First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
February 22, 2012
LAW OR GOSPEL?
Isaac Butterworth
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 (NIV)
1 ‘Be careful not to do your “acts of righteousness” before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
5 And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you….
16 When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
I’m all thumbs when it comes to band-aids. I know you’re not supposed to touch the pad, the part that compresses the wound. If you do, then you contaminate it, and you run the risk of infection. And, of course, you don’t want to do that. So, every time I use a band-aid, it’s something of a challenge – a little one, I’ll admit, but a challenge all the same.
Actually, I’m able to get the bandage out of the package okay, but then, when I am pulling away the little strips over the sticky part, I get it stuck on the wrong place. My fingers are so clumsy that I wind up having to grasp the only part that’s not sticky – the gauze patch – in order to regain control of the process. And, of course, then I’ve done it. I’ve soiled the part that supposed to be sterile!
The Bible says that you and I are spiritually contaminated. To use the apostle Paul’s words, I am ‘sold as a slave to sin’ (Rom. 7:14). I am ‘a prisoner…of sin at work within my members’ (Rom. 7:23). Psalm 5:9 says that my ‘heart is filled with destruction,’ and even Jesus tells us that ‘out of the heart come evil thoughts’ and that ‘these are what make a man “unclean”’ (Matt. 15:19, 20). Our Reformed forebears called this condition ‘total depravity.’ John Calvin wrote in his Institutes, ‘Our nature is not only destitute of all good, but it is so fertile in all evils that it cannot remain inactive’ (Vol. I, Bk. II, 1, 8). In our natural state, we are non posse non peccare, not able not to sin. In other words, we are contaminated.
The gospel message, of course, is that God moved toward us in mercy. Otherwise, we would have remained in this terrible state of corruption. So, what God did was: he chose us for redemption and sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to secure it for us. He accepted Jesus’ death as full payment for our sins and, by his Holy Spirit, joined us to Christ so that Christ’s righteousness, which is perfect and in no way defiled, covers our unrighteousness. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ That is the gospel. That is God’s grand rescue project, set in motion from before the creation of the world for our benefit and his glory. By this means, we are saved from sin’s penalty, and we are grateful, aren’t we? But sin still seems to have some degree of power over us.
Take this portion of the Sermon on the Mount that we have read tonight. Jesus is making the assumption that we are people who do a number of very good things, but, to use his words, we have to ‘be careful’ how we do them – or their goodness will be compromised, just like the gauze patch of a band-aid is contaminated when it comes in contact with an object that is not sterile.
Jesus mentions what he calls three ‘acts of righteousness’ that we might engage in at one time or another. First is giving to the poor. Second is praying. And third is fasting. These are all good things, right? But done in the wrong way, they become an occasion for evil. Done with impure motivation, we may as well not do them at all. Well, with the exception, maybe, of giving to the poor. There is some good that comes out of that, even if our intentions are suspect. But praying and fasting – don’t bother if the reason you’re doing it is to get credit for doing it. If our motive is ‘to be honored’ for what we do, Jesus says we ‘have already received [our] reward.’ You may get the recognition you want, but God’s not impressed.
This almost seems unfair, doesn’t it? I mean, giving and praying and fasting and doing other religious things: shouldn’t they count for something? Shouldn’t we get credit with God just for doing them? Not according to Jesus. If we do such things for the wrong reasons, we may get the approval of others, but God just shakes his head.
So, what kind of burdensome religion is this? I’m not only expected to do good things, but I’m expected to do them with the right motivation. That sounds awfully hard, actually. I can’t seem to shake this matter of spiritual contamination. Even though I have the assurance that Christ has spared me from the penalty of sin, the power of sin is still operative in my heart. I still don’t seem to be able to get it right! And that’s just the point. I’m not able – not on my own steam.
The irony of this passage from the Sermon on the Mount is that, while we find it in the Gospel, it is heavy on Law. In fact, the whole Sermon on the Mount is weighted with demand and duty, with the added requirement that, even if you do the right thing, it’s not right unless you do it with the right motive. Where’s the gospel in that? Where’s God’s grace? It doesn’t seem like it’s here. What we have here is more like law than grace. What’s up with that?
Our Reformation heritage talks a lot about the law, and it tells us that the law has three different uses. One is to restrain evil. Another is to show us what pleases God. And yet another – and this is the one I want you to see at work here – another use of the law is to show us our need of grace. Galatians 3:11 says that ‘no one is justified before God by the law,’ that is, by keeping it. Why not? Because we can’t keep it! In that same chapter of Galatians, verse 24, it says, ‘The law was put in charge to lead us to Christ.’ We can only do good – we can only do what is truly good – when he is behind the good we do. We must see our inability so that we will rely on his ability. That’s the function of the law.
In and of myself, I am not able. Just as entering the life of redemption requires the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, so continuing in the life of redemption requires his activity within us. The Westminster Confession of Faith says that our ‘ability to do good works is not at all of [our]selves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that [we] may be enabled thereunto, besides the graces [we] have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit to work in [us] to will and to do of his good pleasure’ (BOC 6.089).
Of course, this is not meant to discourage us from doing good. It would be – well, it would be sinful, subtly so but sinful nonetheless – to refrain from giving and praying and fasting with the excuse that we don’t want to do it if we don’t have the right motivation. Our sinful hearts are tricky that way! No, we ought to give, and we ought to pray, and we ought to fast because these things please God. But we need to do these things, bathing them in prayer and relying on the Spirit to bring glory to God – and not to us – in the doing of them. If I remember how prone I am to sin, how contaminated I am even when I do good, it will serve to keep me humble, and – here’s the best part of all – God will receive the praise.
