Our Daily Prayer: Thy Will Be Done

It disturbs me to realize that my will is often opposed to God's will. Even the great Apostle Paul wrote in deepest humility about this fact as he said,

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? - Rom 7:15-24 ESV

Find it to be a law? Always? Captive to the law of sin in my members? How can this be?

There are those among us Christians who claim to have conquered sin. They claim to be holy. Among Protestants this movement and set of convictions can be traced back over a hundred years to John Wesley, founder of Methodism, who called for Christian perfection. When you examine the teachings of holiness churches today it is not unusual to see statements such as these:

We believe In the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a holy life.

Likewise among Roman Catholics there is still the cult of saints, the belief that some Christians have attained to such Christian perfection in their walk with Christ that they may be called holy and without sin. They are the heroes of faith, if you will. Thus it is appropriate to ask these heroes to help us, assuming that they have special influence with the heavenly Father. And for their sakes, the Father intervenes, sometimes in a miraculous manner, bypassing the usual laws of nature.

Both ways of thinking are quite dangerous ways of approaching the Christian life. More needs to be said about these dangers another time.

For today we return to the LORD's prayer,

Our Father in heaven . . . Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven? 

Are we also not praying that He fill us with His Spirit and grant us the power and strength to submit our wills to His in all things? Are we not praying that He empower us to be holy, even as He is holy? And does He not hear our prayers? Indeed we are and indeed He does answer prayer. Do the so-called Catholic saints know what we do not? Do the holiness Christians have insights that we have overlooked?

Return to what Paul says to us: "I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand." This is what Paul means by the flesh that still dwelled within him and dwells within each of us even after the Holy Spirit has come to make His home within and give us a new birth in Christ Jesus (John 3:3-6). The Spirit empowers us to say yes! to Christ and to His sacrifice for us, but . . . the flesh remains. And within that sinful flesh there is ever the desire to reject the will of God and seek my own instead. Paul warns about this as he writes,

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. - Gal 6:7-9 ESV

We hear that Word. We ponder it in our prayers. And we strive to do good, believing that sowing to the Spirit will ultimately reap eternal life. But, but, but we fail again and again.

At that point it is ever and always important to remember that our good is good only because God is gracious and merciful in Christ, for none of our good is, in the strict sense of the term ever good! Even our so-called good deeds are infected by the imperfection of our sinful flesh. So Paul reminds us when he says,

"For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what  I keep on doing." 

This is why the entire life of us Christians is hidden in Christ, as Paul says,

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. - Col 3:3 ESV

And this is why we flee again and again to the truth given to us in Christ as taught by John,

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. - 1Jo 2:1-2 ESV

John knew himself. He knew us. Through his writing the Spirit warns that the flesh remains and that we will not be perfected until Christ returns to grant us a new body like His (Phil. 3:20-21). Hidden fleshly desires, ambitions and unbelief remain within even the most dedicated. Aware of the power of this law of sin that ever wages war with our reborn life in Christ, we return each and every day to our Baptism and to the wonder of what that means. Each day we remember that Christ and Christ alone is the complete and full atonement for all of our sins (1 John 2:1-2). When He died and was buried, we were buried with Him. And so we are certain that we who died with Him will be united with Him in the resurrection from the dead. In that faith we rise again each day to give battle to the sin that remains within us and in the world around us. And in that faith we find confidence, victory and hope in this day, as Paul also teaches,

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. - Rom 8:1-2 ESV

Begin each day then in peace and hope. Put your life into the hands of Jesus and live that day in the joy of your Baptism and under the guiding of His Spirit within. Tomorrow is in His hands.

Righteous By Faith Alone

I have often pointed to two basic principles in the teaching about spiritual matters and faith in God.

1. The Formal Principle— the only source of my knowledge about all things spiritual is the Bible, God's revealed Word.
2. The Material Principle—the central teaching of the Bible is that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who became man and offered His precious life as the complete sacrifice for the sins of all mankind.

Both principles were at risk as Luther began his attempts to reform the medieval European church early in the sixteenth century. Church councils and traditions guarded and taught by the church's bishops and the Roman Pope had distorted God's Word. As a result, the central teaching of the Bible, that a man is declared just and righteous only by God declaring him so for the sake of Jesus Christ, was also distorted. To assist my readers to understand what this means I return again to the Apostle Paul in Romans 10.

But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) or "'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." - Rom 10:6-11 ESV

Consider righteousness itself. What is it and why does the Apostle use such a complex word? Paul's Greek word dikaiosynay is rooted in the widely used O.T. Hebrew word zedek. So we read in the psalms:

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. - Psa 1:5-6 ESV

For you bless the righteous, O LORD; you cover him with favor as with a shield. - Psa 5:12 ESV

The righteous man loves the LORD and walks in His ways. He seeks to know God's will and way for his life and obeys Him. He is righteous. But is he? Is there any man on earth who may correctly claim to be righteous or just (zedek) in God's eyes by virtue of the pious life he lives? No, not one, says King David in his psalms:

The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. - Psa 14:1-3 ESV and Psa 53:1-3 ESV

Yet in Jesus' day many Jewish teachers believed they had attained to diakaiosynay, the state of perfection. They even believed they lived above and beyond God's demands. In this they took great pride. Yet of them our Lord Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount,

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. - Mat 5:20 ESV

For this reason the Apostle Paul insists that the state of being declared righteous in God's eyes is only possible when you put your faith and trust in Jesus, the same LORD who came down once on Mt. Sinai (Rom. 10:9; Phil. 2:11; 1 John 4:2) to speak to Moses and lead Israel to the promised land. He is the Son of God, very God of very God, who offered his life as the single all-atoning sacrifice for all men's sins. To confirm this the heavenly Father raised him up on the third day. If then you believe in your heart and confess the same with your lips you are saved. In the words of the ancient prophet Joel,

And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls. - Joel 2:32 ESV. (cf. also Hab. 2:4)

This was the challenge of the Reformation. The false teaching of the Jewish scribes and pharisees had crept back into the church. Men were being taught that they could obtain righteousness by purchasing indulgences. Luther was an ordained and certified doctor of the church. He was called to teach God's Word. He was under the command of God and compelled by his conscience. He had no choice but to insist that men are righteous and just before God only by faith!

Sadly, the Roman Catholic church still clings to indulgences and the so-called treasury of merit she believes she controls despite everything that has been taught from God's Word over the course of the past five centuries.