It is arguably the most well-known passage in all of Scripture: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” The words are clear. Everlasting life, which is life in blessed communion with God, is not earned by what one does for Jesus but is freely given to those who trust in what Jesus has done for them.

This Gospel is proclaimed throughout the Old Testament. Adam named his wife Eve, which means “living,” because he believed God’s promise that the Woman’s Seed would restore life to fallen man, crushing the serpent’s head by allowing the serpent to strike his heel in the process. Of Abraham it was said, “He believed in the Lord, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Abraham was not righteous; he still sinned. But God counted him as righteous because he was blessed with faith to believe that the Messiah, who would come into the world through his seed, would win his salvation. Earlier, the prophet Isaiah confessed the same when he said, “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust in him and not be afraid.”

The New Testament proclaims that the Messiah God promised of old is his Son, Jesus Christ, who declared to Martha, as she grieved over the death of her brother Lazarus, “Whoever lives and believes in me, though he may die a physical death, shall never die an eternal death.” St. Peter, not long after Pentecost, stood before the Jewish Sanhedrin—the very same body that condemned Jesus—and confessed, “Salvation is found only in Jesus Christ. For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” And a few years later, when a jailer in the Greek town of Philippi asked Paul and Silas what he had to do to be saved, they didn’t reply, “Be a good person and keep the commandments as best you can,” but rather, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.”

So why do so many who profess to be Christians look not only to their Savior’s redemptive work but also to the works of men—whether their own or those of another—for their salvation? Why do more and more people today want the funeral of their loved one to be a celebration of his earthly life, which was a life of sin (or else he wouldn’t have died), rather than a celebration of what Christ has done to give him eternal life? And why is it that an alarming number of Lutherans, who were taught that salvation is the gift the Son of God won for them by his sufferings, death, and resurrection, find so many excuses not to come to Christ in his service, where he is present to give this gift to them?

In a word: unbelief. The sinful flesh—passed down to every one of us through the sinful seed of our fathers—refuses to believe that we are so corrupted and so lost in sin that we can do nothing to merit or contribute, even in the tiniest bit, to our salvation. All we have earned for ourselves by our deeds—and all we can earn—is God’s temporal and eternal punishment.

But do not despair. Our sinful flesh may be hostile to God, but God is not hostile to us. On the contrary, he is a God of grace, a God who desires our salvation—and not only ours, but the salvation of the world.

That should be evident to you in this promise, which Jesus made to his disciples on the night he was betrayed. They were filled with sorrow because he said he was going away. He told them, “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper (whom he later identified as the Spirit of truth) will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send him to you.” Then he explained why this was to their advantage: “He will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine and declare it to you.”

Last week, I heard a local Roman Catholic bishop, when interviewed by a newscaster, say that God speaks to us not only in his Word but also through the Pope. Nowhere does Scripture make such a claim. Listen again to these words of St. James: “Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” Do you hear anything in that about the Pope’s words? No! It is through the preaching of God’s Word alone that the Holy Spirit takes what is Christ’s and declares it to you. And it is through your hearing of his Word that he blesses you with faith to believe what it says: that life and salvation come not by what you do for Christ—as the Pope and other false prophets teach—but solely by what Christ has done for you.

But because your flesh does not want to believe that, the Holy Spirit must first convict you of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment through the preaching of the Law, which is part of his Word: of sin, because you who were conceived in sin are under the power of sin; of righteousness, because everything you do is so tainted by that sin that it’s impossible for you to make yourself righteous in God’s sight; and of judgment, because whoever trusts in his own deeds for salvation will be judged and condemned with Satan to the unquenchable fires of hell.

Now, once the Holy Spirit convicts you of that through the preaching of the Law, then he, through the Gospel, declares what Christ Jesus has done, still does, and will do for you as your Savior. What he did was bear your sins even to death on the cross, and by this, he merited God’s full and free forgiveness of all those sins. What he does for you today is come to you in the Word that is preached and, even more personally, in the Holy Feast of his Body and Blood, which is served to you so that the forgiveness he merited for all by his salvific work might be given to you for life and salvation.

And because you—whom the Holy Spirit has blessed with faith to believe this—are accounted as righteous in God’s sight, you live in the sure and certain hope of what your now exalted Lord will do for you when he comes again in glory. He will welcome you to live in blessed and eternal communion with him.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.