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Romans 5:1-11
We’re all probably familiar with the well-known Groucho Marx gag, where Groucho is a doctor, and a patient comes to him and says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” The doctor replies, “Then don’t do that.”
This is funny as slapstick humor. But we wouldn’t think that it was so funny if our actual doctor were to react in such a way if we were to tell him about a pain that we had.
Pain is a problem. But we know that pain is also almost always a symptom of a deeper problem. When we go to the doctor, we expect the doctor to try to figure out what that deeper problem is, and not just to deal with the symptom.
There is a virtually universal perception among people, the world over, that the human race has problems. The crime and violence that we see all around us, the deceptions and betrayals that we often experience in our relationships, and the wars and conflicts that continually rage, prevent us from thinking that all is well in this world.
We all have to admit that things are not as they should be. As a consequence of this, we are often unhappy.
Now, being unhappy is indeed a problem. Some people superficially look for a “quick fix,” to solve the problem of their unhappiness. Often, unhappy people will turn to religion.
They feel unhappy. They want to go to a church that will make them feel happy. And there are many religious enterprises that are willing to comply with this desire.
They tailor everything they do to the goal of making people feel happy. Ministers with happy personalities deliver happy messages and lead people in singing happy songs.
But that’s the religious equivalent of a Groucho Marx doctor’s office routine. Humanity’s unhappiness, such as it is, is not the real problem. It is a symptom of a deeper problem – or of several deeper problems.
Identifying those deeper human problems is a major challenge. Throughout human history, philosophers, educators, social engineers, scientists, and religious thinkers have all made their proposals of what it is – most fundamentally – that makes life in this world to be as stressful, as dangerous, as unfulfilling, and as unhappy as it usually is.
Some have concluded that the reason why things are not as they should be, is because people are ignorant and superstitious, and need a more enlightened and scientific education.
Others point us to the way of spiritual enlightenment and new-age meditation. People need to find the divinity that is within themselves, in order to be at peace within themselves.
Others again are convinced that the most basic human problem is the economic exploitation of the poor by the rich, so that a scheme for redistributing the material wealth of the world is what is needed.
Still others are persuaded that the most basic human problem is that people repress and deny their true feelings and desires. We should not be so inhibited, they say. True happiness will come only when everyone does what he or she wants – when people “follow their hearts,” without caring what others think.
Some of these theories are interesting. But none of them gets to the core of the real problems.
The Christian faith also puts forth a proposal, as to what our common human predicament really is – and what will deliver us from this predicament. And we are bold enough to say that the Christian explanation of humanity’s deepest problems is the right explanation.
We say this, because God himself has given this explanation. And the Christian explanation – the Scriptural explanation – does indeed get to the bottom of everything.
In today’s second lesson from the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul gives us a list of humanity’s real problems: not just the outward symptoms, but what is wrong at the most fundamental level. And as he gives us this list, he also tells us how God solves each and every one of these problems: in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ.
Pay attention to St. Paul’s list, because in it he describes the natural condition of all people, not just some. And he identifies for all of us the fundamental human problems that impact everyone, not just a few.
First, we are reminded that humanity is without excuse before God. We cannot justify our sinful actions. We stand before God in shame and guilt for all those sins that have disrupted our relationship with him. That’s a major problem.
But when God speaks to us his forgiveness in Christ, and delivers that forgiveness to us in his gospel and sacraments; and, when he invites us to believe that what he tells us is true, that disruption comes to an end.
That gap is breached. We are invited in Christ to stand again in the presence of God, without shame and guilt – because Jesus Christ has removed that shame and guilt from us:
“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
Without Christ, in their natural state, human beings hate God in their hearts. That’s another major problem.
To be sure, we don’t, by nature, hate the idea of God. The old Adam would love for there to be an indulgent and compliant God who served his greed and lust, by giving him everything he wanted: without judging him, and without demanding obedience from him. But the old Adam hates the only God who actually does exist.
However, when we know Christ by faith, we also then know that “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” We learn, then, to love what God loves, and to desire for ourselves what he desires for us.
In our natural, sinful state, we are also without moral strength. That’s another real problem. We are able to form an idea of right and wrong, but that just increases our guilt: because we are too weak, in ourselves, to live up to the standards that we set for ourselves – not to mention the standards that God sets for us.
And even in our rational deliberation of questions of morality and ethics, our thoughts are not pure and objective. Our sense of right and wrong, such as it is, is always tainted by selfishness.
People seldom conclude on their own that something that they perceive to be bad for them personally, is actually the right thing – even when it is. The morality that we devise for ourselves, apart from God’s revealed law, is almost always self-serving and self-justifying. The “god” that one serves and worships with such a morality, is ultimately oneself.
But the true God didn’t wait for us to pull ourselves out of these self-deceptions before he reached down to us – in the sending of his Son into the flesh – to save us from these blinding idolatries.
God’s mercy and forgiveness in Christ are not a divine response to anything that we are, or to anything that we did to make ourselves worthy of his love. God forgives us, and loves us in Christ, because of who he is:
“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
In modern times, it is increasingly foreign to the religious sensibilities even of professing Christians, to believe that God judges sin, and is wrathful against wickedness and rebellion. People don’t fear God’s punishment for their transgressions.
It is assumed instead that God is “nice.” A part of us might want to believe in a “nice” God, too. But the true God is not just a God of “niceness.” God is a God of wrath against sin and evil.
And that, too, is a problem for humanity. It is the biggest and most frightening problem: a problem that is so big, and so frightening, that few people in this world are willing to face up to it, or to think about it.
But the frightening truth that God is a God of wrath against sin, is a problem that we all need to grapple with in our consciences because by nature we are sinful and unclean. We are, as St. Paul says elsewhere, by nature “children of wrath.”
People in their presumption and arrogance often say, “I could never believe in a God like that.” But what if a God like that is the only God who actually exists?
If and when God does hold back his judgment against us, it is not because he has no wrath against sin. It is because his wrath has been deflected away from us by his Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ – in keeping with his own gracious will and plan.
It was not necessary for Jesus to suffer and die on the cross – to atone for our sins, and to propitiate God – because of the “niceness” of God. He suffered and died for us because of the holiness of God – and because a holy God must judge and punish sin.
He suffered and died because “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins,” as the Epistle to the Hebrews soberly reminds us. But in Christ, as we repent of our sins, and trust in him, we do not fear God’s wrath, because we know by faith that the blood of Christ has in fact been shed for us.
We have not escaped from the wrath of God by wishing it away, or by pretending that it is not there. As our substitute under the judgment of God, Jesus has delivered us from the wrath of God, by absorbing that wrath into himself, for us, on the cross:
“…having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”
Notice that the solution to all these fundamental human problems boils down to one thing – or more precisely, to one person: Jesus Christ.
To solve the problem of our guilt before God, Jesus becomes our righteousness. To take away our inborn hatred for God, Jesus fills us with divine love by the gift of his Spirit.
In our moral weakness, Jesus becomes our strength. And for a sinful human race that is born under the wrath of God, Jesus goes to the cross and dies as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
And so we rejoice in God. We do not rejoice in God in an abstract, impersonal way. We “rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”
We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received, from God, real and deep solutions to our real and deep problems.
Jesus is not like the Groucho Marx doctor character. He doesn’t just treat our symptoms.
As the Great Physician of our souls, he treats, and cures, our fundamental problems – problems that only he can solve; and problems that he has in fact solved, forever. Amen.