Redeemer Lutheran Church

Dear Friends in Christ,

“Save Yourself!” The challenge is hurled at Jesus again and again while He’s dying. To the cries of the rulers, the soldiers and the robber in Luke, we add the priests from Matthew 27:42: “He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him.”

Dead kings are no good: kings need life and strength, strong will and vitality if they’re going to win any victories. That only makes sense. It doesn’t make sense to put your trust in king who is helpless and bleeding to death on a cross.

So the cries make sense: “If You are the Son of God, the Christ, the King, then prove it. Show us! Save Yourself! Come down from the cross. Once You’ve done that, save us too. After all, once You’ve come down from the cross, do You think we won’t believe in You?” Think about that. Seriously, it makes perfect sense. It’s perfectly reasonable.

Ah, it may be perfectly reasonable, but reason isn’t perfect. Reason says, “You get what you pay for.” Reason says, “People with power produce results.” That’s because this is how the world works, and reason is based on observing the world. But the wisdom of God makes the world look foolish. The wisdom of God says this: “You’re far more sinful than you can reasonably imagine, and you’re going to die for that sin. At least you would die for your sin, but My Son became flesh and died for your sin on the cross. Furthermore, He is risen from the dead. You don’t have to die for your sin, because Jesus gives you grace and life freely.”

That’s the Gospel: in our text, Jesus is dying on the cross to save mankind. That’s what makes those reasonable shouts of the people to be so terribly wrong, so terribly perverse. “Save Yourself and save us, and then we will believe in You”? But if Jesus saves Himself, He doesn’t save them. They have to die eternally for their sin. If He comes down from the cross, they’ll believe in Him all right. Well, kind of. They’ll have the same faith that demons do: they’ll know that He’s the holy Son of God, but they won’t trust in Him for salvation. Instead, they’ll want the mountains to fall on them because of their sin and because there’s no forgiveness to be found—because the sacrifice hasn’t been made.

Jesus has to stay on the cross and die in order to save them. He has to stay on the cross and die so that they might believe in Him for salvation. Jesus has tons of power—He’s healed the sick, calmed storms and raised the dead. But ultimately, He redeems the world as the helpless Savior on the cross. He doesn’t save the world by growing in power. He saves the world by becoming a nothing before God, forsaken by His Father because He bears the sins of the world. He is the greatest Victor by being the biggest Loser.

That’s not reasonable. But that’s the Gospel. That is your salvation. So Jesus saves you by not saving Himself. You’ve got that down. You trust that Jesus is your Savior. But you’re still probably trying to save yourself anyway. I don’t mean that you reject Him—I don’t mean that you’re saying, “I don’t need this Jesus because I can work enough to save myself!” If that was your faith, you probably wouldn’t be here. But there is a popular misconception among Christians and it goes like this: now that you’re a Christian, you think that becoming a better Christian and overcoming sin is something that’s up to you. Now that you’ve been saved, you think it’s up to you to keep saving yourself.

Here’s a quick analogy. A lot of Christians treat sin like doctors would treat, oh, let’s say obesity. While sometimes it’s more complex, the treatment for many boils down to proper diet, proper exercise and changing behaviors. It’s about self-discipline, really: just watch an episode or two of “The Biggest Loser,” where there’s a trainer showing the contestants what the contestants have to do for themselves. That’s how many Christians approach sin: you’ve got Jesus or the pastor as your trainer, and it’s up to you to discipline yourself to do the right thing, avoid the wrong and change your behavior. That, many think, is how you overcome sin and become a better Christian.

Sin isn’t like obesity, though: it’s a lot more like a cancer. Cancers work and grow to corrupt and kill; and if you’re the victim, no matter how carefully you eat or how well you exercise, you’ve still got something inside that is working death. You have something corrupting you that has to be removed. It has to be killed if you’re going to live. Sin is the same way: if you’re sinful, you can discipline yourself and better your behavior all you want—but then you’re just a well-disciplined, better-behaved sinner who is still dying. If you’re to have life—if you’re to be saved, that sin has to be removed. It has to be killed.

But the problem is, you can’t kill sin. It has to be killed for you. That’s why Jesus went to the cross: He snatched your sin away from you at your baptism, held it to Himself and hurled Himself into the hell of God’s wrath to destroy it. How does He kill sin in you now? He forgives you. He washes your sin away in baptism. He speaks to destroy its power by His Word of absolution. He gives you His body and blood—body and blood that’s already broken back out of the grave and lives forever.

Now that you’re a Christian, you don’t save yourself by your better behavior and self-discipline. The answer to getting rid of sin isn’t your self-improvement: it’s repentance. It’s confessing to the Lord, “I’ve got this sin that’s working to corrupt and kill me, and I trust in you alone, O Lord, to take it away.”

You become strong by confessing your weakness, because Jesus makes His power perfect there. That’s unreasonable. But that’s how the Gospel works.

A couple of quick thoughts, then, before we wrap up. The first thought is this: the common objection at this point is that many will say I’ve just said that you don’t have to worry about doing the right thing, avoiding the wrong thing or living a life of good works or self-discipline. Many will misconstrue this message of Gospel to say, “Since you can always be forgiven, go ahead and sin as much as you want because what you do doesn’t really matter.” That’s foolish. Let me ask this: if you’re a lung cancer patient who’s just been saved from death by a lung transplant, do you step outside the hospital and light up another cigarette? Of course not. Some do, actually, but that’s foolish. Why would you invite death back in when you’ve just been rescued?

It’s the same with sin. Do good works and better behaviors destroy sin? No. But if Christ destroys that sin with forgiveness, why would you go right back to death and corruption? That will only, inexorably harden your heart and eventually kill you. That’s why you discipline yourself as a Christian to avoid sin. If you don’t, you’re poisoning the life Christ gives you at the cost of His own blood.

Here’s the second thought: it’s no coincidence that both doctors and pastors speak of remission: remission of cancer and remission of sins. In both cases, it means that the affliction is gone—but that it could always come back and start to kill again. For cancer victims, that means ongoing checkups and perhaps more treatment if the cancer returns. For Christians, it means a life of ongoing repentance, ongoing confession, and ongoing reception of the means of grace because sin always returns. That is where Christ is for you, and Christ is your life.

Christ is there for you, and Christ remains your life. The Gospel is not that Jesus died, rose and then said, “I am the good Life-coach.” He doesn’t’ say, “I’ve done My part and given you the tools you need to work out your own salvation from here. I won, so you can win too if you just put in the effort.”

No. The Gospel is that Jesus didn’t save Himself so that He might save you—that at the cross, He was the biggest Loser so that He might win the victory over sin death and devil. And the Good News continues that He remains present in His means of grace even now to take your sin away. If you “lose” your sin—if it’s taken away, then you’re righteous before God. That loss is certainly gain, the kingdom of heaven forever. It’s yours: not because of your efforts, but because the risen, victorious Son of God says to you, “I forgive you all of your sins.”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.