Last Wednesday evening we embarked on "a journey in the cross of Christ" by hearing the words of the Apostle Paul, "For I am determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." That means, to use the words of Martin Luther that "the cross is our theology." The only place where sinners find favor with God and the promise of a happy eternity is in the cross of God's Son who was put to death for our sins and raised from the dead to give us life in His name.

If we are to stay on course in this "journey in the cross of Christ" we must avoid the pitfall of thinking that we can make ourselves righteous or keep ourselves in a right relationship to God by means of obedience to the law of God. Luther captured this thought in his the first of his Heidelberg Theses, which states, "The law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance humans on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them." Now that is a hard pill for the old Adam to swallow. We know that evil works- murder, theft, adultery, lying- do not advance us in the way of righteousness. That is pretty apparent. But Luther, like the Apostle Paul before him, is saying that our good works do not in the least help us in the pursuit of life with God. Listen again to the concluding verse of our text: "And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death."

The Law of Moses has often been described as "the law of life" or to use the words of Luther, "the doctrine of life." In other words, the law promises life to all who fulfill its demands. Recall that as the people of Israel were sitting on the banks of the Jordan, poised to enter into the promise land, God through Moses exhorted His people to obey the Law and thereby live and prosper. All of this sounded great to the enthused Israelites and so they said, "count us in!" Their reasoned in a way that is still popular: If the Law of God is what God expects us to do…and He will bless us in our doing it, then this is something that we can and will do. God would not demand the impossible and then promise blessing for those who achieve it. In other words, obligation implies ability. This reason is both faulty and of the devil. It is wrong and damnable. Obligation does not imply ability-it implies only responsibility. The law holds us accountable to God.

There is plenty of misunderstanding about the place of the law in God's plan of salvation. What law reveals is that we are imperfect people who cannot perfectly bring our lives into conformity with the demands of the law. That is true not because the law is bad, but because it is good. Indeed the law perfectly describes the contours of the life that is good and blessed. Just think of how good and blessed life would be if it were lived in complete conformity to the Ten Commandments. Think of a life where God is feared, loved, and trusted above all things, where His name is honored and His Word is heard! Think of a life where parenting was so perfect that children actually honored father and mother without fail! Think of life without murder, theft, adultery, lying! Think of a life that is completely content-free from covetous desires! The problem is not with the law but with our sin, which is revealed by the law.

You see the law doesn't make suggestions. It demands perfection. The law is never satisfied with our best efforts. With the law it is all or nothing. It demands that we be perfect even as our Heavenly Father is perfect. A little bit of righteousness is not enough. There is no such thing as semi-righteousness before God. There are only two kinds of people-those who are perfect and righteous and those who are unrighteous and spiritually dead. The law makes it clear that we are the unrighteous and dead ones. Dead people can't do anything. They are out of the running. It would be positively silly to ask a corpse to do its best!

The more God places His law, the law of life before our eyes-especially the First Commandment which demands that we fear, love, and trust in Him above all things--the more He demands that we love Him with all of our heart, mind, and soul--the more we realize how helpless we are. The more we realize that we can only stand before God as beggars. We are corpses who need life.

That life is not going to be found in our attempts to keep God's law. That life is not going to be found by saying to God "I'm not perfect but at least I've tried." That life is found only in Jesus Christ where God promises friendship to sinners and life to lawbreakers. There is only One who has lived the good life that the law demands and that One is Jesus. He was perfectly and completely obedient to the will of the Father and in that obedience He went to the cross as your Substitute to suffer and die for the sins of the world. He takes from us our sin and death and in their place, He gives us His righteousness and His life. That's the Gospel. Salvation does not come by obedience to the law but through faith in Jesus Christ who loves us and gave Himself up for us.

The devil doesn't want you to believe that, so he would try to entice you to believe one of two lies. First, is the lie that you don't have to keep the Law of Life perfectly-God will respect and honor those who simply do their best. After all no one is perfect and we really are making an effort. The devil wants us to believe that because God is a God of love, he will accept what we have to offer and overlook the rest. That's lie number one. Lie number two is simply to say, to hell with it all! Let's just live it up today-tomorrow we will die--but that's tomorrow. That is the cynicism and despair of many in our culture.

Lie number one says you can fix up your life, you can make it presentable to God. Lie number two says that life is so bad and wretched that it is beyond God. Both of these lies of Satan end up in the same place-death. You see the Law of Life really leaves us with only two options. Either we will live to die or we will die to live. You can walk the road of the cross, which brings life out of death, or you can walk the way of devil, grabbing to obtain your own life, and die in the process.

To journey in the cross of Christ is to die to live. "Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no more has dominion over Him. For the death that He dies, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.