October 25, 2026

Reformation Sunday

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46

Romans 3:19-28

John 8:31-36

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

 grace and peace to you from the one who justifies us

 by grace through faith. Amen.

Justification is a word

 that gets thrown around a lot

especially in Lutheran circles at this time of year

 as we take a moment to remember the reformation and the reformers

 and if we’re really paying attention,

remembering the call to be constantly reforming.

Justification is one of those words

that we hear enough to think we know what it means

 but when we sit down with it

we realize maybe we’re not quite so sure we understand what it refers to

even as important as it is.

Basically,

justification is the teaching about how we get on God’s good side.

Because of sin we do things that are offensive to God

 that break our relationship with God,

we know this because of the gift of God’s law,

 the law shows us how we fall short of the glory of God.

 Since God is well, God,

we want to be in full relationship with God,

we want to try to fix what we’ve broken,

 to make the relationship right

(that’s what justification is making the relationship right)

Everything else is debate about how we do that

So we know we’re less than perfect

We’d like to make it better

and we naturally latch onto rules as a way to do it

(even though breaking the rules got us in this mess in the first place).

 But rules seem like something we can manage

we can be so good that God will forget about all the bad stuff

 if we can just keep the right rules we can get on God’s good side, right?

In a word, no,

 humanity has a proven track record of imperfection

not only when it comes to following rules

but in who we are

(this is where the doctrine of original sin comes in but we’re not going to go there today),

 but God loves us

 and God wants to be in relationship with us,

a good relationship,

 and so God sent Jesus

 who is perfect

and who was crucified, died, and rose from the dead on the third day

 to take care of the rules and the legal rightness

(there are many theories about how that happens, theories of atonement, we’re also not going into that today)

 But regardless of how it happens

 the end result is that when joined to Christ

we are in full right relationship with God because of Christ’s goodness.

Christ sharing his goodness with us

 is justification by grace

 a free gift,

 one that we receive by faith,

 by trusting that the promise Jesus makes us

 (the promise that through him we will be in right relationship with God)

is true,

  and this trust, faith, is shown by our living into this given reality.

Now this is all very abstract

which is why God gave us something physical to hold onto,

a moment in time to point to,

that is, our baptisms.

We saw it just this morning with little Emma,

 the words of promise spoken over the water,

the water poured over Emma,

pointing to something much greater than a few drops of water

 full life in God.

She’s now a saint.

 She’s also still a sinner because she is human,

 as she grows up she will annoy her siblings to no end,

she will lie to her parents about broken toys and who ate the last cookie

 and make other mistakes and break other rules,

and God will still love her,

 God will forgive her and encourage her to learn how to get along with siblings

and why it’s important to tell the truth

even if it means admitting a mistake

not because God sees her as anything less than perfect

but for the sake of her relationships with others.

Because for God relationships are much more important than rules.

 Do you remember Jesus’ response to the expert in the law

 who asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was?

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hand all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt. 22:34-40)

Love is the law

 but remember, the law doesn’t save us,

Jesus does.

And in saving us, justifying us,

Jesus sets us free to love and serve our neighbors,

 not because we have to but because we get to.

We get to love our neighbor as imperfectly as we might do it

because the relationship is more important than perfection,

Jesus has already taken care of perfection,

setting us free to think of others first rather than ourselves.

And yet we still try and justify ourselves,

we still put ourselves first,

 and it is often this self-justification

 that keeps us from loving God and neighbor.

 How do we do this?

 We often seek to justify ourselves with identities that we hold

 (apart from our identity as baptized children of God that is)

 ‘It’s okay, I’m Lutheran’

or ‘I’m a church member’

 or ‘I’m a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent’

or a member of the underwater basket weaving society

we use these identities as a short cuts

 for doing the work of getting to know our neighbors,

or because we want to be right or appear right in the eyes of others,

protect our place in society or community,

or we don’t want to be embarrassed,

 all ways of self-justification in themselves

because they are an attempt to seem perfect,

 or at least better than someone else.

And while identities are important and serve very important roles

 they do not one bit of good

 in making us right with God,

 especially if claiming them

seeks to explain or justify actions that hurt our neighbors,

that hurt God.

 There only identity that can provide that kind of perfection

 is our identity as child of God,

water washed and spirit born.

And so when we get caught up in a whirl of self-centered self-justification

God returns us to the waters of baptism.

As Luther puts it “Thus a Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, begun once and continuing ever after.” (Book of Concord, 465)

 Each day is a new chance to live in the freedom of Christ

 by extending the grace we have already received

 to others in need of that same grace and freedom,

 new life living to love God and neighbor,

not because we have to

but because we get to,

because we have been saved by grace through faith

 and this is not our own doing but a gift from God. Amen