For the 7th and last Sunday of Easter prior to Pentecost, the three assigned readings are Acts 1:12-26; Revelation 22:1-20 and John 17:20-26. The text chosen for the sermon is Revelation 22:14, “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.”
Sounds somewhat ominous, doesn’t it? The only way to have a right to the tree of life is that you have to do His commandments? You might ask your listeners to put up their hands if they have been able to “do His commandments” perfectly, because we do have a holy God and nothing but the best will satisfy Him. Just received an email from a listener to “Law and Gospel” on AM 850 KFUO who attached a Facebook posting about how the Bible teaches that the only way to get to heaven is to be sinless. Interestingly, he himself writes, “…even though I personally haven’t reached sinless perfection in my own life, I believe it is as a result of not being born again.” Good luck with that, we say. Why? Because I have never met anyone who has a sinless life. There was only One and He is God.
Among the numerous passages he cites he imagines supports sinless perfection, this passage from Revelation 22:14 could have been one of them. And it is why the distinctions of Law and Gospel need to be mentioned in every sermon as the text is applied to the hearers. Reading the Bible without understanding Law and Gospel is kinda like builiding a wall in your basement without knowledge of construction and load bearing and….etc. I know of what I speak when the wall we built was attached to the ceiling because we couldn’t figure out how to attach it to a cement basement floor. It lasted about a month.
Its not that any person cannot be saved by reading the Bible. It’s just that he won’t totally understand why he is saved; how he became saved and how to teach God’s way of salvation to others. He will actually read Revelation 22:14 and conclude that the only way one has a right to the tree of life is by meriting such right through doing His commandments!
However, one can have a right to something either because he has earned it or because he has certain rights he hasn’t earned. In regard to the former, you have a right to a paycheck if you work for a company. You merited it. However, you also have a right to an inheritance if your parents die which you didn’t earn or merit. You were born into the privilege of having such a right.
So also with Christiainty. The right we have to the tree of life is part of the free gift one receives when that conversion heart transplant takes place through Word and Sacrament by the power of the Holy Spirit. Also part of the free package is recognition by God that you are doing His commandments. First of all, you are absolved or forgiven for not doing His commandments; you are dressed in the robe of righteousness to take care of your sins of omission and finally, through the love of Christ placed in your heart at conversion by the Holy Spirit, you do accomplish fruit of the Holy Spirit. To put it bluntly, the Christian believer is regarded by God as fulfilling perfectly every commandment of Almighty God. That’s why the Bible addresses members of the Church as “saints.”
Verse 14 is easy to understand and apply as long as you don’t put the cart before the horse. That is, don’t give the impression that you first do His commandments by your own will thereby meriting a right to the tree of life. No, instead God creates in you a clean heart and right spirit (Psalm 51) which spontaneously produces fruit of the Holy Spirit that God declares to be sinless good works. The right to the tree of life is part of our inheritance given to us as a free gift by grace through faith on account of Jesus Christ and Him alone!
Name:Tom Baker