Posts tagged ‘Penalty’
Sermon Extra – When Guilt Won’t Go Away
In my message this weekend, I talked about how Israel’s worship of the golden calf in Exodus 32 became a watershed and guilt-inducing moment for literally centuries in ancient Israel.
For instance, ancient Jews paid an annual half-shekel tax for the upkeep of the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus references this tax when He instructs Peter: “Go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours” (Matthew 17:27). The coin Peter finds is equal to a shekel––enough to pay the tax for both Jesus and Peter.
But this tax was not merely about maintenance. It was also tied, in later Jewish interpretation, to malfeasance. A Jewish collection of sermons known as Midrash Tanchuma connects the half-shekel tax to Israel’s sin with the golden calf: “Because they had violated the Ten Commandments,” and specifically the First Commandment when they made the calf, “each one had to give ten gerah, which totals half a shekel” (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 10:1). The tax became, in this tradition, a way of reckoning with guilt for a sin committed centuries earlier.
Another tradition, which I did not mention in my message, notes that on the Day of Atonement, the high priest of Israel, who usually sported a jewel-encrusted golden breastpiece, would enter the inner sanctum of the temple wearing simple white linen garment, according the instructions first given Moses in Leviticus 16:4. Later rabbinic interpretation explains why: “For what reason does the High Priest not enter the innermost sanctum, the Holy of Holies, with his golden garments to perform the service there on the Day of Atonement? It is because a prosecutor cannot become an advocate” (Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 26a).
In other words, because gold had been used to forge Israel’s most infamous idol, the high priest could not wear gold while making atonement for Israel. The material associated with Israel’s accusation could not also be worn in Israel’s defense.
It is striking that both of these traditions arose long after the golden calf catastrophe. Guilt over this one sin lingered for a long time.
Have you ever struggled with guilt that just will not go away? Maybe it’s guilt over the cross word that became the beginning of the end of a relationship. Maybe it’s guilt over a failure as a parent. Maybe it’s guilt over an old decision you’re still terrified someone will discover.
When Moses first walks into the golden calf calamity, he says, “Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin” (Exodus 32:30). But Moses’ best efforts at atonement fail. In the end, “the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made” (Exodus 32:35).
Atonement for sinners by another sinner—even if that sinner is a man as great as Moses—never works.
This is why, at the heart of the Christian faith, there is an atonement made not by Moses on a mountain, but by Jesus on a cross. Not by a sinner doing his best, but by the sinless Son of God giving His life.
Only Jesus can make atonement for sinners. And because He has, the guilt you feel is not spiritually real. Your payments, rituals, self-punishment, and refusal to forgive yourself cannot do what Jesus has already done. He has forgiven you. And His grace is greater than your guilt.
You do not need to keep paying for what Christ has already covered.
The Reformation of the Church
Credit: Ferdinand Pauwels, 1872
Tomorrow, many corners of the Christian Church will mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. And though the Reformation of the Church was larger than any one event and any one man, the beginning of this grand theological and historical watershed is traditionally traced to October 31, 1517, when an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther posted 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, outlining his grievances against some of the abuses that were rampant in the Roman Catholic Church of his day.
At the heart of Luther’s protest was the Church’s sale of indulgences. Indeed, in his 95 theses, Luther uses the word “indulgence” some 45 times! An indulgence was a partial remission of punishment for sin, issued by the Church, and could be used either to lessen a person’s future penalties in purgatory, or to shorten a deceased loved one’s current intermediate period in purgatory. Indulgences took both the form of personal good works, such as pilgrimages and acts of devotion, as well as the form of a payment to the Church by which, it was said, one could have some of the good works of one of the Church’s canonized saints imputed to him to counterbalance his sin.
In Luther’s day, a preacher named Johann Tetzel shamelessly peddled the second type of indulgence, claiming that paying for an indulgence could breezily and easily excuse a sin for which one would otherwise have to suffer terribly in purgatory. With clownish flamboyance, he declared:
Consider, that for each and every mortal sin it is necessary to undergo seven years of penitence after confession and contrition, either in this life or in purgatory.
How many mortal sins are committed in a day, how many in a week, how many in a month, how many in a year, how many in the whole extent of life! They are well-nigh numberless, and those that commit them must needs suffer endless punishment in the burning pains of purgatory.
But with these confessional letters you will be able at any time in life to obtain full indulgence for all penalties imposed upon you …
Are you not willing, then, for the fourth part of a florin, to obtain these letters, by virtue of which you may bring, not your money, but your divine and immortal soul, safe and sound into the land of paradise?
According to Tetzel, one sin buys a person seven years of suffering in purgatory. If a person commits only one sin a day, which, according to Tetzel himself, who invites his hearers to ponder “how many mortal sins are committed in a day,” is an unrealistic underestimation, this would mean that, for one year’s worth of sins, a person would spend 2,555 years in purgatory. If a person lived to be 75, they would have to endure 191,625 years of suffering in purgatory. But, Tetzel continues, “for the fourth part of a florin,” one can purchase an indulgence letter, which allows the bearer to “obtain full indulgence for all penalties imposed on you.” A florin was an Italian gold coin worth around $144 in today’s currency. A fourth of a florin, then, would be worth around $36. Thus, Tetzel’s message was this: for $36, your sins can be taken care of, and you can enter effortlessly into paradise. What a deal!
The problem with Tetzel’s deal, of course, is that, ultimately, he cheapened both the penalty and the payment for sin. As harrowing as 191,625 years in purgatory may sound, the true penalty for sin is even more terrifying, for it is not a finite time in purgatory, but an infinite eternity in hell. And the true payment for sin that rescues us from this eternity in hell is certainly more than a measly $36. The true payment for sin is nothing short of priceless. As God says through the prophet Isaiah, “Without money you will be redeemed” (Isaiah 52:3). The true payment for sin is nothing less than the priceless blood of Christ.
The truth Luther rediscovered is that the penalty for sin is much steeper and the payment for sin is much deeper than an indulgence preacher like Johann Tetzel ever let on. And this is the truth that launched a reformation of the Church.
Tetzel passed away in 1519, only two short years after the Reformation began. By this time his ministry had been discredited, and he had been accused of fathering an illegitimate child. When Luther heard that Tetzel was near death, he wrote his old theological sparring partner a kind note, begging him “not to be troubled, for the matter did not begin on his account, but the child had quite a different father.”
Luther was known for preaching grace as a theologian. It turns out that, for all his protestations against and sometimes harsh critiques of the Catholic Church of his day, at times, he was also gracious as a person. And grace is better than any indulgence. This was Luther’s message – and, most importantly, this is the gospel message. And that’s a message worth celebrating, which is why the Reformation is worth celebrating, even 500 years later.
“Indulgences are in truth the most insignificant graces when compared with the grace of God and the piety of the cross.” (Martin Luther)
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