190804 Sermon on Romans 6:19-23 (Trinity 7), August 4, 2019 In the Garden of Eden the serpent said to Eve, “You will not surely die.” The devil’s lie was in direct contradiction to God’s Word. God had said that if Adam and Eve should sin, then they would most certainly die. And yet the serpent says, “You won’t die.” God had made a law, but the devil said, “There is no such law.” It was the power of lawlessness that led Eve and then Adam to eat what God had forbidden with his law. They hoped that the law did not exist. They hoped that it wouldn’t be enforced. But, of course, the law did exist. It would be enforced. They were living in a fantasy land. They were living in a lie.As we well know, God was gracious to Adam and Eve. Contrary to their will he showed them that the law was real and that it would be enforced. This was contrary to Adam and Eve’s will because they would have liked to have continued on in their false hopes rather than being terrified by the sound of God coming after them in the Garden. But it was a good thing that their false hopes were demolished, because then they could build on a new foundation. They could build upon God’s own promise that he would send his Son to redeem them from their slavery to sin and the devil. Through this promised seed of the woman, there was reconciliation between God and Man. That’s because there would now be a righteousness that was not based upon the Law, upon what we have done or left undone, but upon the free gift that is given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.But the fall into sin has done its work. We are born blind to the truth. The lawlessness by which we ate in the Garden is the lie that comes much more naturally to us than the truth. Nobody has to teach us lawlessness. It is of the essence of our sinful flesh. Everybody wants to do whatever they want to do and not be punished for it. That is why Adam and Eve ate. That is why children disobey their parents. That is why we have done things that we know to be wrong. We do not think that things will go badly for us. We think things will turn out fine. The forbidden fruit looked good to Eve. That’s why she ate it. So also those things that are forbidden for us look good, otherwise we wouldn’t even be tempted to do it. The false hope that there is no Law or that it won’t be enforced is the only sensible reason why anybody would ever break the Law.Unfortunately, most people live their entire life entertaining this false hope, this lie. They hope that they will not be judged and will not be punished for their sins. There are very powerful forces that cooperate in the endeavor to keep people convinced of this. The devil is the author of this lie, and he knows well how to further it along. All the unbelievers that make up the world take lawlessness for granted. People are sinners. That’s just the way they are. So this is just what is considered normal. The only advice that the world has to offer in this situation is to make use of second chances and to try harder. This is very familiar advice to us. Try harder and never give up. Do this your whole life and then people will say nice things about you when you die. But who cares what people think? Who cares if the whole world thinks you are just swell? It is not to the devil or to our fellow sinners that we must give account. They very well might give us a free pass with a winky, winky at all our misdeeds. It is to God our Creator and Judge that we must give answer. What shall we say? … I tried? Can he possibly be convinced by such lies?And so if we want to help ourselves as well as our neighbor, then our first task must be to dispel this false hope, this lie, that God’s Law does not exist or that it won’t be enforced. The world believes that we Christians live in a fantasyland. It is actually the other way around. Christians know God’s Law and that he is deadly earnest about it. The whole Bible is testament to the existence of the Law and how God punishes those who break it. It is th