All, or Nothing at All
Text: I John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12 The Beatitudes
Remember when Wendy’s kicked off their anti-McDonald’s Chicken McNugget campaign? “Parts is parts!” The relic veneration system is just like that. Pray to the parts of the Saints. Some very extraordinary saints led such holy lives that they earned way more merits than they needed to buy their ticket to heaven. St. Paul, St. Peter, St. Mary, etc. So all that extra merit goes into the treasury of merit in heaven. Pray over that saint’s parts, and some of that saint’s merit gets direct-deposited into your account. Now you need to get more parts! That’s the pieces-parts method. If you collect them all, you get your golden ticket. The saints are your go-between.
The world and our sinful nature believe the only way to be blessed by heaven is the old-fashioned way, we earned it. Just like the old Smith-Barney investment commercials. The world believes as Rome does: God gives you a piece of grace. If you do well with that, he’ll give you some more. You don’t get dessert unless you clean your plate. If you are a waste of grace, God cuts you off. It’s all or nothing at all. Secular society works this way, and most of the world’s religions do also.
The reality is God’s law teaches us we either get all the grace, or we get nothing at all. It’s not the amount of merit credit we gather and hoard. God’s accounting records don’t record our credits and debits. It isn’t your good intentions and your selfless deeds that make you worthy of God’s approval. Our blessedness is not a tit-for-tat of our efforts.
After the fall, we lost all our merit. No blessedness at all. Even if we want to do good, our fallen nature cannot know what is truly good. Our best effort at collecting good works is tainted with sin and self-pride. Your works wrote a check your soul can’t cash. God’s law is like that. The law is good, but it also condemns sin and deeds tainted with sin. Every single work from every single soul.
That treasury of merit didn’t belong to the saints of blessed memory, the pope, the Southern Baptist Convention, or even the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. It is Christ’s, and He bought it with His precious blood. All the baptized receive His merit, and are His blood-bought saints. Not nothing at all, but all. No in-between but Christ, our intercessor. Your works have nothing to do with anything. Christ’s merit, however, means everything, and He gives it all to you.