June 7, 2026
Pastor Chris Warneke
Scripture: Acts 2:1–21
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
God called Abraham and promised him that he would become the father of many nations. Consider this promise to Abraham. God gave this promise to Abraham when his wife had been barren for many years, and they were also old enough that this was not going to naturally happen. And yet Abraham believed God. He believed this promise.
God says in Genesis 15, and then St. Paul repeats in our epistle reading for today from Romans chapter 4, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
What could Abraham have done by his own power? He did not by his own power have anything to do with whether or not he and his wife could conceive, as they were both advanced in years and had been barren up to that point. What could Abraham’s work have done to fulfill that promise? It all had to depend on the work of God. Abraham clung to the promises of God and believed that God could do as He had said.
Consider also Matthew the tax collector, who was living in a life where he had essentially betrayed his own people by collecting taxes on behalf of the Roman Empire. On top of that, tax collectors had a bad reputation in that day because they would usually skim a little bit off the top to put in their own pockets.
So this is the life Matthew is living, sitting there at the tax booth. And Jesus comes up to him and says, “Follow Me.” Matthew gets up and follows Him.
What could Matthew have done by his own power? If it was up to him, he would have still just been sitting at the tax booth scamming his friends and neighbors. But it took the call of Jesus to bring him out of this life of sin into the life of following Christ.
And consider all of us. All of us are in need of the forgiveness of sins. Like St. Paul says in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.”
That’s what Jesus is saying in our Gospel reading as well:
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
And that’s exactly what Jesus does for each and every one of us. Just like God promised a child to Abraham and delivered on that promise, just like Jesus said to Matthew, “Follow Me,” and brought him through His ministry and gave him faith to believe in Jesus, Jesus fulfills His promise to each and every one of us of the forgiveness of sins that we so desperately need.
What could we do by our own power? Nothing.
As God says, we are dead in our trespasses and sins. We can’t wash our own sins away, but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Christ gives us salvation. And when we receive that promise, when we cling to that promise in faith, God counts it to us as righteousness, just like He counted Abraham’s faith as righteousness.
That’s what St. Paul says in Romans 4:
“That is why faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord.”
That’s what we call our justification in the Christian Church. That’s what the Bible calls our justification: that God calls you righteous even though, by yourselves, in your own sinful human nature and according to what you yourself have done, you are unrighteous. You are wicked. But God calls you righteous. He declares that you are righteous. And that is because Jesus has washed away your sins through His death on the cross.
And you cling to that promise by faith. And on account of that faith, God counts it to you as righteousness like He did to Abraham.
That’s the message that our texts have for us today from Romans chapter 4 and Matthew chapter 9: faith in Christ is counted to you as righteousness.
First, we’re going to ask why this emphasis on faith, and then we’ll answer the question: What does that saving faith look like?
Why does St. Paul make such a big deal about faith?
First of all, he says that it depends on faith in order so we can put God’s work in its proper place and put our work in its proper place.
Christ’s work on the cross is what saves us through the forgiveness of sins. Like St. Paul says in Romans 3:23–25:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.”
So who did the work? Christ Jesus.
Christ Jesus came down to you who were dead in your trespasses and sins and raised you up. He did the work of perfectly obeying the Law of God where we could never. He went to the cross and bore the weight of our sins in His body to wash your sins away.
So how are you saved? It is through the work of Christ alone.
And then Scripture makes very clear that this is received by you through faith alone.
That’s what St. Paul said in Romans 3:25: Christ was put forward “as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.”
And then Jesus Himself says:
“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned.”
And then St. Paul says in Ephesians 2:8–9:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Why does St. Paul make such a big deal about saying that it’s faith that receives this, not your works?
Because if we say that part of the equation of our salvation is your work, what is that going to do automatically? It’s going to take Christ’s work and lower it way down in importance, and it’s going to take me and raise me way up to be more important than I actually am.
What’s the reality? I’m over here dead in my trespasses and sins, and God has to do all the work to raise me up.
Jesus doesn’t just do 99% and then tell you that you have to do the rest, because even that would be impossible for us.
So St. Paul emphasizing that we are saved by grace through faith puts Christ’s work in its proper place.
Think again about the promise God gave to Abraham that he and Sarah would conceive a child even though they were both advanced in years.
Could anything of Abraham’s work accomplish this? Could positive thinking bring this about? No. There was nothing Abraham could do that would bring this about. It could only be the mighty and miraculous work of God.
And in the same way, there is nothing we can do to dig ourselves out of the hole of our trespasses and sins.
St. Paul says in Romans 4:
“For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the Law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the Law who are to be heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the Law brings wrath.”
Once we start emphasizing our own works, it becomes very easy for us to become those self-righteous hypocrites like the Pharisees in our Gospel reading.
They saw Jesus going to sinners and said, “Why are You hanging out with these people?”
And Jesus corrects them:
“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus wanted them to realize that they were not so righteous as they thought they were. They were sinners just like everyone else. They needed repentance just like everyone else.
Like St. Paul said in Romans 3:23:
“All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.”
We don’t want to elevate our works to the point where we become self-righteous hypocrites. We want to repent of our sins and throw ourselves only at the mercy of God.
But emphasizing our own works also leads us to despair. If my salvation depends on me, how can I ever really know if I’ve done enough?
That’s why the emphasis on faith elevates the grace of Christ. The weight of my salvation is not on my shoulders. It is on Christ and what He has already done for us.
Faith that justifies is to believe in God’s promise. It is to believe that for Christ’s sake the forgiveness of sins and justification are freely offered in Him.
Saving faith is this firm belief and trust in the promises of forgiveness that come through Jesus Christ alone.
And even this faith is not my own work, but a gift to me from God by the Holy Spirit. Like St. Paul says in Romans 10:17:
“Faith comes by hearing.”
This faith is not merely historical knowledge that Jesus existed, died, and rose from the dead. Even the demons know that. Saving faith is trusting that the forgiveness of sins won by Jesus on the cross is for you.
Saving faith is also not some idle faith that we can lay aside when it is convenient and then pick up again later. That’s not what Jesus means when He says to Matthew, “Follow Me.”
“Follow Me” means follow Me.
Faith clings to Christ and His promises throughout our whole lives, not just when it is convenient.
Saving faith is not merely “having faith” in a general sense. The emphasis is always on the object of our faith because it is Christ who saves us.
So saving faith is always faith in Christ, in His forgiveness, and in what He does for us.
Saving faith is not the type of faith that can coexist with open and intentional rebellion against God with no intention of repentance.
St. Paul asks in Romans 6:1–2:
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?”
And then in 1 Corinthians 6:9–11:
“9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
So how can St. Paul say both that we are saved by grace through faith and also that we cannot continue living in sin?
Because the life of faith is one that follows Christ.
If we deliberately continue in sin without repentance, we have elevated that sinful desire above the Word of God. That sin becomes our god instead.
Now, does that mean Christians never sin? No.
St. Paul himself says in Romans 7 that the good he wants to do, he does not do, but the evil he does not want to do is what he keeps on doing.
We will continue to struggle in this life. But what does the life of faith do?
The life of faith hears the Word of God, repents of sin, turns back to Christ, asks for forgiveness, and receives it.
Over and over again throughout our lives, we cling to the promise of forgiveness in Christ.
Saving faith is the trust Abraham had in the promises of God.
St. Paul says in Romans 4:
“He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead… or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God.”
What does this mean for us?
It means we cling to God and His promises of forgiveness no matter what we see happening in the world. Even when we struggle, face sickness, hardship, or death itself, we continue to cling to God and His promises.
And when Satan accuses you and says, “You’re not really forgiven,” saving faith clings to Christ anyway.
Because the blood of Christ is powerful to wash away all our sins.
Cling to those promises of Christ. No matter what you see in the world, no matter what Satan throws in your face, Jesus promises that He has forgiven you through the power of His blood.
Christ, our great Physician, came to heal those who are sick with sin. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
And He calls each and every one of us to follow Him, to receive the forgiveness of sins in His name.
And in His name we follow Him by faith.
Amen.
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