not Christ and His righteousness by faith alone.
You see, the good news of the Gospel is that free grace is for the sinner… but it’s also for the Christian! In other words, the Gospel’s promise of the forgiveness of sins and right standing before God, his eternal love and favor towards us, is not just given to us only as yet unconverted sinners, and then immediately taken away by the fine print of the Law once we become believers. No! The Law never nullifies the Promise of free grace, because in God’s economy you can get something for nothing.
That’s so hard for us to believe because from childhood we’re train to be cynics; we’re trained to distrust anything offered to us for free because we’ve learned the hard way that our fellow human beings are basically Indian-givers. They’ll promise you one thing, but then they’ll, in effect, take it back by requiring something in return. So the question the is: Is God an Indian-giver? Does God take away with His left hand what He has given with His right hand? And if not, how can we trust that He won’t someday?
St. Paul knew the human heart. He knew that we’re all basically cynics. And so he used an analogy from ordinary life to convince us that God cannot take away with His left hand what He’s given with his right. He says, even we believe that once a person is dead he can’t change his mind. That’s the fundamental assumption of Paul’s illustration. When you’re dead, you don’t get to take things back. So when a man makes his last will and testament, and then ratifies it by dying, even we trust that nothing can be added to it or taken away from it. No additional conditions can be added as new terms for the heir to receive his inheritance, because the only one who could change the will is the one who made it, and he’s dead.
What Paul is saying is that God gave his last will and testament to Abraham and his seed, and then sealed it with his own death. But you say, “When did God die?” In Genesis 15: 7-18.
We read it this morning. God tells Abraham to gather together some animals – a cow, a goat, a ram, a dove, and a pigeon – and then to kill them and cut them in half right down the middle, and to spread out the parts so as to make a kind of pathway of death. And then Abraham falls into a deep sleep. And in the darkness and horror of his vision, Abraham sees a smoking fire pot and torch pass between the parts. What is Abraham seeing? He’s seeing what we call a theophany – a manifestation of God – passing between the dead animals. What God is doing here is symbolically undergoing death to seal His promise. It’s an oath making ceremony. God is basically saying, “If I do not keep my promise to you, Abraham, let me be like these dead, torn up carcasses. Isn’t that amazing! But, brethren, that’s not all God is doing by passing between the parts. He is also pledging Himself to under go an actual death. He is pledging Himself to become a man, and to have his flesh rent and torn on a cross, that he might keep His promise of free grace.
What Abraham was actually seeing was a Christophany – a manifestation of the pre-incarnate Christ – because Paul says that God ratified the covenant beforehand in Christ. And so, at this point, God’s last will and testament was sealed – sealed by His symbolic death; sealed by His promise to go to undergo the actual of the cross - and after that not even He could change it. That’s what the passing between the parts was to assure Abraham of – that God would never change His covenant, that not even God could introduce other conditions for the receiving of the inheritance, that the inheritance would only ever be by promise and not by law.
And what is the promised inheritance? That in Abraham’s one great descendant, Jesus Christ, all the nations of the earth should be blessed - blessed, says St. Paul, to be declared righteous and accepted and love by God through faith in Christ alone, and not on the basis of how worthy weel feel. That’s the promise of God’s last will and testament. And because it was sealed by the death of Christ, no can be no new conditions added to qualify His grace.
In the world you may not be able to get nothing for nothing, but in Christ the promises of God come without fine print. In Christ the promises of God are only “Yea and Amen.” +
