Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Title: Dying with Regard to the Law
Text: Matthew 10:34–42
Liturgical Date: Pentecost 5 Proper 8 A
Calendar Date: June 28, 2026
Location: St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County. 316 W. Main St., Forestville, WI 54213. 920-856-6420.
Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson
Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church serves Ephraim and other areas within Door County.
Transcript
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Christ our Lord said, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Today we’re going to be talking about death and the law in three different ways. First, we will talk about death through the law. Second, death to the law. And finally, death unto the law. We’ll tease out some of these fine distinctions.
Living in the Past: The Example of Hananiah
Have you ever met or known someone who kind of lives in the past? A lot of times it’s a guy who hasn’t updated his wardrobe since high school. Maybe he lives on his high school athletic accomplishments. He hasn’t gotten the notice that times have changed—that the man he once was thirty years ago no longer exists. He’s failing to live in the now because he’s failed to die to the past.
We have something similar in our Old Testament lesson today. Jeremiah is confronting Hananiah, and Hananiah is a man who has failed to die to the past and is failing to live in the present situation. In what way? Hananiah has failed to die to the past because he does not recognize God’s judgment for what it is.
As we meet Hananiah and Jeremiah at this point in the Book of Jeremiah, Babylon has already come. This great empire, with its headquarters in what we would now call southern Iraq, has overwhelmed Judah. In the process, they have carried off some of Judah’s greatest treasures.
First, quite literally the treasures: you might remember the various items, implements, and vessels that God had instructed Israel to fashion for worship in the tabernacle and then eventually in the temple. Babylon had carried off a number of these. Not only that, but Babylon had also carried off many of the people—the highest among the people of Judah: their great merchants, their great generals, their nobles, and even the rightful Davidic king himself. They carted them off back to Babylon. In the king’s place, they installed their own puppet king, one the Judahites would have considered illegitimate.
Hananiah is saying, “In two years, it’s all going to go back to the way it was. In two years those vessels are going to come back, and the king will be restored to his rightful place on his throne in Jerusalem. We will, in essence, be reliving what they thought was their golden age.”
Jeremiah says, “Okay, that’d be great if that happens,” but actually (and this is beyond what we read today) he says it’s going to get worse than what we’re presently experiencing—and it’s going to get worse for you, Hananiah, because you are actually going to die within a year’s time. Both of those prophecies came true, by the way.
Hananiah ought to have died to the past. He ought to have recognized the Babylonian takeover of Judah for what it was: God’s judgment over the fact that they were already dead in the past. They were dead because they failed to keep God’s law. They failed to love the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and strength and mind. Instead, they allowed themselves to be led astray by idolatry. Not only that, but they had failed to show the brotherly love that the Lord had instructed them to show.
So much of the Old Testament law exists to establish and maintain a brotherhood among the children of Abraham, and they had rejected this purpose of the law. People misused each other, abused each other, and violated God’s commands with regard to one another. They were already dead, and they ought to have recognized that death and died to the past. But Hananiah failed in this regard.
Death Through the Law
At the center of our sermon today, we understand that under the law we stand dead, and that we therefore die to the law by faith in Christ. But on the other side of that, we are empowered to live unto God and to live unto His gracious will for us—to live unto the law.
St. Paul in our epistle lesson today has a really complicated argument. I’m probably going to oversimplify it, but I’ll simplify it for you to help us see two major themes. We’re actually going to take the second theme that he brings up first, which is that through the law we die.
We die through the law. In what sense? The law arouses disobedience to God on account of our sinful nature. St. Paul goes on at great length about this. He says, “Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I once was alive apart from the law, but then the commandment came. Sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.”
The law of God is certainly there for the sake of our life, for the sake of our wellbeing. If we obey the law of God, things would tend to go well for us and for our families. This is a big part of what God was indicating when He set the law before the Israelites and said, “Keep this and you’ll live, but depart from it and you’ll have curses.”
But here’s the thing: because we are sinful, we take that opportunity to live through the law and instead die through it. We take it as an opportunity toward disobedience. I know I reuse my examples, but I love this one. You’ve heard it multiple times, but I think it’s a good example, so I’m going to say it again.
When my little nephew Luke was two years old, I was watching him and told him, “Don’t touch the remote control.” I said that for his wellbeing, because if he touches that remote, it’s never going to work again and we’re never going to be able to get the cartoons up that he wants to watch. So, “Luke, don’t touch the remote control.” What did he do? He went and touched it with the tips of his fingers to show that he was touching it—not because he wanted to touch it, but because he wanted to rebel against me.
That’s our situation as sinners. We are all spiritual two-year-olds who take the commands that the Lord has given us—good and righteous commands that are there for our wellbeing—and we take them not as an opportunity of obedience to Him and an expression of love toward Him and toward our neighbor, but instead as an opportunity to rebel. “Okay, God, you told me not to do this, so therefore I’m going to do it. God, you told me to do this, so I’m not going to do it.”
That’s our situation under the law according to our sin, and therefore the law kills us. Under our sin it increases our sinfulness, and therefore we stand condemned and judged under God’s righteous rule.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the good thing for us is to recognize that—to not be like Hananiah and think things were fine before, so therefore God will return us back to that situation. No. Instead, what is good is for us to recognize the fact that we are dead, and therefore to die unto our sinful selves.
In the book of Romans, a few chapters before our reading today (chapter 3), we find these words: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
We will not be justified in the sight of God according to the law, because through the law we become rebellious sinners according to our sinfulness, and therefore we understand our sinful nature. And we therefore do not even try to justify ourselves before God. That’s a good dying to the law.
St. Paul goes on: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”
Death to the Law
And so this is the second dying with regard to the law we’re talking about. Through the law we die, but through faith in Christ we die to the law. And that’s actually the first point that St. Paul is taking up today: that through faith in Christ we die to the law.
For by faith we are united to the work of Jesus Christ for us on the cross. As it says in Romans chapter 6, all of us who are baptized into the death of Jesus—so that even as Jesus Christ rose from the dead, so also through this washing of rebirth and regeneration we have the promise that we too will live. If by faith we die with Jesus—this death in which He died to take the consequences for our sins—therefore we die to the law as well. The law can no longer condemn us. The law can no longer stand in judgment over us, because in Christ we have already been judged. And through Christ we have also received His righteousness.
And therefore we die to the law. That is gone and passed. Just like that guy who is still reliving his high school days thirty years on ought to die to who he was, so also in Christ we die to who we were. Once we were sinners, once we were condemned, but now we are righteous, we are holy, and we stand as God’s children. Die to the law by this means.
Living Unto the Law
And as we die to the law, we then live to God and live unto His will. And we live unto the law—not under the law, but rather fulfilling the law as God has always desired us to fulfill it. Not as external compulsion, but rather out of internal heartfelt desire. As it says, “I no longer live; I’ve died. Christ lives in me.” And as Christ lives in us, therefore we follow in His footsteps.
As Christ says, take up his cross and follow Him. Now, as we take up the cross of Christ and follow Him, this certainly means that the world will look at the way that we live and consider us foolish, and maybe even evil according to its standards.
I think that in a community like Forestville, Wisconsin, these words that Christ said can be very hard for us to hear. Family is everything, right? And so it’s hard for us to hear Christ say, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
We look at that and think, “Lord, what an awful thing for you to put in front of us.”
As we look at this, we need to keep in mind who Jesus was speaking this to. He does speak this to us, but He was speaking this originally to His apostles—whom He was getting ready to send out to spread the word of God. These are men, most of whom are in the working years of life, from their teens to their forties, maybe fifties. These are men who certainly maybe their fathers and mothers depended upon them. Men who had wives and children. Men who had careers. And yes, Jesus was asking them to sacrifice—not only asking them to sacrifice in worldly understandings, but also asking their families to sacrifice in a worldly sense.
And yet what an incredible act of love the apostles performed as they fulfilled this first mission, and then eventually the other mission by which the gospel has come to us. Through the work of the apostles, the message of Christ Jesus has gone out into all the world so that hearts would be transformed into hearts of faith in God and therefore as well love to the neighbor. This was a means by which the love of God has been spread throughout the world. Did it entail sacrifice, worldly sacrifice? It absolutely did.
And yet Christ gave them an even greater way to love. In this way they followed along in the footsteps of Christ. Yes, the apostles faced all kinds of persecution, and most of them—all but one—also faced death for the sake of the gospel. And yet Christ Jesus certainly warned them of such, that they were taking up their cross, which He did for our sakes.
When we think of love, what greater love is there than this? Than that a man might give up his life for his friends—which is what Christ Jesus has done for our sakes.
What I’m getting at, brothers and sisters in Christ, is that the gospel of Jesus Christ transforms our hearts so that we are able to love in ways in which the world is unable to. And therefore we are able to sacrifice in the ways that the world is not able to. Most of us are not called to leave house and home and family for the sake of obedience to God. Most of us are called to labor in our places and to serve the Lord in our workplaces, in our homes, in our communities. But you too have had the same transformation that the apostles did.
Your hope is not in this world, but rather in the world to come, and therefore you are empowered to sacrifice for the sake of others in ways that the worldly are not empowered to. And no sacrifice is a worthy sacrifice if it is done simply by external compulsion. But instead, your hearts have been transformed to render this service unto others by the gospel of Jesus Christ, so that you do so willingly as God’s children, gladly taking up your crosses and following in the way of Christ.
And by this means you fulfill the ultimate commands: to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself—not by your own power, but rather by the power of God in Christ Jesus.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, let us gladly hear the testimony of the law that we stand condemned under God’s righteous rule so that we might embrace the gospel and therefore die to the law. And let us gladly as well follow along in the footsteps of Christ so that we might live unto the law out of willful, glad obedience.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.