Yes, You Are Completely Sanctified By The Word Spoken To You
Text: John 15:1-6
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. Amen.
It is certainly obvious from this parable in our Gospel
reading that Jesus deserves all the credit for declaring you and me clean and for
connecting us to him. Indeed, as dead helpless branches, you and I have been
forgiven at the cross and then grafted into the true living vine by the power
of the Lord’s word and promise pronounced upon us. Once connected to Christ by his word though,
notice that the calling is not for you and me to work towards becoming ‘more’
connected or ‘more’ grafted into Christ, but the calling is to simply abide and
remain. What does this mean? It means
that you can confidently know that you have already been cleansed and are fully
and completely grafted into the vine through the Lord’s powerful word, his word
that delivers the benefits of Mt. Calvary to you. Yes, you can say with confident joy that you
are completely justified because of Jesus’ death on the cross and you can also
know and confess that you are completely sanctified—that is to say made clean—by
the word spoken to you. Listen dear
friends, you are reckoned saints for Jesus is your complete sanctification![1]
Being sanctified in Christ though means that you are not subject
to the enemies of assurance, those enemies being adjectives; adjectives like:
more, greater, true, further, higher, real, and nearer. Indeed these enemies of
assurance all communicate that the branch’s grafting to the vine is lacking; however,
you are not lacking anything in Christ. Indeed, adjectives can strip assurance
and create the impression that the goal of the Christian is to move closer or
upward towards the vine in order to obtain something that it is lacking.
Regrettably, adjectives give the impression that the branch should ascend up
the vine to obtain a greater or improved ontological status. But this is not
the case for you. The reason being, you
have every spiritual blessing in Jesus because he has declared you clean. Yes, his word has declared you clean; it is
what it is. Otherwise stated, it is not
necessary for you to move upon the Holy One, but rather it is the Holy One who
has moved upon you with a declarative word. “You are clean!”
Being sanctified in Christ also means that it is not up
to the branch to try and produce fruit (i.e., good works) as a bargaining tool
for being connected to the vine or as a payment for the status of being
declared clean. Rather, this sanctification is the source of all good works,
works that the forgiven Christian gets to bear. The implications of this are
clear. The good works that each of you bear certainly have no power to make you
more clean or more connected to the vine. The good works that you walk in are a
result of being connected to Jesus by the word and faith, not the cause. The
fruit of good works can be thought of as marks of faith and grace; they are
descriptive not prescriptive. Thus, we must be on guard from believing that the
reason for being connected and staying connected to the true vine is due to our
good works or some inherent strength that we supposedly bring to the table.
Now, while it is spot-on to confess that good works are
not the cause of sanctification and do not preserve faith, it must be noted
that it is certainly true that evil works do destroy faith.[2]
What this means is that
even though you are cleansed by God’s forgiving word, we are daily in need of
the vinegrower’s (i.e. the Father’s) work upon us, because the old Adam still
clings to us. The Father though does not act upon us by applying spiritual
cosmetics to our sin in order to masquerade our sin as legitimate fruit.
Furthermore, the solution to the old Adam is not an exhorting pep talk to
encourage the old man to tap into willpower so that he might somehow produce
fruit, or possibly reform his old ways.
Just try harder! Rather, what is needed is an end to the old Adam and
his sin. What is needed is death. Your sinful nature needs to be cut off and
thrown away, that is to say, drowned in the waters of baptism, for you have
been baptized.[3]
The Vinegrower needs to act upon the branch by pruning and stripping the
branches of unneeded leaves. Thankfully,
God will not allow or permit the branch to simply exist in an unpruned status. It must be fertilized, acted upon, and tended
to, for to not do so would be to let it degenerate into a wild and barren
branch. To not act upon it would be to
allow it to decay into nothing. God does
indeed cultivate, feed, prune and strip the branches so that they yield good
fruit.[4]
Truly, the branch is pruned to make it bear more fruit,
but fruit for whom? Martin Luther once said, “God doesn’t need our works, but
our neighbor does.” This is also certainly true in the parable before us, for
the vine does not produce fruit as a means of circular consumption. The
branches are not a means that the vine uses to bear fruit for itself.
Furthermore, as branches, you and I are not the source of good works, the vine
is. What this means is that we don’t produce good works, but bear good works.[5] Good works are prepared in advance for us to
walk in, which teaches us that we don’t do good works to become a Christian,
rather we do good works because we already are Christians. Thus, a proper
understanding of the doctrine of vocation helps us understand that God not only
prepares good works, but He gives us the opportunity to serve our neighbor with
these good works in our callings. These vocations are avenues in which God has
called us to bear fruit.
Blessed Baptized Saints, Jesus says that apart from him
we can do nothing. Yes, you can do
nothing apart from Christ. This
Christian life is not the establishment of the unholy trinity of ‘me, myself,
and I’ as an independent autonomous vine, it is rather to abide in Christ the
true and only vine, by faith; continually receiving the word and sacraments
that are for us.
Blessed Baptized Saints, as branches of God the Holy
Spirit, you and I only do good to the extent that he rules, leads, and guides.
If God the Holy Spirit would withdraw His gracious hand - if you and I ceased
to be branches of his verbs to and through us - we could not for one moment
remain in the faith, let alone bear good fruit.
You are dependent upon the vine and cooperate as they receive all that
is good and salutary from the vine.
Blessed Baptized Saints, because good works are the
fruits of the Spirit, you and I get to look to Christ and his word rather than
ourselves and what we are doing. The reason for this is, if we look to the good
works to spur on more good works, our endeavor will prove to be futile at best.
It is foolish because Jesus, the true vine, is the author and perfector of
faith; fix your eyes on Jesus, his word is for you.
Baptized Saints, you are completely justified because of
Jesus’ death on the cross and you are completely sanctified (i.e., made clean)
by the word spoken to you. You are
reckoned saints for Jesus forgives you of all your sins. Be of good cheer, your
sins are forgiven. There is no
condemnation for you are in Christ Jesus.
You are clean, Jesus is your complete sanctification.
Jesus is the true vine, we are the branches, and we live
this sanctified life from the true vine.
Receiving, faithing, living—in Him and His Word for us!
May
the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1] The term Sanctification, as used
here, is to be considered in its wide sense where it speaks of everything that
God does in the one who He turns from sin to holiness (i.e., God’s work of
repentance, faith, justification, sanctification, and preservation of the
person).
[2] See: Ephesians 4:30; 5:5; 1
Corinthians 6:9-ff; Galatians 5:21; Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5-6.
[3] See: Romans 6:1-ff.
[4] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Sermons on the Gospel of St.
John Chapters 14-16 ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, trans. Martin H. Bertram (St.
Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House,1961), 212.
[5] See: Ephesians
2:10.
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