The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, AD 2015
Ephesians 4:22-28; Matthew 9:1-8
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Put off your old self, exhorts St. Paul in the Epistle reading. “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Go ahead. Do that. Put off your old self. Just because you desire it, because it feels good does not mean it’s good for you or worthy of being desired.
Since the fall into sin, your desires have become deceitful. They are liars. You cannot trust them. Every desire must be tempered by discipline and checked against the Word of God. Hunger, once a good desire, designed to lead the man and his wife to the Tree of Life, to teach them to trust in the perfect provision of their Creator, in the fall has become disordered and deceitful, yielding to gluttony. If it tastes good, eat it. And then eat some more. Sexual desire, once pure and unspoiled, intended to enable the man and the woman to enjoy the company of one another and to make pleasurable and desirable the fulfilling of the command to “be fruitful and multiply” now deteriorates into lust, as your disordered desires seem unnaturally constrained in a permanent, one-flesh, procreative union. Zeal for righteousness, designed to make the man a perfect lord of creation, now spirals out of control into selfish anger, into wrath, so that you bristle and seethe at anyone who interrupts your vain search for happiness and fulfillment.
The problem is, you kinda like your sinful self. Lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, pride, greed, and envy seem kinda fun. They are your natural inclinations, your disordered desires, but you’ve grown to trust them. Getting rid of them seems scary. Repent. They are not your friend. They have no fruitful end. Your desires would naturally lead you to destruction. Discipline is necessary. Submission to the Word of God is called for. Repent. It may not be pleasant to get rid of your old self, to put him off, to doff him like an old , comfortable garment, but it is critical to your eternal health, your enduring life.
If there’s a textbook example of what this putting off the old self looks like, here’s this paralytic in the Gospel reading. Put off your old self, brother. Except he can’t. Paralysis is just a little bit difficult to discard, much like your sinful self and your disordered desires. You can’t put them off. You can’t stop. You can’t fix your disordered desires. The only solution is what the friends of this man knew: Jesus. The paralytic can’t save himself. His friends cannot save him. His only hope is Jesus.
And Jesus, when He saw their faith, said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—He then said to the paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And He rose and went home. When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
“Put off your old self and put on your new self, which is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness,” is not an exhortation to work harder in your struggle against sin. The solution to paralysis is not in paralytics. The solution to sin is not in sinners. The solution to your old self is not in yourself. Paul is exhorting you to Jesus. Where is that? Here. In His means of grace, His instruments chosen for the purpose of delivering His forgiveness and healing. The One who alone holds the power to cure bodies and forgive sins has not left you alone. You don’t even need to cut a hole in the roof; Jesus is here for you.
Paul’s commandment to you, to put off your old self and to put on the new, is a command to be baptized. In the otherwise serene, placid waters straight from the city of O’Fallon water supply is a raging flood to do precisely what Paul commands: put off, drown, destroy your old sinful self with every single one of his deceitful, lying desires. But the flood isn’t merely a destroying flood. It is also a wellspring of life. For in the waters of Holy Baptism, as your sinful self is plunged under the torrent, your new self is raised with Christ from the watery grave to be yours eternally.
Put off your old self and put on your new self is an exhortation to confession. St. Matthew doesn’t say, “When the crowds saw Jesus heal the paralytic, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to One Man.” He says, writing his Gospel not for those crowds, but for the hearing of crowds who gather every Sunday morning to receive these gifts, “who had given such authority to men.” Matthew means the Office of the Keys, the men whom the Lord calls to be pastors. The authority to forgive or retain sins, which belongs properly to the Office of Christ, to Jesus Himself, He gives to men, not so that they may lord it over you, but so that you, like this paralytic, can hear these words from Jesus, “Son, your sins are forgiven” and have them do what they say, forgive your sins. Do not fear or despise private confession and absolution, the fifth chief part of the catechism, what the Augsburg Confession rightly calls a sacrament. Fear God and give Him glory and praise that He has given such authority to sinful men who occupy a holy office, the Office of Christ. Putting off the old self is repentance, the fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit to preach His Law to you, to sting your flesh, to give you godly sorrow and contrition over your sins. And putting on the new self is not your work either. It is Christ’s, which He accomplishes through Absolution. In those words, which He intends for you to hear, is your new self.
Put off your old self and put on your new self is an altar call of sorts, not to give your heart to Jesus or some other unscriptural nonsense, akin to asking paralytics to cure their own paralysis. It’s a call to the altar where Jesus gathers you to deliver to you His self, His real crucified and raised triumphantly from the grave Flesh and Blood. These deliver your new self. These are the image of Christ, in perfect righteousness and holiness. These forgive your sins and cure your spiritual paralysis. They give you life beyond the grave. They ensure that your old self will be forever dead and your new self will be raised incorruptible on the Day of Jesus’ return. These are the medicine of immortality. And they do for you what you cannot do for yourself: put off your old self and put on your new self, recreated and renewed in Jesus Christ, after His own sinless likeness, perfect righteousness and holiness.
In the mercy of Jesus, He gives you forgiveness and new life. He gives you a new self. This new self has new desires. He desires to be here, to receive the means of Jesus’ grace He delights to give, to use to forgive your sins, to make you His own, to keep you in His grace eternally. Your old self does not desire these, but your new self certainly does. Embrace those new desires. Be where and when the Lord uses these instruments to put off your old self and put on His new self.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria
Pastor Jeff Hemmer