What is he doing? He has transformed the saying about death and its sting. Vengeance has become love, love has become grace. We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. That is the transforming agency. It is not resurrection only, it is crucifixion and resurrection, the two belong together. Some people think that vs. 56 is a feeble pedestrian theological gloss, put in by some stupid copiests who interrupted and ruined the flow of Paul’s triumphant verse. It is not so, this verse is necessary if we are to see the foundation on which the victory rests. Every great military victory rests on what may seem to be tedious, methodical, plodding staff work, which deals with supplies and logistics. It is like that here. This is the supply verse.
It is easy, and not wrong, to shout about victory over death, to join in what Noel Davey called “the simple whoop of triumph.” To say Jesus is alive, death is dead, is well enough, but all the same your friend has died, and you know that you will die. Where is the victory? Paul knows that death has a sting, and he knows what it is—“Hold on a minute,” he says. There will indeed come a time when death is no more, but he has already pointed out that death is the last enemy to be destroyed, and we shall not see the end of it until God is all in all, and his purposes are complete.
What about the present? Sin and death have been bound up together from the beginning. It was through sin that death entered the experience of the human race. It is there in the old story of the Garden of Eden, and it is there in whatever way you may choose to view the history of humankind. It is sin that turns the clean wound of death into the scorpion’s sting. If you can look back on a long sequence of happy unclouded relations with your dead friend, you are sad that in this life there will be no more of them. What makes the scorpion’s sting is the thought, “If only I had not said that to him! If only I had done that act of kindness that I thought of but was too idle or too stingy to do ! If only we had taken the trouble to put things right after that quarrel!” Or, if you feel you must cast death in the teeth of God, “Why did he do it? Why did he take from us this innocent child?” And all this means I live in a world where death ought not to be. It is here because human beings have chosen to take away from God, who is the source of life, to go this way, rather than his way.
Sin stings because it cuts us off from one another, because it cuts us off from God; this is the dreadful wound it inflicts. And God has dealt with it. “God commends his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” So be reconciled to God, accept what God offers, the victory has come, and the sting is gone. Pain has not gone, sadness has not gone; death is real, death is hurtful, but the sting is gone.
We may build it up further. Where does sin find its power? In the Law. But isn’t the Law a good Law, God’s own good gift, holy, righteous, and spiritual. Yes indeed it is, but sin has got hold of it and pressed it into service to fight on the wrong side. It aggravates rebellion, it makes us think if we obey it, we have given God his due, and may therefore bargain with him as equals. But God has given us a new way by which to be related to Him. “What the Law could not do, in that it was weak, through the flesh, God did when he sent his Son.”
God has found ways to defeat our sin, due to which we were too bad to know Him, ways of defeating our legalism, in which we thought we were too good to need Him. And we see this happening in our world. We see lives in which sin and legalism are being beaten. Today (4/4) is the day on which Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He was not a perfect man, but there is freedom for you. I have seen it inscribed on his grave in Atlanta. “Free at last, free now even from death,” but before that a man set free by the victory of God. And we have seen it in lives that have no memorial. And because we have seen God setting people free from the bonds of sin and legalism, we know that at last the last enemy will be beaten too. And it all began with Easter. “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory in Christ Jesus.”
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“GOD’S COMFORT—THE REFORMATION”—2 Corinthians 1.3–6
[Preached sixteen times from 10/31/63 at the Durham F.C.F.C. to 10/31/91 at Spennymoor]
Even if on other occasions I was in the habit (which I am not) of paying a text the disrespect of announcing it and then forgetting it, I could not do that today, for not the least of the lessons we have learned from the Reformation is that when a preacher and a people come together, they do so not in order to entertain one another and discuss the latest religious ideas, but to stand under the Word of God, and to hear and gratefully obey what God shall say to us out of his Book. Nevertheless, having said that to make the operation clear, I am going to leave the text for a few minutes, not in order to forget it, but in order that in a little while we may come back to it and understand it all the better.
First, I remind you of the purpose of our coming together this evening. It was on October 31, 1517 that Martin Luther fastened to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg a document containing 95 theses or topics for discussion. This was his protest, and not his first one, against the system of indulgences by means of which, by task performed and money paid, people were taught that they would receive remission of penalties for sin itself. It was not simply a protest against the Pope. The Castle Church itself contained (so it was believed) a thorn from the crown of thorns, a tooth of St. Jerome, four pieces of St. Chrysostom, six of St. Bernard, four of St. Augustine, four hairs of “our Lady,” a piece of the swaddling clothes in which Jesus was wrapped, thirteen from his crib, a nail from the crucifixion and much besides. In all 19,013 bones (in 1520) which made it possible to reduce your spell in purgatory by 1,902,202 years and 270 days. The time had come to say to this, and many another travesties of Christianity flourishing under ecclesiastical patronage, a resounding NO!
But this is 1963 and to any who care for the story of reformed Christianity this year brings a special commemoration. This is a centenary. In 1563 two men, widely differing in personal characteristics, Zacharias Baer, shy, quiet scholar and Caspar Olering14 brilliant popular preacher contrived to write the Heidelberg Catechism. It was written at the request of Fredrick III when he succeeded to the Palatinate and to Heidelberg, it’s capital. Both authors knew the meaning of suffering, perhaps that is why they began this best loved of all Reformation statements of the faith, with the personal and (it might seem) untheological question: “What is thy only comfort in life and in death?” The answer is too good not to quote: “That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, are not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the Devil, and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven, not a hair can fall from my head; yea that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.” But the question alone suffices to bring us back to the text which is about comfort.
COMFORT
We hear it wearisomely repeated that Protestantism is only a negative religion. The very word is unfortunate. The very word Protestant is unfortunate and it would be good if we had a word like the German Evangelisch and were simply “evangelicals.” And of course we have seen that the Reformation did on occasion have to say a decisive No, only because it was concerned to say Yes in another direction. The Reformation was in fact a rediscovery of the New Testament Gospel that God has provided comfort for humankind in his affliction. The word “comfort” has perhaps, in modern English, unhappy associations. It suggests too much the idea of God cradling the few saints in the Church on Sundays, soothing their tattered feelings and lulling them into a conveniently anesthetized sleep.
What does it mean? We cannot do better than to go back to the Heidelberg Catechism and its answer to the question, with which the Reformers all begin—“What is a human being’s comfort in life and in death?” What is it that can make possible a life free of anxiety and fear, set free for service? The answer is that God has taken the initiative in dealing with the human situation. The real rub in my situation is not that I am an unfortunate little fellow, prevented by a hostile
