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“They were cleansed.”
᛭ INI ᛭
There’s an idea of Christianity that’s floating around out there, and it’s been doing so for quite a while. People have this notion that it’s even from the Bible. The thought is this: “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s a false idea, but, as Americans who also like the notion of people pulling themselves up by their own boot straps, we can understand why it’s popular.
But that idea is really nowhere in the Bible. Some Christian preachers preach and some Christians believe similar ideas to “God helps those who help themselves.” It sounds like “Do your best and God will do the rest” or “God’s done His part, now it’s your turn” or “If you’ve done A, B, C or haven’t done X, Y, Z, then God will or maybe won’t do 1, 2, 3.” But just because some or many so-called Christians preach or believe that way doesn’t make it Christian or right or true, because it’s not biblical! Whoever preaches such a thing is accursed!
In fact, you find the exact opposite teaching in the Bible! The Bible teaches that the Lord doesn’t help those who help themselves. The Lord helps the helpless. “He casts down the mighty from their thrones and exalts the lowly.” (Lk 1) “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick,” Christ says. Christ helps those who can’t help themselves! He heals the sick. He forgives sinners. He raises the dead. And, as far as our Gospel lesson today is concerned, He cleanses the unclean. In fact,
CHRIST ONLY CLEANSES THE UNCLEAN!
(I. He does so ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτοῦ εἰς ΙΛΗΜ and ἐν τῷ λόγῳ αὐτοῦ.)
Yes, CHRIST ONLY CLEANSES THE UNCLEAN! He saves only the condemned. He forgives only those who have sins. He feeds the hungry, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, with good things, and the rich he sends empty away. That’s what we see. Those lepers couldn’t cleanse themselves, couldn’t heal themselves, couldn’t save themselves. They need a Cleanser, a Healer, a Savior. So they cry out to Christ, just like we do, “Lord, have mercy upon us.”
He does have mercy and He does cleanse. He does forgive. He does save. That’s what His going to Jerusalem is all about. He’s dead set to go to Jerusalem. He was dead set to suffer, to die! He was dead set to rise on third day. That’s the salvation of God! Christ saves from all suffering, misery, and pain, from all sins past, present, and future, from all ills of both body and soul, from death itself!
Christ is the sacrificial payment that brought peace with God for our sins and the sins of the whole world! His blood sprinkles many nations. His life given for the healing of the nations. In the blood and water that flow from His spear-pierced side, we see the life-giving waters, the rosy-red waters of Baptism. In His body lifted up, His blood pouring down we are directed to His life-giving body and blood, given to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of your sins. This Holy Communion strengthens your faith, enlivens you anew. Christ’s Supper is the medicine of immortality, it promises, gives, and assures you that you will live forever, yes, but more importantly that your grave isn’t end, your body will be brought back to life, and you will live forever, both body and soul, in life everlasting.
And the way that I’ve talked lets you know something else. That when CHRIST ONLY CLEANSES THE UNCLEAN, this doesn’t just happen at Calvary. It goes out to the nations, it comes to you. That’s our reading from Proverbs today. As Solomon rightly teaches his son about the importance of his words, which are nothing other than the Word of the Lord. What does Solomon preach to you and to me about the Lord’s Word when it’s taught in its truth and purity? You remember:
My son, pay attention to my words; turn your ears to my sayings; do not let them dry up from your eyes; guard them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them, indeed they’re healing to all his flesh. (Prov 3)
And so the Scriptures and sermons, “preaching and God’s Word” as the Catechism has it, and Baptism and Absolution and the Lord’s Supper “are life to those who find them, indeed they’re healing to all his flesh.” The cleansing is somewhere, even as the Lord is somewhere. the Samaritan grabbed hold of Jesus’ feet. Just like our alleluia verse today says, “Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion;” or our Introit Psalm, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! … Blessed are those who dwell in your house.”
(Transition.)
CHRIST ONLY CLEANSES THE UNCLEAN! What does it all mean for you? What sort of cleansing should you expect?
(II. Saints are truly cleansed by faith alone, even as the flesh hangs around our necks.)
Well, first, God considers you clean, He accounts your sin debt as paid, He attributes Christ’s as your righteousness. So, you really are clean, but what of the way we live? We still sin daily and much, in fact, we’re unaware of a great many of our sins. Just because you don’t think you’re all that sinful, doesn’t mean you don’t have sins. In fact, those who think that way have weak faith in what the word of God teaches.
Now, some so-called Christian preaching says if you’re really clean, then you’ll get to a point where you will live a sinless life. That’s not true. You are clean not by your own thoughts or by your own words or by your own actions. You are clean by faith alone. God reckons you, He accounts you, He declares you to be righteous and holy by faith in Jesus alone. And yet, in this life, you still have the flesh, which is at war with the Holy Spirit. You are completely righteous before God by faith, and completely unrighteous before God according to the flesh. All at the same time!
It’s why we get so mixed up, why we often don’t understand why we do the things we do, and don’t even really want to address them, talk about them, or even think about them. It’s a trick of the flesh. Your flesh doesn’t want to be put to death daily by the Word of God, it doesn’t want to be drowned anew at each return to Baptism’s power by faith. And the flesh which wars against God and would kill your faith, will endure until the grave. There it will rot away into dust until the Lord raises it from dust and corruption to resurrect you to eternal life, complete and blameless and holy.
It is also true that the cleansed live clean, the forgiven live in that forgiveness, the holy live in holiness. But this isn’t your own doing. This is the power and work of the Holy Spirit within you. This is Christ’s continued work on you and in you. The Holy Spirit and Christ Himself work on you and in you through the Word and Sacraments, cleansing you, forgiving you, enlivening you anew—again and again—your whole life through. “I am the Vine; you are the branches,” Christ says, “Without me you can’t do anything!” “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”
This is why brining children to baptism ASAP is so important, why being in God’s Word and prayer daily is so important, why Holy Absolution is so important, why listening to true Law-Gospel preaching is so important, why receiving Communion is so important! For through these tools and instruments, Christ and the Spirit put your flesh to death and resurrect new impulses and fruits. As even Luther, of blessed and holy memory, would remind us:
the fact that we do not feel our weakness just makes things worse. It is a sign that there is a leprous flesh in us that can’t feel anything. And yet, the leprosy rages and keeps spreading. [78] As we have said, if you are quite dead to all sensibility, still believe the Scriptures, which pronounce sentence upon you. In short, the less you feel your sins and infirmities, the more reason you have to go to the Sacrament to seek help and a remedy. (LC V)
(Conclusion.)
CHRIST ONLY CLEANSES THE UNCLEAN! If they’re was something that the unclean could do or sinners or the dead could do for themselves, even just a little bit, then Christ died for no purpose! But Christ didn’t die in vain. The Son of God’s blood cleanses us from all sins! Not just once at Calvary, but the benefits of His blood are given out through the Word, but not just the Word, through the Sacraments as well.
There is the way of death and the way of life. “Many are called but few are chosen.” “The gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” Even as only a tithe of the cleansed lepers clung to Christ’s feet, and yet for the few, for the sinners, for the leprous, for the dying and the dead, Christ is for you. For
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