"The Fullness Of The Gospel"

Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord God promised: "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah" (31;31), a covenant not according to the Law but according to the Gospel: "For I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more" (31:34).

That covenant was, of course, the new covenant in Christ’s blood, confirmed by his death and empowered by his resurrection. It is this Gospel covenant that defines Christianity. Simply put, this is what the faith is: salvation in Christ alone, for it is only through the blood of Christ that we have forgiveness.

This Gospel covenant was also at the center of the Reformation. The issue was this: does Jesus forgive completely, or do we need to add something to complete his covenant? Do certain penitential works need to be performed in order for us to attain grace? Do we need to have an indulgence to help us? Do we need to add our own merits, and those of the saints, to Christ’s merits? Or is Christ enough for all of us?

The new covenant that the Lord proclaims in Jeremiah mentions nothing about our merits or our obedience. Those things had more to do with the old covenant God made at Sinai, the same covenant that Israel repeatedly broke and that we continually break.

The new covenant has nothing to do with our merits or efforts, with penitential works, or with gaining indulgences based on someone else’s merits. The new covenant is based on complete and total forgiveness in Christ. God said; "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

In Saint John’s vision that is recorded in the book of Revelation, John reports: "Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal Gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language, and people" (14:6).

What John saw was the Gospel being proclaimed throughout the holy church. The angel is the heavenly figure that represents all those messengers who have been sent out to bear witness to this new covenant of forgiveness, from the apostles and martyrs of the early church right down to the pastors and confessors of the faith today. This Gospel has never ceased to be proclaimed in Christ’s church. It is an everlasting Gospel against which our Lord says even the gates of hell will not prevail.

There are times, though, when hell seems to have prevailed. Luther came on the scene at just such a time. The precious Gospel of forgiveness, the very heart of the Christian faith was being obscured. In fact, it was so obscured, that most Christians had never even heard of it, at least not in its fullness.

Martin Luther was a well-educated law student who became a monk. He struggled in the faith because he didn’t know the full message of the Gospel. The words of the angel recorded in Revelation and the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans had been drowned out by the rants of the pope, his bishops, and his preachers, who were preaching a different message – a message that made Christ’s Gospel just a part of the equation when it came to salvation.

The old covenant of the Law and the new covenant of the blood of Christ were being mixed into something strange, something that made grace into works and works into grace. The Law and the Gospel had been utterly confused.

But the Gospel prevailed. Hell could not defeat it. The Medieval Church nearly obscured it, but it was never completely lost. The Gospel is everlasting. It never

So the Reformation was really not the start of something new. Luther and his protégés were not radical rebels, forsaking the Church catholic to start a new Protestant one. Luther tried to keep the church united. He knew that there was and is only one true Church, which can always properly be called the Church catholic.

If that sounds confusing, let me briefly explain. "Catholic" literally means "universal". The "little c" catholic Church, in the true sense, is the collection of all believers in Christ Jesus. It’s the universal Church. It was not some pope that made the Church catholic, it was the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the Gospel, believed by every Christian in every place and every time, that defines the Church. The Gospel makes her a catholic Church.

The Roman Church may call itself catholic, but it really isn’t. It has some elements shared by the whole Church catholic, such as the liturgy, the office of the ministry, and even preaching and the sacraments. But it also has some elements that are not shared by all believers. It continues to obscure the Gospel. Rome turns the Law into Gospel and the Gospel into Law. It even confuses the Sacraments.

In spite of the Reformation that began 490 years ago, there is still a need for reformation in Christ’s Church, including the Lutheran Church. People are still trying to return to the error of the Roman church, even if they aren’t Roman Catholic.

Our old flesh is not content with the simplicity of Christ’s forgiveness. It longs to add something to equation – something like works of mercy or sacrifice, self-chosen decisions to follow Jesus, efforts at personal sanctification, things that have the appearance of piety, but are done to merit something, however small, before God.

Those efforts may make us feel pious and holy, but in reality, they are nothing before God, nothing but the self-chosen works of un-righteous and filthy sinners. How can our meager, wretched, attempts at good works improve on the holy, complete, perfect work that Christ has already done? Such efforts to add one’s own merits to Christ’s are not Christian. A true Christian trusts in Christ alone.

So the church must constantly be on guard. She must be perpetually reforming herself. She must continually move back to what makes her catholic, and back to the everlasting Gospel of Jesus.

And so in our reforms, we do not need try to bring out new and different things, things that the Church has never known. Instead, we only need to return to the old, that is, the Gospel and to those things that glorify it and truly proclaim it.

When we have this Gospel in its fullness, we have everything that Luther was looking for, everything that Rome lost, everything that Christians ever needed, because in that Gospel is forgiveness, life, and salvation in Christ Jesus through the new covenant in his blood.

In Him we are joined together across time and space with every Christian that ever heard and believed the heavenly angel’s message that John recorded in the words of our text. We are joined through the eternal Gospel with those who dwell on earth, the people of every nation, and tribe, and language, and people.

When we have the Gospel in its fullness, we are joined in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. And the most important thing – and the really neat thing – is that we are joined to Christ. Amen.