Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity

Matthew 9:18-26

THE ORIGIN, ESSENCE AND GOAL OF TRUE FAITH

In our days Christianity is becoming more and more despised. Many people look down upon it and do not trouble themselves about it. Many people scoff at it, poke fun at it and persecute it. And yet, my friends, Christianity is something so great, blessed and glorious that human language cannot express it! It is the life-creating and saving power in the world, and true believers who have appropriated the truths of Christianity to themselves in a living faith are happy, blessed people, although they are despised in the world. That's why faith is also praised highly in Holy Scripture.

Already in the Old Testament it says that Abraham's faith was counted to him for righteousness. The apostle John says, "Our faith is the victory which overcomes the world." (1 Jo. 5:4.) The Lord Jesus says that "all things are possible to him who believes" (Mk. 9:23) and that "whoever believes ... shall be saved." (Mk. 16:16.) In today's Gospel we hear Jesus say to the woman with an issue of blood: "Daughter, be of good comfort! your faith has made you whole." According to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures therefore, faith justifies us before God in life, it saves in death and glorifies in eternity.

But Scripture also speaks of another faith which does no good, a dead faith which cannot save, and warns against it. The apostle James writes, "What does it profit, my brethren, though a man say he has faith, and does not have works? Can faith save him?" (Ja. 2:14.) The devil also believes (that God is one) "and trembles." (Ja. 2:19.) Therefore Scripture says: "Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith." (2 Co. 13:5.) But if that is going to happen, then everyone will easily see how necessary it is to learn how rightly to recognize that faith so that we can examine and properly judge if it is the true faith which we have, and not lose out on eternal salvation through self-delusion. Therefore in this hour of meditation, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we will consider

 TRUE FAITH  

according to the opportunity which today's Gospel gives.

I.

Our Gospel presents two persons to us, who, visited with their crosses, who in their distress, seek and find help in Jesus. The one, a woman, has suffered from an issue of blood for twelve years. As the evan-gelist Luke reports, she had "spent all her money on doctors, and had not been able to be healed by any." The second, a ruler and director of a synagogue, by the name of Jairus, had left his little daughter "near death." Just as that woman had experienced that all her riches could not help her, nor all the skill and art of the doctors, but rather that things had gotten worse for her, so had Jairus also had the experience that with all his authority and respectability he was not in a position to give his little daughter health or to save her from death. Both had learned to know human impotence in the school of the cross and to surrender all confidence and trust in their own as well as in other people's power and ability to save them from their distresses. They had learned to give up on human help.

It is in this distress of theirs that they go to Jesus in order to find help. As long as they still had not felt their wretchedness and helplessness they stayed away from him. Now need drives them to him of whom they have heard that he takes the wretched to himself and heals the sick with a word. Because it is as Jesus says: "They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick." (Mk. 2:17.) That's why our Catechism also teaches us that faith is conceived in the feeling of our sinful misery.  

Yes, if we are going to come to Jesus in faith, if we are going to place our firm confidence and trust in him as our Savior from sin, death and the power of Satan, from all distress and sorrow in time and etern-ity, then we must first come to a humble, thorough and earnest recognition of our spiritual anguish, of the heart's deep corruption both through original sin and actual sin, of our totally, completely helpless lost condition. We must have had the sorrowful experience that sin is a spiritual loss of blood which it is not in human power to stop or to heal. We must therefore have learned to give up on our own as well as other people's help, yes, to consider every effort in that direction and through such means, that is to say, without Christ, to be completely useless and hopeless to save us from distress. That's what the apostle Paul means when he writes to the Philippians, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ." (3:8.) The apostle had been zealous according to the Law, and hoped through this zealous effort of his to be able to stand before God by means of the Law and to obtain the crown of righteousness. Now he lets all these rotten props go and abandons the false basis for his confidence and trust upon which he had relied before. Yes, he counts all things as loss and as dung because they have kept him away from Christ, however much they may have glittered in people's eyes and however great a spiritual appearance they may have had.

But unfortunately, when in his grace God wants to lead us to such a humble recognition of self and to repentance through the Law, then the proud, arrogant heart does not want to detect itself in this. The Law divests the heart of the nobility it imagines that it has and the Law throws it down from the heights it occupies in its own thoughts. A person is made a poor, lost sinner, and is disturbed in his happiness by the Law's severe, crushing judgment. In order to avoid this man seeks all kinds of escapes in his excuses and attempts to justify himself. Circumstances, he says, make a departure from the truth and uprightness excusable if not necessary. Yes, error and sins are even made virtues, so that, for example, covetousness must be called thrift, wrath holy zeal, slovenliness in the defense of the truth Christian patience and forbearance, and so on. And if all this doesn't help, but the sting of the Law still wants to intrude and to separate joints and marrow, interrupt pleasures and disturb the heart, yes, then many people plug their ears and try to blot out the impression by giving themselves completely to the intoxication of the senses. Or, they take the Law to heart insofar as they acknowledge God's just demands on them in it, and they try to observe it with the most extreme exactness, but they think that by doing that they can make satisfaction for their sins and thus become righteous before God by their own works, because people are completely blind to the spiritual significance of the Law and do not see that a person falls under the judgment of this Word of God: "Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of right-eousness ... For they stumbled at that stumbling-stone." (Ro. 9:31.32.)

However, our dear God does not let go of the palsied soul so easily but takes it into the school of the cross and of suffering in order to heal and save it just as we see that he did in the Gospel with the ruler of the synagogue and the woman with the issue of blood. Certainly the sufferings themselves cannot instruct us about our sin, far less teach us to know Jesus. The Spirit of God accomplishes this only through the Law and the Gospel. But when the thoughtless or secure sinner is suddenly deprived of his property or is laid upon a hard sickbed, when death approaches him, or he sees himself separated from some of his dearest friends who were his greatest joy in life, then God is seeking to awaken him from his sleep of sin through such a chastisement, to lead him to reflection and to bring him to pay attention to the voice of his conscience and the Lord's testimony in his Word. The Lord also seeks in this way to lead the proud, self-righteous sinner to the feeling of his spiritual impotence, and to despair of himself. For that reason the psalmist says: "It is good for me that I have been afflicted. Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept your word." (Ps. 119:71.67.) For such an afflicted, frightened sinner the Gospel becomes a pleasant, joyful message, a healing, refreshing drink through the instruction of the Holy Ghost. In a soul which feels its sinful misery in that way the Holy Ghost can create faith. The "healthy" person who does not know his sin's distress has no need of a physician. He will push God's hand of grace away from him-self. If he confesses faith in the Savior, yet his faith is not true, but dead. He deceives himself, and through hypocrisy seeks to deceive others. The power of the Law is felt in distress and tribulation. Sin becomes alive through the Law and thus the Law becomes our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. We shall there-fore not murmur if the Lord leads us into the school of affliction, even less turn our ears from the Law or try to remove its sting when it penetrates our hearts. In that way we hinder God's Spirit from leading us to repentance and make it impossible for him to work true faith in our hearts.

In our Gospel for today it says: "While he (Jesus) spoke these things unto them, behold, there came a ruler and fell down before him and said: My daughter is now (almost) dead; but come and lay your hand upon her, and she shall live." And the evangelist Mark reports that when the woman heard of Jesus, she came behind him among the people and touched his garment." (5:27.) It is therefore through the word that both came to faith in Jesus so that he both can and will help them out of their distresses, so that they go to him and seek help from him. Now also it is only through the Means of Grace, the word and the Sacra-ments, that the Holy Ghost works and preserves faith in the poor sinner's heart. "Faith comes by hearing," Scripture says, and again: "How shall they believe on him of whom they have not heard?" (Ro. 1O:17.14.) If you therefore, dear friend, really want to come to the true faith and preserve it, then do not despise the Means of Grace but use them diligently! It is a necessary condition that we hear the Word of God in order to be able to be converted and believe. If you do not want to hear the Word of God, then you close off the way of the Spirit to your heart and are yourself responsible for being lost. Watch therefore, so that you do not become so strongly taken up with reading the newspapers, novels and all kinds of worldly books, that you neglect the divine Word! However, not even everyone who hears the Word of God is converted. Paul writes of some people that they are "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (2 Ti. 3:7.) And Stephen cries to the Jews: "You do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do you." (Ac. 7:51.) People must therefore always take the responsibility themselves if they are not converted by the Word of God. The reason is that they harden their hearts and harden themselves against the witness and stirring of the Spirit just as Christ says: "The heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." (Ac. 28:27.) And again, when he speaks to Jerusalem: "How often would I have gathered your children togeth-er, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings! And you would not." (Mt. 23:37.) For such people the Gospel becomes a savor of death unto death.

On the other hand however those people in whom the opposition is broken and who come to conversion must not give themselves or their zeal or their concern in reading the Word of God the glory for it but the Spirit of God alone, who by grace, for the sake of Christ, works such a change in the heart of man just as it says in the prophet: "you are stronger than I, and have prevailed." (Je. 2O:7.) Everyone who has come to a true conversion will surely confess that he would never have been converted if it should have been the excellence of his repentance and prayer and his zeal in reading the Word which should have prompted God to take him to grace. He will certainly confess that he has the grace of God alone to thank for it and that his conversion therefore was accomplished through it alone, that God has been merciful to him in spite of his stupidity, indifference and reluctance. However, since the Spirit does not work faith apart from the Word, then it is necessary that we hear it diligently and earnestly pay attention to it.

II.

Since we now have seen in whom it is and through what means it is that true faith alone is worked, we want now to consider its essence. In our text we hear the ruler approach Jesus with the words: "My daughter is now almost dead; but come and lay your hand on her, and she shall live." Likewise the wo-man says to herself: "If I can just touch his garment, then I am healed." In both, firm, unshakeable confi-dence in Jesus is characteristic of their faith. It has no doubt that he surely has the will as well as the power to help. It is as it is written: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." [He. 11:1.] This true faith can certainly often be weak and express itself then as a heartfelt longing for grace but it is still always very different from false faith which so rather bluntly and half-doubting says: "Oh, I imagine God will be gracious to me," or: "I have to hope that I also will be saved." Just as the little child can hold the same costly pearl in his trembling hand as the giant with his strong hand, so does also weak faith possess the whole Jesus when it is true, although it naturally is more easily exposed to losing him than is the case with strong faith. Also, weak faith, in contrast to doubt and human opinion, is "a firm conviction," because it is based on the immovable foundation of the Word of God. True faith does not build on human appearances nor on one's own feelings and experiences but on the promises of God alone. It clings to the Lord's covenant in baptism, to God's promises in the Word, to his gracious promise in absolution, and to the pledge in the Lord's Supper. It takes its refuge in the wounds of Christ, builds on his merit and comforts itself with his battle and victory. In a word: It appropriates the Lord to itself as its own with all that he has done and suffered. With that and with that alone it comforts itself believingly, to stand before God. And precisely because all this is outside him, but promised and assured him in the Word of God who cannot lie, therefore the faith which clings to his word is also a firm conviction. Take the Word away and true faith is gone. Make the promises uncertain or conditioned by anything, be it much or little which a person is to fulfill, then faith is soon gone because then this imperfect work of man will always be necessary to look to and to build on as that which is demanded for the fulfillment of the condition and it becomes thereby an uncertain opinion, to doubt and fear, instead of to firm conviction. This is not to say however that true faith is never exposed to doubt. On the contrary it constantly has to fight with doubt and temptations. But just as it never seeks help apart from Christ, so neither does it let itself be enticed or frightened away from him by any other voice. It has a struggle, but it conquers: "this is the victory which overcomes the world, even our faith," (1 Jo. 5:4) because it knows the voice of the Good Shepherd and follows it. It relies upon Jesus' Word and promises also over toward all unfamiliar voices, objections and threats.

Look at the woman in our Gospel. According to the Law of God she was unclean because of her sickness and dared not approach the gathering. And if she now wanted to expose herself to the judgment of the Law, how was she, a weak woman, to get through the tight mass of people and get to present her petition to Jesus? And how did she dare nourish the hope that Jesus, the Holy One, would have anything to do with her, the unclean one, and hear her supplication? We see here that her own reason, popular opinion, the judgment of the Law all combine to hold her back and tempt her to think, There is no use in your trying to apply to him for help. You only expose yourself to ill treatment among the crowds of people, yes, even to being punished, because you who are unclean have intruded among the people. And if you should be so fortunate as to get close, then he, the King of the Jews, the Holy One in Israel, will, however, have to deny you sternly. But you see, all that is not able to shake her faith. "If I can just touch his garment," she thinks, "then I will be helped; in him is all the necessary power, and there can be no lack of desire to help." And now she prevails in spite of reason, people, and the judgment of the Law. She touches his gar-ment and is healed. And then Jesus, as Mark relates, asks: "Who touched my clothes?" and "looked round about to see her that had done these things." (Mk. 5:3O.32.) Then she became really frightened, and "fear-ing and trembling, knowing what was done in her," but in faith she took courage, "came and fell down be-fore him, and told him all the truth." (Mk. 5:3O-33.)

Likewise we see what a shock Jairus' faith had to sustain. While he was on the way to his home with Jesus some people came, again, as Mark relates, with a message for him: "Your daughter is dead; why do you trouble the Master any further?" (Mk. 5:35.) And when he comes home he finds the house full of flute players and people who are weeping and howling over the dead girl and who only laugh at Jesus when he says, "The girl is not dead; but only sleeping." (Mk. 5:39.) However, all that is not able to hinder Jairus from following Jesus further, who had heard his prayer and had gone with him in order to help his daugh-ter. He clings to the Word of the Lord which he had already received: "Be not afraid, only believe!" (Mk. 5:36.) His faith is strengthened mightily by the word he hears Jesus address to the woman on the way: "Daughter, be of good comfort! your faith has made you whole," and by the miraculous healing to which he is a witness. Although he hears mournful sounds upon entering his home and sees so many signs that the girl is dead, and hears the people's ridicule of Jesus, yet it does not affect his faith. Nor does he doubt the truth of the Lord's word: "The girl is not dead, but is only sleeping," but takes comfort and strength for his faith from the Word which the others laugh at and ridicule.

And this is always the essence of true faith. It is well aware of objections such as these from subtle rea-son and deceitful feelings. How is it possible that God can be three persons - three divine persons - yet only one divine being? How can the eternal, unchangeable God also be a finite man subjected to grief and death? How can a righteous God punish the pure and innocent for the guilty? How can a little water to-gether with the Word of God be a washing of spiritual regeneration and cleanse from sin? And how can a piece of bread and a cup of wine be the body and blood of Jesus Christ? Likewise, feelings object: "I daily see so many imperfections and sins in myself. How can I then be pure and holy in the eyes of the all-knowing and holy God? How can the holy God who hates even the least sin be willing to forgive so great a sinner as I who have nothing other than sin and weakness to bring to him? How can a little band of frail, despised Christians hold their ground and be preserved against the world's power and the devil's cun-ning?" Faith often has a severe struggle with these and similar thoughts. But with the Word of God for its defense it cares as little about the judgment of conscience and the Law as for the ridicule of reason and the world and scorn for Jesus and his Word and deeds, his disciples and followers. Over toward all this faith clings, as I already said before, to the Word which says: "Who will lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies," (Ro. 8:33) and again: "If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things," (1 Jo. 3:2O) and again: "The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men," (1 Co. 1:25) and: "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" (1 Co. 1:2O.) Faith clings firmly to this Word that it is divine truth and that God is faithful. And faith is obedient to this Word and believes and does as it says, and it always says over toward such tempta-tions: "Be not afraid, only believe!" (Mt. 5:36.) Therefore, dear brethren, let us not be negligent in the use of the Word of God but let us meditate on it day and night so that we can say with the psalmist: "Your testimonies also are my delight, and my counselors," "I will delight myself in your statutes: I will not for- get your word"! (119:24.16.)

III.

Finally, today's Gospel teaches us that neither the woman's nor the ruler's faith was put to shame, but that both were helped at the opportune time.

Hardly has the woman touched Jesus' garment before her issue of blood stopped and she was free of her torment. And since she fears that she might have been too bold in touching him and publicly confessing to him what she had done, how is her faith then strengthened, what peace her heart receives through his Word to her which the evangelist Luke renders in this way: "Daughter, be of good comfort: your faith has made you whole; go in peace!"

So also with Jairus. Upon his request Jesus goes with him. And when his faith is in danger of wavering by the news of his daughter's death, Jesus comes to its help and strengthens it, first by letting him be a witness to the woman's miraculous healing, next by his word to him: "Fear not, only believe, thus shall she be saved," and the comforting assurance: "Weep not! She is not dead, but is sleeping." But that his Word was not an empty word of man, but a word of the Almighty Godhead which accomplishes what it says, and that before him all the dead were as sleeping, because if he wanted to he could raise them up and make them alive through his almighty power, he now testifies when he takes the girl by the hand and says: "Maiden, arise!" And, behold, "her spirit returned, and she stood up immediately." All of which the evangelist Luke reports in much detail.

Thus true faith in Jesus finds help from all distress, spiritual and physical, for time and for eternity. Because Jesus has overcome all our enemies and won for us all spiritual gifts, so would it surely be just as impossible that faith should miss out on these good things and lose the fruits of his victory, as that the devil should again be able to get any power over the Son of God or that the truthful and faithful Savior should break his vow and not keep his promises: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," (Mt. 28:2O) and: "Fear not, little flock! For it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." (Lk. 12:32.)

Thus the true believer obtains in his spiritual distress the forgiveness of sins, justification and peace, because "The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin," (1 Jo. 5:1) and: "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Ro. 5:1.) In all temporal distress faith is fully assured of God's fatherly care and protection because "he that spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely give us all things?" (Ro. 8:32.) And of course we have the assurance that "all things work together for good to them that love God." (Ro. 8:28.) Finally, faith is also convinced that death is swallowed up in victory through Jesus' death and resurrection. Faith therefore does not fear death but awaits it with blessed hope and longs after being separated from here because now it sees in death a sweet and peaceful sleep as it says in the hymn:

I know of a sleep in Jesus' name,

A rest from all toil and sorrow;

Earth folds in her arms my weary frame

And shelters it till the morrow;

My soul is at home with God in heav'n,

Her sorrows are past and over.

Faith expects with longing and gladness that on that great day Jesus shall awaken us from this sleep and place us "with all others who believe, in eternal life." Thus the believer can also therefore trustingly sing:

I know of a morning bright and fair

When tidings of joy shall wake us,

When songs from on high shall fill the air

And God to His glory take us,

When Jesus shall bid us rise from sleep -

How joyous that hour of waking!

God's Son to our graves then makes His way,

His voice hear all tribes and nations;

The portals are rent that guard our clay,

And moved are the sea's foundations.

He calls out aloud, "Ye dead, come forth!"

In glory we rise to meet Him.

Because true faith already here possesses peace through the forgiveness of sins and has such a blessed hope, it also gives desire, strength and courage to work and to fight for the Lord's cause. It loves him again, who has first loved us. Courageously it goes into battle because it knows we shall be more than conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord. Patiently it will bear cross and suffering, ridicule and disdain for Jesus' name's sake because it has surely the blessed hope that God will grant a good outcome thereof and a blissful ending.

During all this time the true believer feels and humbly confesses his great weakness, and says trustingly: "When I am weak, then am I strong," (2 Co. 12:1O) because Jesus has said: "My strength is made perfect in weakness." (2 Co. 12:9.) It has the comfort that "he which has begun the good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." (Ph. 1:6.) With this comfort and this hope the believer now awaits "the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glor-ious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." (Ph. 3:2O.21.)

And now, dear brothers and sisters, let us examine ourselves well, whether we are in the faith, true faith, and are not deceiving ourselves with a false, dead faith! That does not help at all but only makes us more miserable and lost. Just as people with false faith remain in their wickedness, so they also remain without true comfort and peace. But let him who by the grace of God is standing in the true faith, see to it that he does not fall! Let us therefore diligently cling to the Word of God and continue in it. Because "blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." (Lk. 11:28.)

Lord Jesus, you who have loved us and given your life into death for us, have mercy upon us! Create in us a pure heart and give us a steadfast spirit! Grant us a blessed departure from this world and a glorious resurrection at your coming!

Now opens the Father's house above,

The names of the blest are given;

Lord, gather us there; let none we love

Be missed in the joys of heaven.

Vouchsafe Thou us all a place with Thee:

We ask through our dear Redeemer.

Amen in Jesus' name.

Proedikener over Evangelierne, pages 672-683