Romans 7:14-25

Have you ever noticed how, a lot of times, things just don't turn out the way you planned? And if you work REALLY hard at something, you can REALLY mess it up? It's REALLY frustrating, isn't it? I've been working on a little place out in back of our house - just a workshop, really, but it's a nice little place - kind of cute, about twelve by twenty-four feet. I really wanted to get it finished by the time our youngest son got home, so I could show it off to him, since he helped me do some of it. Now, I'm not the most skilled or talented person in the whole world, but I have done some carpentry and electrical work - I'm really not that bad. But it seems that the harder I work on that place, the more of a mess I make of it. I think it's one of those basic rules of life, that the more important something is to you, and the harder you work at it, the less likely it is to turn out right.

Believe it or not, Luther also noticed this - as did his predecessor, Paul. Paul put it this way:

Finally, exasperated, he declares, "O wretched man that I am! Who can deliver me from this body of death?!"

Luther, in his more classical expression, simply noted that we are, "simul justus et peccatur," at the same time, both saints and sinners.

It is a good thing that we are saved by grace, isn't it? I think of old Abraham, the "Father of Faith." What a mess he kept making of things! Almost offered up his only son, Isaac as a sacrifice. Gave his wife to pharaoh, saying she was his sister. Every time he turned around, he messed things up so much that it took an act of God to straighten them out again. My life's been like that, too. I was bent on not being a pastor. Anything but that. But God had other plans. I said, "I could never preach - I'll never make it through Greek and Hebrew - heck, I could hardly make it through German in high school, and was asked by my Latin teacher to drop that course so that she wouldn't have to flunk me! Yet somehow I ended up graduating cum laude. After seminary, I said, "Put me in a little urban or rural church. I never want to go to one of those big suburban churches." I ended up in a church of almost one thousand with a day school to boot. Of course, all that wasn't too bad - at least, as a die-hard Northerner, I didn't have to live down south!

The ways of God are not our ways. Thank God, he can take our brokenness, our sin, our selfishness - however you want to put it - and still create something wonderful out of it! When we look at our life, all we see is mistakes, missed opportunities, bungles, betrayals, and the mess we make out of everything. We are sinners, in every sense of the term. The Biblical word, hamartia, expresses it well. It is a word from archery - when the archer misses his target. God has created these wonderful beings, full of possibilities, full of talent - but unfortunately, also full of themselves. And we keep missing being what he has called and created us to be. We never seem to make it. But the good news is that he takes all of our bungled attempts, and still makes something beautiful out of them. He takes our failures as well as our successes, and uses them to complete his will. He takes us, warts and all, and over our tattered lives he puts, as it were, another set of clothing, another face, another life - the life, the face, the clothing of his own Son. So he no longer sees our mistakes, but his Son's perfection; he no longer sees our tattered lives, but his Son's perfect life; and he is able then to take the poor material that we give him, and out of it constructs his perfect kingdom.

The world around us is a hard place in which to live. It is always pointing out our frailties, our failures, our shortcomings. All of that is true. We know that. We aren't the people we want to be - much less the people that God has called us to be.

But what the world does not tell us is the great secret of the Gospel: that we are also God's children. In fact, the Bible puts it a bit more strongly than that. Hebrews says,

And Jesus says,

We are not slaves of God. We are not household servants. We are not beggars at the gate. We are not stowaways. We are not orphans taken in. We are not distant relatives. We are His adopted children, sharing the same rights, the same love, the same inheritance as God's own true Son. However hidden it may be among us, we are still princes and princesses of the King of Creation. In his love he has made us his children, and sealed it in the waters of our baptism.

"Simul justus et peccatur." We are both, and at the same time, saints and sinners. To ourselves and to those around us, we are only miserable, failing human beings. Yet God has clothed us in the perfection of his Son, and called us his children. So Paul can say, "We do not yet know what we shall be, but we know that, at His appearing, we shall be like him."

Day by day, may you put on the appearance of Christ; may God complete in you the good work he began in your baptism; and out of the stained and tattered gifts you offer him, may He finally complete His wonderful and perfect Kingdom.