Why listen to God accuse you?

Every week, I stand here and preach God’s accusation against you.

The headline for our church is “God is in a good mood with you!” And some hostile people who want to misrepresent us, ignore everything else we say, and claim that we’re denying God’s Law.

But every Sunday, I tell you you’re a self-justifying person, who trusts yourself rather than the living God, who loves yourself rather than other people.

In our liturgy in every service: we ask for Christ’s mercy, we acknowledge our evil and weakness, we pray God will forgive our sins, and we take communion because we explicitly say Christ had to die for us to redeem us from God’s wrath, sin, death and hell.

Our selfishness, self-righteousness, and need for forgiveness is in every blog post, every video, every flyer, everything we say.

God’s Law is all over everything we say and do.

The question is not: Do we preach God’s Law?

The question normal people are asking, and that we all hold deep in our hearts is this: Why would you listen to that message at all?

Normal people don’t enjoy being accused. They avoid it. They walk away from it. They explain it away and justify themselves.

So: Why on earth listen to God accuse you? Since that’s what God’s Law is doing—that’s what it’s for—it accuses sinners: that’s why God gave it to you. So, why would you listen to that?

Of all the books in the New Testament—the one that reveals God’s Law most relentlessly is James. And he answers that question by saying three things:

1) If you see your sin and leave, you don’t get what you need to receive (22-24)

2) But when you see your sin and stay, God gives you grace each day (25, 17)

3) Because, no matter how bad you look, God will never stop giving (1:26-5:20)

So, first, If you see your sin and leave, you don’t get what you need to receive (22-24)

Just look at v. 22 with me please:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

So, I can come to church, I can read the Bible, I can watch a video. But I deceive myself—I lie to myself about something.

But what that self-deception is, is where most Christians disagree. Because James does not say: “Look at your works, they are evidence to you that your faith is real.”

Look at what he actually says in vv. 23 and 24:

 ²³ For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. ²⁴ For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

What is the mirror? It is the Law.

And what does that mirror show you about yourself? That you do not have good works in the way you should.

The Law never tells you:
—you’re doing ok in this area;
—you’re doing well enough to pass;
—you’ve sorted out that problem, now onto the next.

No, every time you look in the mirror of the Law, you see the problems with yourself.

Never look inside yourself, to try and see the evidence of the Spirit.

The only way you are ever told to test your faith in Scripture, is to test what it is you’ve been told to put your faith in.

Here’s the only test you should apply to your belief: what is it that you believe?

This isn’t an idea from elsewhere in the Bible that James disagrees with.

That’s exactly what we covered last week in the verses right before this.

What comes from myself is sin and temptation, v. 14:

each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire

All good things come from outside myself, from God, v. 17:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights

And those good gifts come through his Word, v. 18:

Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth

So, don’t look at yourself, look at the Word, you only look “inside” yourself in the sense that you look at the Word you remember you’ve already heard, v. 21:

receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

The problem is that feels uncomfortable for people who want to justify themselves.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve had to deal with one or two very difficult people.

Who, every time I’ve spoken to them, have said: “I haven’t done everything right! I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong!” But if I explain it to them, they say I’m a bad person for doing so.

Self-justification like that is exhausting. It kills emotional intelligence. You all know people like that in your own lives. ou’ve been telling me about them.

But here’s what James says: you and I are just like that as well.

And that’s why God’s given us his word of the Law, to show us this. But, the problem is, it feels uncomfortable being shown why it is you need the Gospel.

That’s why you misuse God’s Law as a tool to make yourself right:

“You see: I’m a victim, not a perpetrator.”
“I deserve compensation, not castigation.”
“You—and God—should give me a payoff, not punishment.”

And so we misuse God’s Law. We don’t hear it accuse us.

And as a result: We come to the Gospel with hard hearts, not humble hearts. We come as people who don’t need to be justified by someone else.

And so the problem is this: If you see your sin and leave, you don’t get what you need to receive

Point 2: But when you see your sin and stay, God gives you grace each day, v. 25:

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

“Persevere” James says—that’s an ok English translation, but it sounds more active than the original Greek. An even better word would simply be: “Stay.”

You don’t graduate from the Law. You don’t move beyond your need for forgiveness. You don’t become “fixed”… as though now the Gospel is just for other people.

Living in my baptism daily means continually this: “Right now: I die to myself, and live in Christ’s forgiveness.”

And so, not being self-justified: see in the Gospel that you’re already forgiven in Jesus.

Because, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” and “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth,” and trust that he will create in you more and more good works, since he freely gives his forgiveness to us: “that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”

James here is saying nothing different from Paul in Ephesians 2:

—And you were dead in the trespasses and sins (v. 1)

—But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us (v. 4)

—by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, (which he gives through the Word, v. 8)

So: —we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, (v. 10).

When you see your sin and stay, God gives you grace each day.

This is how you walk in your Baptism, by using Law and Gospel. Never moving beyond my need, nor beyond God’s giving.

Now, it’s true, James does explain the Law much more clearly than the explains the Gospel.

And so it is very easy to read James, without remembering the Gospel.

This is what Luther meant when he called James an “epistle of straw.”

If you read James very carefully, you can see he gives the Gospel. And everything he says about Law is in light of the Gospel.

But so many people do not read James carefully. It is very easy to misunderstand what he is saying.

And many preachers today do misunderstand and misteach it.

Because for the rest of his letter, James almost exclusively holds the Law up to us as a mirror.

But by doing that, James is not intending to deny what he’s said here and last week about the Gospel.

And James gives subtle little hints to his readers throughout the letter, to keep remembering the Gospel.

The Law only ever serves the Gospel.

So James’ hints pointing us to the Gospel must never be ignored.

Because the reason James holds the Law up so relentlessly is so that we won’t forget what we look like: We are not just and righteous people. We need God’s forgiveness to come to us from the outside. And we didn’t just need it once, when we made a decision for Jesus, 15 years ago. We need it all the time. Every moment. Every second.

You see, When you see your sin and stay, God gives you grace each day.

Because James assures you of this: no matter how bad you look, God will never stop giving (1:26-5:20)

One of his themes about how bad we are is our speech, v. 26:

If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.

And so that you don’t misuse that Law, hear it, and immediately forget what it says, James drives it home unambiguously in ch 3 v. 2:

For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.

You speak badly. So do I. Because we are bad people. None of us is a perfect man. And so God gives us the Gospel, ch 1 v. 5:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

Dealing with my own difficult situations, I come to God every day on my knees and ask him to give me wisdom in speech.

Not because I am wise, and I deserve it.

But precisely because I’m not wise, and need him to give it. That’s what the Law shows me. And this Word of the Gospel tells me that he freely gives it.

Another of James’ themes is desire and worldliness, v. 27:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

And James drives it home in ch 4 v. 1:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

Who here doesn’t get angry, or lash out at others, or hurt other people sometimes?

If you think that is you—then you are truly self-deluded. Because all of us struggle in this way. Don’t forget how the Law shows you your evil.

Because that drives you to God’s Word of Jesus Christ, and what does God promise you in that word? James tells us in ch 4 v. 6:

But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

All of James’ themes are written to do the same thing: Don’t forget you are bad. Because God himself is good.

But no matter how bad you look, God will never stop giving.

Why listen to God accuse you?

Why read James? Why read God’s Law? Why do we repeat or allude to these accusations in everything we say and write at MLC and CLC?

It’s not to make you feel bad, that would achieve nothing.

It’s not to give you a standard to convince yourself you’re improving: that’s the opposite of what James is doing.

Because: If you see your sin and leave, you don’t get what you need to receive.

But when you see your sin and stay, God gives you grace each day.

Because, no matter how bad you look, God will never stop giving. This is who God is:

he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”