In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this has a been a very sad week in country’s history to say the least. The ugliness of sin was laid bare before our eyes, reminding us yet again of our desperate need for a Savior. A young Christian man with a wife and two little children was murdered in cold blood simply for trying to reason with America’s youth on our college campuses and rescue them from the poison of woke indoctrination. You might not have agreed with every little thing that Charlie Kirk ever said, which is true for just about every one that there is, but there are a lot of things that he said that you should agree with. He sounded the alarm on the transgender movement and tried to convince people that God never lets anyone get born in the wrong body. He defended marriage between one man and one woman, and encouraged those who had been brainwashed by the porn industry that God has a better plan for their life. He was a strong advocate for the value of all life, even life in the womb. And on many occasions, he appealed to the authority of the Scriptures and spoke boldly about the forgiveness of sins in Jesus, and how through faith in His sacrifice a person could be saved from eternal damnation. No, Charlie wasn’t a Lutheran. But he was a Christian. And that means he was one of our own.

What should we make of the unspeakable atrocity that took place a few days ago? How should we respond to the martyrdom of one of God’s beloved children?  When we listen to the world around us, we hear all kinds of different answers. Some people call for violence. Some people call for political and social reform. And some people are completely silent. But when we listen to God’s Word, we hear the only answer that matters. As Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, our Epistle lesson for today, “We preach Christ crucified.” So, permit me to explain to you all this morning for a few moments what it means to preach Christ crucified and why this is the message that we need to hear now more than ever.

In the first place, preaching Christ crucified means preaching God’s wrath against sin. If it wasn’t clear to you by now, this world is a messed-up place filled with all kinds of evil. Even though God didn’t make it that way the begin with, that’s how it is now, and it’s not just some else’s fault. It’s our fault too. The Lord has given us all very clear Commandments for how He wants us to live our lives, and every single one of us has fallen short of His glory. It isn’t just that we sometimes make mistakes or mess up, like spilling a glass of water or burning a piece of bread in the toaster. We sin. And God hates our sin.

If you don’t think that God hates sin, and that it actually makes Him angry when we do things against His holy law, then look again at the cross of Jesus. The Bible tells us that when Jesus died on the cross, He wasn’t suffering for His sins, but for ours. What that means is that when we look at His suffering, it shows us exactly what our sins deserve. Remember what Jesus once said to the women who were following after Him and crying while He was on His way to being crucified. He said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.” That’s the attitude that we are supposed to have when it comes to the cross. We aren’t simply supposed to think, “O poor, Jesus, He didn’t deserve any of that,” but “Woe is me; I deserve that. And if God were fair, that’s what I should have gotten from Him instead of Jesus.”

The death of Jesus on the cross is God’s call to repentance for the whole world. Here’s what the Lord thinks about false worship and false teaching. Here’s what He thinks about skipping Church and being disobedient and disrespectful to your parents. This is price that had to be paid for getting divorced, fooling around with your boyfriend or girlfriend, and hurting people with your words and actions. This is the just punishment for talking behind peoples’ backs and wanting things that don’t belong to you.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Christianity is all about God accepting you just the way that you are. Don’t ever believe the lie that preaching Christ crucified doesn’t have anything to do with preaching against sin and calling out things by name. Just look at Saint Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Actually read the rest of the book where he tells us that we should preach nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. In that same letter, Paul goes on to talk about all kinds of different sins and why we Christians can’t embrace any one of them. In chapter 4, he talks about lawsuits among believers and why it’s wrong to sue a brother or sister in Christ in court. In chapter 7, he talks about not leaving your spouse except on Biblical grounds. In chapter 3, he talks about why it’s wrong to hurt your body or the body of another. And in chapter 6, he talks about why you shouldn’t get drunk and why you can’t live like a homosexual. Remember how Saint Paul defends the reason why it’s not okay to go around sleeping with prostitutes, which is apparently something that was actually happening in the church of Corinth? He says it’s because “You were bought with a price.” Paul frames the entire argument in the context of Jesus’ atoning death on the cross. He does that because that is part of what it means to preach Christ crucified. It means preaching why He had to be crucified and calling people to repentance for their sins.

But that, of course, is not all that it means to preach Christ crucified. It doesn’t just mean preaching the wrath of God against sin and calling people to repentance, though that’s certainly part of it. It also means, preaching the forgiveness of sins too and showing those who are sorry for the things that they have done that there is still hope for their salvation. The death of Jesus doesn’t just show us how much God hates sin, and what He had to do to His own Son because of it, it shows us how much God loves sinners, and what great lengths He has gone in order to save them.

The most famous passage in the whole Bible is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” Everybody knows that verse. But do you remember what comes right before that verse? Before that verse Jesus says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” It was on the cross that God showed us His love. It was in Jesus being lifted up and suffering and dying in our place that God actually gave us the answer to how we can go to heaven someday even though we don’t deserve to. As Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter 8, “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” And as we read in 1 John 4, “And this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

There is no sin that Jesus didn’t die for. There is no sin that our Lord did not make up for, and atone for, when He laid down His life for us on the cross. And there is no sin that God will not forgive when we ask Him for it.

Why do we preach against things like transgenderism, homosexuality, abortion, and every sin that there is for that matter? We don’t do it because we hate people, we do it because we love people. We do it because we want people to know the love of God in Christ. We want them to stop hurting themselves and their souls, and instead receive the healing forgiveness that comes from Jesus. It’s wrong to reject the body that gave God you and try and make it look like the body of another. It’s wrong to have sex outside of marriage and use someone else for pleasure when even common sense itself tells you that it’s unnatural. It’s wrong to take the innocent life of child in the womb just so it makes your life a little bit easier in the present. None of those things can take away someone’s pain, and none of them can give us a clean conscience before God in heaven. But the blood of Jesus can. Will people who trusted in Jesus for forgiveness think that they were born in the wrong body in heaven? Will people who struggled against their sinful and unnatural desires, and relied on Christ in the process, have any of those desires in heaven? Will women who followed God’s Word and protected the fruit of their womb even though it made their life harder, still have a hard life in heaven? No, they won’t. God will take care of it all. The sin that He has forgiven, He will finally remove completely. All of its effects. All of its pain. All of its sorrow. All of it will be gone for those who put their trust in Christ.

And that’s why we preach Christ crucified. That’s why we call the whole world to repentance, including ourselves, and proclaim to everyone that there is forgiveness to be found only in Jesus. The reason why we do that, and why this is the exact message that we need to hear now more than ever, is because there is no other message on earth that has the power to save a person’s soul. As Saint Paul writes in our Epistle lesson, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Telling people that their sins aren’t sins, won’t save them. Telling people that God accepts them exactly the way that they are and that they don’t need the forgiveness that comes from Christ won’t save them. And telling people that in order to have God’s forgiveness they have to do something more than repent and believe the Gospel won’t save them either.

It’s true that not everyone wants to hear the preaching of Christ crucified. We saw that very clearly last week. As Saint Paul reminds us in our text, “Jews seeks signs and Greeks seek wisdom.” Some people don’t want to listen to the preaching of Christ crucified because they don’t think it’s that important. Hearing about things like sin and grace, repentance and forgiveness, doesn’t interest them as much as other things do, and they can’t see how it does them any good here and now. If they want anything from God at all, they want a miracle, but they don’t realize the miracle that they already have in Jesus. Others don’t want to listen to the preaching of Christ crucified because there are things that go along with it that they don’t like or that they don’t understand. They want everything in their life to make sense to them, and nothing in their religion to conflict with how they view the world already. They want wisdom, but they don’t realize that the wisdom of God is wiser than men.

Regardless of what keeps people from listening to the preaching of Christ crucified, the only thing that will change their mind is the preaching of Christ crucified itself. We didn’t want to hear it either. Every single one of us from the moment of our conception was blinded by sin and hostile to the Gospel. And yet, through the preaching of the cross, the Holy Spirit called us to faith and enlightened us with His gifts. Through the preaching of the cross, the power of the cross was applied to us, and salvation itself was given to us. And so, we keep preaching the cross. We preach it even if it means that we suffer for and die it. We show other people their sins and we show them their Savior. We don’t budge on anything that the Bible teaches and we put our confidence in everything that the Bible says. We call the world to repentance and we teach them how Jesus died for the sins of the whole world too. We preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And we listen to the sermon that we preach while we do it. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week in church we talked about conversion, and how coming to faith in Jesus is entirely the work of God which takes place completely apart from anything that we do or contribute. This week in church, though, I’d like to talk about what happens after conversion and how even though we don’t do anything in order to become Christians, that doesn’t mean that we don’t anything at all once we are Christians. By looking more closely at our Gospel lesson today from Mark chapter 7, the healing of the deaf and mute man, I want you to consider with me what the details of this miracle teach us about sanctification. And for those who might not know, “sanctification” is simply the Biblical word for referring to the new way that a person lives once he or she becomes a Christian. To sanctify something means to “set it apart” or “make it holy,” and we Christians are called to live a sanctified life and holy life where we are set apart from the world.

In any case, the first thing that the healing of the deaf and mute man teaches us about sanctification is that sanctification always follows after justification.  Before we can begin to do the things that God requires of us, and serve Him as His obedient children, the Lord has to make us His children by forgiving us of our sins and giving us spiritual healing. It’s not that we live a sanctified life and then God declares us righteous in His sight and worthy of heaven, but rather that He declares us righteous in His sight and worthy of heaven through faith in Christ and then we live a sanctified life. First comes God’s grace, then comes our response to His grace.

Just look again at the account of the deaf and mute man from Mark chapter 7. When Jesus first met him, that man couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t hear and he could speak. It was only after Christ intervened and spoke to him, that the man was finally able say something in return. As our texts says, “And looking up to heaven, Jesus sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.” And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.” Isn’t it interesting that in order to heal the man who could not hear, Jesus did it by speaking to him? That seems completely backwards. But that is the power of the Word of God. God’s Word has the ability to create things out of nothing. Just like God made the whole universe simply by saying “Let there be” and there was, God can cause deaf people to hear simply by talking to them, and, more importantly, He can cause unbelievers to have faith simply by preaching His Word them. As we heard in our Epistle lesson today from Romans 10, “So faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of Christ.”

The point here is that just like Jesus had to physically heal the deaf and mute man before he could speak correctly, our Lord has to spiritually heal us before we can do good works. It’s not our good works that cause God to forgive and heal us. It is His healing and forgiveness that causes us to do good works. Remember what we sing at the beginning of every single one of our Matin’s services. The very first words out of our mouths are, “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.” That is a confession that in order for us to praise God in the right kind of way, God has to open our lips. In order for us to live the kind of life that is pleasing to Him, Jesus has to intervene in our lives. He does that both by dying for our sins and by giving us the gift of faith to trust in Him for forgiveness. Then, and only then, can we begin to do the things that Jesus wants. Because again, as the healing of the deaf and mute man shows us, sanctification always follows justification.

The next thing that the healing of the deaf and mute man teaches us about sanctification is that it is a necessary part of our Christian lives. Since our good works are not the cause of our salvation, but the result of it, sometimes the impression is given that Christians don’t have to do good works at all and that they don’t even have to try and live a holy life. In the most extremes cases, some people in Lutheran circles will even argue that trying to live a holy life is actually part of the problem itself and that sanctification is really only about getting used to your justification. But that kind of attitude is extremely dangerous to our faith. 

Again, look at the account of the deaf and the mute man. When Jesus healed that man from his ailment, the man didn’t just walk away and do nothing. On the contrary, our text specifically tells us that he spoke plainly. A more literal translation of that word in the Greek would be “orthodoxly” or “rightly.” The man didn’t just speak with good grammar, he spoke accurately concerning that which had happened to him and how it related to what we learn in the Bible. Instantly, from the moment that Jesus cured him, he was able to do things that he could not do before.

This is the exact same thing that happens to us spiritually when we receive the gift of faith. After the Holy Spirit is given to us through the washing of water and the Word, and we are joined to Christ and become one with Him in our Baptism, now we are able to do things that we couldn’t do before. As Jesus tells us in Mathew chapter 7, “So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad fruit.” The fruit that our Lord is talking about is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is good works, as in, true love toward God and true love for our neighbor. It is impossible to be a Christian and not do good works. Just like it is impossible for a heathy apple tree not to produce heathy apples or a sick apple tree not to produce rotten apples, it is impossible for those who have the Holy Spirit not to live differently. As Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter 8, “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.” And as he also says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” 

Sanctification does not simply consist in getting used to our justification. It doesn’t mean that all we do is realize that we don’t do anything good at all and that everything that we do is sinful. We used to not be able to do anything at all. We used to only be able to sin. And we still can’t do anything but sin apart from Christ. But we are not apart from Christ! We have been joined to Christ through faith. And now, in Christ, we can do things. We can cooperate with the Holy Spirit and not push Him out of our hearts by being willfully and stubbornly defiant to the teachings of the Bible. We can choose to sit at the feet of Jesus like Mary did and have our faith nurtured by God’s Word and Sacraments. We can do good works.

Besides not simply being about getting used to your justification, sanctification also isn’t just about refraining from overtly wicked acts. It doesn’t just mean that once you become a Christian, you stop robbing banks, having affairs, getting drunk, or physically abusing your spouse and kids. Even those who do not have the Holy Spirit are able to keep themselves from doing these sorts of things to some extent. Sanctification, on the other hand, is about becoming an entirely different person. It’s about living for Christ and not for yourself. It’s about trying to do the things that God tells you to do in the Bible, and being upset with yourself when you fail. When people who are living a sanctified life realize that they are doing something that the Bible forbids, they don’t defend it. They confess it, and they try and stop it. They do everything that they can to avoid the things that make God angry and grieve the Holy Spirit. Likewise, and this should go without saying, people who are living a sanctified life actually want to go to Church and hear the Word of God. They don’t just go out of obligation, or because someone else made them. They do it because they want to be there and they know that they need to be there. They are legitimately concerned with the state of their soul and more invested in eternal things than worldly things. It’s hard to argue that someone is living a sanctified life and definitely has the Holy Spirit in their heart if they won’t even go to the place where the Holy Spirit promises to be present and active to forgive us our sins and keep us in the faith. On the contrary, the more that a person grows in his or her sanctification, the more that they realize that they need to be in God’s House and in His Word constantly. 

As soon as the deaf and mute man was healed, he spoke rightly. As soon as Zacchaeus the tax collector experienced salvation, he immediately wanted to give half his goods to the poor and restore what he had stolen fourfold. As soon as an individual comes to the knowledge of Christ, and knows what Jesus did on the cross for their salvation, if they believe it, they will want to hear about that salvation more and more. Again, it is not as if sanctification is the cause of our justification. But we should be clear that no one who is justified in the eyes of God will be without it.  And that is because sanctification is a necessary part of our Christian life. It is the inevitable result of our justification. 

And lastly, the healing of the deaf and mute man shows that even though sanctification is a necessary part of our Christian life, it is never completely perfect in this life. Yes, it’s true that whoever has the Holy Spirit will be filled with new and godly desires and that their life will look different than it did before they had faith. The man that was deaf and mute was different after Jesus healed him. And we are different after Jesus heals us by forgiving us of our sins. But even though we are different, that doesn’t mean that we are perfect. It’s not that we never sin anymore at all, but that our attitude towards our sin has changed. Now, we hate our sin. Now, we want to be rid of our sin and eagerly await the time when that will happen in heaven. And most importantly, now we actually trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins and believe that because of His death on the cross our sins will not condemn us to hell. But we still have sin.

When Jesus healed the deaf and mute man, we learn that those who were there and saw it happen started telling other people about it. Even though Jesus told them explicitly not to tell anyone, but to keep it a secret, as our reading says, “The more He charged them the more zealously they proclaimed it.” Now, it certainly seems like these people did have faith in Jesus. After all, they were the ones who brought the deaf and mute man to Jesus in the first place, and at the end of our text they praised Him for “doing all things well.” But even those who had faith in Jesus did not do exactly what He said. Who knows why Jesus told them not to talk about the miracle. Maybe Jesus wanted to be known by His teaching and was concerned that other people might try and treat Him like a “genie in a bottle” instead of the Savior of sinners. We don’t know. But what we do know is that Jesus told them to be quiet and they weren’t. They still struggled with their own flesh and at times thought that they knew better than God.

And that’s how it is for us sometimes too. Sometimes, we get things wrong. Sometimes, in our weakness we fail to do what God says and even have difficulty knowing what the right thing to do is in the first place. Sometimes as Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter 7, “I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” And yet, none of that necessarily means that we are no longer Christians. 

Image all of the stuff that we couldn’t do anymore if we actually believed that it was possible to stop sinning in this life entirely. We couldn’t pray the Lord’s Prayer anymore. Don’t we say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us?” How could we pray that prayer from a sincere heart if we didn’t think we had any sins that needed to be forgiven? Or what about taking Communion? Doesn’t Jesus tell us, “Drink of it all of you this cup is the New Testament in My Blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins?” What would even be the point of going to Church and listening to the sermon at all, if we had already reached the point of perfect sanctification and there was nothing from the Bible that we didn’t already know or that we didn’t need to hear again? 

The question is never whether or not our sanctification is perfect, which it won’t be in this life, but whether or not it is real. Are we among those who mourn our sins and try to live a godly life by the power of the Holy Spirit, or have we given into our sins and stopped trying to fight them altogether? Just because no one can reach a state of complete perfection on this side of heaven doesn’t mean that we don’t strive for it. It doesn’t mean that we don’t even try. As Saint Paul also tells us in Philippians chapter 3, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own.” 

We strive to live a sanctified life not to merit eternal life, but in order to guard it. We pray against our sinful nature, come to Church to take Communion, and read our Bibles on a regular basis because the Holy Spirit promises to work through those things to sanctify us and keep us in the faith.  There are times when we feel as if we are progressing in our sanctification and there are times when we feel that we are not making any progress in it at all. But at every time, if we want to be rid of our sin and want the forgiveness that comes from Christ, then we can be certain that Christ has not left us, and that soon our struggles will be over. We can rest assured that God is still at work in our hearts to sanctify us completely. May the Lord grant it to each of us for Jesus’ sake. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The topic of this morning’s sermon is going to about conversion and how a person comes to saving faith in Jesus. As I’m sure many of you already know, for some time now the dominate perspective in our religious context here in America has been that conversion is an act of our own free will. Sometimes, this popular perspective has been referred to as “decision theology.” “Decision theology” is the teaching that coming to faith in Jesus is something that a person decides to do for him or herself.  For example, many churches still have a time in their services known as the “altar call,” which is when people in the pews are invited to come forward to the front of the church in order to, as they say, “make a decision for Christ” or “give their heart to Jesus.” Some of you may even remember how Billy Graham, one of the most famous preachers of the 20th century, would have a specific time for altars calls at the end of every one of his services. Many congregations today, including the Baptists as well as several non-denominational churches still do the same thing. Likewise, if you’ve ever flipped through one of those little Bibles that the Gideon’s pass out, or picked up one that was sitting on an end table in a hotel room, you’ve encountered decision theology there too. In the back of almost all of those little Bibles, there is a page that literally reads in bold print, “My decision to receive Christ as my savior.” At the bottom of that page, there is a prayer, as well a as a space for a person to write their name and the date when they supposedly made that decision. 

Once again, all of these examples are representations of “decision theology.” All of them operate under the premise that to some degree or another conversion, or coming to faith in Jesus, is an act of our own free will. To some degree or another, conversion is something that we do. To some degree or another, it is a choice that we have to make.

In response to all of that, I would like for you to consider with me what the Word of God teaches us on this particular topic and especially what we hear about it in our Epistle lesson today from Ephesians chapter 2. In Ephesians chapter 2, the Holy Spirit Himself teaches us about conversion. He teaches us about whose work conversion is, and He also teaches us about why understanding whose work it is, is so important to our faith. So again, those will be our two questions that we’ll work through in this morning’s sermon. First, whose work is conversion? And second, why is understanding whose work it is so important?

Right away, in Ephesians chapter 2, the Holy Spirit teaches us without a doubt that conversion, or coming to saving faith in Jesus, cannot possibly be a work that we do for ourselves. It cannot possible be something that we cause to happen or something that we accomplish as an act of our own free will. Saint Paul begins our text by telling us, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” Here the Bible describes for us the state of our spiritual condition prior to our conversion. It describes what we are like as sinners before we come to saving faith in Jesus. When the Bible describes what we are like before we become Christians, it describes us as being dead. The Bible doesn’t say that we are sick. The Bible does not say that we are wounded or hurt. It says that we are dead. To be “dead in our trespasses and sins” means that on our own we are incapable of doing anything to get ourselves out of them. The only thing that can get us out of our sins so that we don’t have to suffer for them in eternity is, of course, as the Bible says elsewhere, faith in Jesus. So, what the Bible is telling us here, is that we cannot bring ourselves to faith in Jesus by something that we do. Even though we can decide to do many other things in our life for ourselves such as deciding what clothes to wear in the morning, or what food to eat for lunch, when it comes to spiritual matters, such as believing the gospel, we do not have any power in ourselves to make that decision. Just like a person who is physically dead cannot cause himself to get up and walk out of the grave, people who are spiritually dead, cannot cause themselves to get up and leave their darkened state of unbelief.

In fact, not only are we incapable of doing this on our own, but according to what we read in Ephesians chapter 2, and elsewhere in the Bible, we don’t even want to do this. That is what makes our spiritual condition prior to conversion so utterly dead. Saint Paul continues, “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.” Besides not having any power to convert ourselves or make ourselves believe the Gospel, in Ephesians chapter 2, we also learn that “by nature,” as in, the way that everyone is from the moment of their conception, we are actually hostile to the Gospel. As Paul says, we all carried our own desires, as in, we all did what we wanted do. It’s not as if our will was neutral like some inanimate object. Rather, it’s that our will was turned away from the Gospel. We didn’t want to believe Gospel. We wouldn’t believe the Gospel. Far from being inclined to make a decision for Christ or to accept Him as our personal Lord and Savior, prior to our conversion, our sinful nature actively fought against it.

And again, this is not just something that the Holy Spirit teaches us in here in Ephesians chapter 2, but something that He teaches us about in many other places in the Bible. For example, Saint Paul also tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, “The natural personal does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him.” Likewise, we read in Galatians 5, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” And in the book of Acts, Saint Stephen tells us, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” Finally, the Word of God tells us plainly in Romans 3, “No one is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” According to the Bible, every single person in the whole world, from the smallest baby, to the most mature adult, is in the same spiritual condition prior to their conversion. They are spiritually dead. They have no spiritual power. And that is why conversion, or coming to faith in Jesus, could not possibly be something that we do for ourselves. It could not possibly be a decision that we make for ourselves or something that we accomplish as an act of our own free will. According to the Bible, conversion is not our work.

So, whose work is it then? In Ephesians chapter 2, besides showing us without a shadow of doubt that conversion, or coming to saving faith in Jesus, is not our own work, the Holy Spirit also shows us without a shadow of a doubt whose work it is. It is the work of God Himself. As Saint Paul clearly says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.” The Bible teaches us that God makes us alive. It teaches us that God brings us from spiritual death into new spiritual life. It teaches us that conversion is not an act of our own free will, but an act of God’s gracious will, meaning that it is something that God does apart from us and even in spite of us. Conversion is something that God does for us.

As Saint Paul continues in our text 2, “By grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works.” Every single part of our salvation from start to finish is a gift that comes from God. That includes, of course, Jesus dying on the cross to make atonement for our sins, but that also includes the faith that is necessary to trust in Jesus and receive the forgiveness of our sins that He purchased there. God gives both of those things to us. And He gives both of them to us by grace. In fact, that is exactly what Saint Paul is talking about in Ephesians 2 when he says, “this is not your own doing.” The “this” that Paul is referring to when he says “and this is not your own doing,” grammatically refers back to the word “faith.” Faith is not of your own doing. Faith is the gift of God. Faith is the thing that comes not as a result of our own works but is itself the work of God that He works in our hearts. Our will is not what causes conversion, our will is what is converted by God. He changes our will. He changes our will by giving us a new will.

And again, this is not just something that the Holy Spirit teaches us in Ephesians chapter 2, but something that He teaches us all over the Scriptures. Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12, “No one can say Jesus Christ is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.” In the book of Acts it says, “When they heard these things, they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” Also, from the book of Acts we hear about Lydia and how, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” And Jesus, of course, tells us Himself in John 15, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Just as God spoke the universe into existence and the whole world was created out of nothing simply by the power of His voice, so also our faith in Jesus is created by Him out of nothing too. As the Scriptures also tell us in Ephesians 4, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

The Bible teaches us that conversion, or coming to saving faith in Jesus, is the work of God Himself. It is a work that He does by grace. It is something that He accomplishes for us and gives to us not because of our own merit or worthiness but according to His own mercy and love. God causes us to believe in Jesus. God causes us to have faith when otherwise we would never be able to and we wouldn’t even want to. God makes us alive, even when we were dead.

So, lastly then, why does understanding this teaching matter so much? Why is it so vitally important to our faith that we know and believe that conversion is not our work, but the work of God Himself? There are two main reasons why understanding this is so important to our faith and both of them relate to what Saint Paul says at the end of Ephesians chapter 2. After describing our spiritual condition prior to conversion and teaching us how even though we were dead in our trespasses God Himself makes us alive so that we are saved us by grace and not our works, Saint Paul adds, “so that no one may boast.” The reason why it is so important to our faith that we understand that conversion is God’s work and not our own work, is because it keeps us from boasting. 

On the one hand, it keeps us from boasting in ourselves. It keeps us from relying on ourselves for our own salvation and thinking that we are ultimately responsible for our it. And that, of course, is a good thing, because if even the littlest bit of our salvation relied on something that we do instead of what Jesus has done for us, then we would never be able to have real certainty that we were actually saved. If there was even one thing that we had to do for ourselves and by ourselves to get ourselves into heaven, then we would always doubt whether or not we had really and truly done that thing. And that is exactly what can happen to people who have been taught that in order to be saved you have to make a decision for Christ. They can begin to doubt whether or not they truly and really did make that decision. 

On the other hand, this teaching about conversion gives us the confidence to boast in Christ. Yes, the Bible tells us not to boast in ourselves, but it never forbids us from boasting in Jesus. In fact, as Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” When we know that our conversion is God’s work and not our own, that alone gives us real confidence in our salvation. That alone enables us to have true peace in our hearts knowing that every part of our salvation from beginning to end relies on the Jesus who loves us and not ourselves.

When we Lutherans condemn the teaching of “decision theology,” it is important for us to be clear that we are not saying that everyone who goes to a church that teaches decision theology is automatically going to hell. Merely going to a particular church is neither the direct cause of a person’s salvation nor their damnation. Just like you don’t get into heaven simply by attending services here at St. John, you don’t necessarily dam yourself by attending a different denomination. And yet, at the same time, going to one of those churches that teaches decision theology puts a person soul in danger. That is because they are hearing false doctrine. If a person actually does believe that the reason why they are going to heaven is because they made a decision to be saved, and that their salvation relies on an act of their own will, then they will not be saved, because no one is saved by their own works. Even if many other things that the church teaches are true, just one falsehood can lead a person astray. And that is a big falsehood. It literally relates to how a person is saved.

When we Lutherans condemn decision theology we are doing so because we do not want people to trust in themselves for their salvation. We do not want people to be worried that they haven’t done something that they need to do in order to get into heaven, like make a decision for Christ, even if they already have true faith in Jesus and trust in Him for forgiveness. How can anyone even make a decision for Christ, who doesn’t already believe in Christ before that? That makes no sense. No, we want people to trust in Jesus alone. We do not want people to rely on some decision that they made for Jesus, but on the decision that Jesus made for them. We want people to rely on God’s grace.

Dear Christians, the Bible teaches us that conversion is not our work, but the merciful work of God. And what a wonderful teaching of God’s Word that is! May the Lord Jesus who teaches it to us, cause us to believe it and cherish it always. May He never let us forget and may we never doubt what we learn in the Scriptures and what we memorized from the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified and kept me in the one the true faith.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.