Transcript
And now to the reading of God's Word from Paul's letter to the Romans, the tenth chapter beginning at the first verse. Brothers and sisters, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God's righteousness. For Christ
is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. There's a big fuss among exegetes about Paul's meaning when he says that Christ is the telos of the nomos. Does he mean that Christ is the end of the law in terms of its termination? Or does he intend to say that Christ is the goal toward which the law has always
been pointing? I think he means both. In the third chapter of his letter to the Galatians, he makes it very clear that the law, the legislation, the law code, the mosaic legislation was given 430 years after God's promise was given to Abraham. For Paul, that means that the promise has not only historical but theological priority over the giving of the law. Then he says the law was in force until Christ came. That the promise to Abraham
that through him and through his seed God would bring blessing to all the nations had indeed been fulfilled in the giving of the Son, in the giving of Jesus. James Sanders, who for many years taught Old Testament at Claremont Graduate School, points out that when we hear the law, we always hear the law code. That's what we hear, the law. Laying down the law. But the word Torah is a much broader word than legislation. It includes
legislation. But Torah really means story, narrative. And couched within the story, a part of the story is the giving of the law to Israel through Moses. But the story is the point. And the story is a story of promise. A story that unfolds out of promise. A promise that God keeps in the sending of Christ. So that we all may have righteousness. I don't know many people today who are breaking their necks looking for righteousness. I
don't know and I don't think I've ever met a person in the church who was trying to justify his or her existence by demonstrating to the world that he or she kept the Ten Commandments. But I have met a lot of people in the church and in the world who are seeking status by achievement. Status by achievement. The word righteousness as Paul used it, indeed as it's used in the Old Testament, is a relational word. It
has to do with the relationship between the individual and the living God. Or between the individual and other individuals within the community. What is the status of my relationship with God and with others? Today we seek to establish our relationships on the basis of achievement. And in this we're no different from ancient Israel. Who though being ignorant of God's righteousness seek to establish their own. Which is what we do. Seeking approval by performance. I remember one
Saturday morning receiving a phone call before breakfast from a young man in my church who said he was in deep trouble and needed to see me immediately when I meet him at the pancake house. So I went to the pancake house where I had pancakes and he downed three Bloody Marys. It was an interesting story. He was married to a lovely woman. They had two beautiful little girls. He was leaving his wife, he told me, and
was going to run off with the stewardess he had met on one of his many business flights. But as the story unfolded he was surely a driven man. Driven to attain the approval of a father now dead. His father had been an Air Force Colonel. And as Bill grew up in that home, nothing he ever did was good enough. If he brought home a report card with six A's and one B+, his father would be
all over him for the B+. If I had ever brought a report card home like that, my father would have fainted. His father held such high standards that he never ever gave his son the approval that he so desperately wanted. Now his father was dead and he was still trying to please his father, prove that he was alright. He had a good job, he was making $75,000 a year then, and in 1970 that was a
lot of money. That would be close to about a quarter of a million dollars a year today. I can get by on that. I said to him, Bill, how much would be enough? Give me a figure. 300,000? Half a million? What would be enough? At what point would you be able to look into the mirror and say, I have arrived, I'm okay? He could not and would not give me a number because he was afraid
that he just might achieve it. And he knew down deep that it would never make it right with Dad. Approval by achievement. A lot of us, I suppose, are still trying to seek the approval of our mothers and our fathers. Status by performance. Let me go from preaching to meddling. How many of us here really look in the mirror and judge ourselves on the basis of our GPA? Our grade point average. Am I an A type
person or a B type person or, God forbid, a C type person? And what Paul is trying to say to us in the Gospel that having given us Jesus the Christ, having given us his only Son, God has nothing more to give. That's it. That's it. God has poured out his heart and given us his love, and it is God's love that gives us status. It's God's love who tells us who we are. It's God's love
that makes life okay. Do you really believe God will love you more if you get an A than if you get a B? Do you really believe that? Yeah, you say, but the graduate school I'm applying to ain't going to love me like that. Perhaps. I've always said the B students make the best ministers. The best pastors are the B students because they could have been A students, but they were having too much fun to be
A students, and they love people. And to be a pastor, you have to love people. We are who we are, not on the basis of our achievement, not on the basis of our performance, but God's gift of justifying love. I invite you to not be ignorant of that love, and as Paul says, submit to it. I know submission's a bad word these days, but I invite you to submit. Bow the knee to God's gift that tells
you who you are and tells you that you will never be of any more value in life and the world than you are today because you are the object of God's redeeming love in Jesus Christ. You can't add to that. What you can do is enjoy it. It's an interesting thing that when God's love hits home, it doesn't send us into a state of apathy. We don't go into all the world and relax. We are set
free. We're set free to use the gifts God has given us, whatever they may be, and they're always different. No two of us are alike. But to use the gifts that we have and the gifts that we are in the service of Jesus Christ in the world. Not to make a point, not to prove a point, but just because we have been liberated to be who we are in the service of Christ for others. Do not
be ignorant of the righteousness of God. Do not seek to establish your own by achievement and performance. Submit to the righteousness of God that is God's gift to you, to me, to us, to the world in Jesus Christ. Let us pray. You have created us, O Lord, out of love. You have given us life, and with life you have given us love. You have called us to faith, and in faith we learn to trust your love.
You have called us to service, not that we may somehow attain merit, deserve, earn your love, but that we may reflect it, and live it, and enjoy it, and give it. We pray this morning for one another as we seek to be your men and women in this place, in this meritocracy called academia. And we pray that we may understand that in, with, and under all of the work we're called upon to do, that the object
is simply that we may learn, not that we may achieve. Help us to learn. Help us to process new information. Help us to get it straight in our heads. Help us to be informed ministers of your gospel, and give us joy in that. Even allow us to relax in that. Let there be fun in our education, because our goal is not our own salvation, but to be the media of your redeeming love in the world. These
things we pray in the name of Jesus, who taught us when we pray together to say, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.