September 1, 2024 

Today's Reading: Mark 7:14-23

Daily Lectionary: 1 Kings 18:1-19; Ephesians 1:1-23

“Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?...What comes out of a person is what defiles him.” (Mark 7:18-20)

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. Have you ever heard the question asked, “Do we sin because we are sinners, or are we sinners because we sin?” How one answers this question reveals what they think is the source of our sin problem and how we can “fix it.”  

The Pharisees, as true devotees to the Law, believed we are sinners because we sin. On the surface, this idea makes sense and seems true to experience; after all, it is the dominant view of the religions of the world. Yet, what is at the heart of this view of sin and us– because it is a matter of the heart. The gist is this: a person is born with a pure, undefiled heart and only becomes a sinner when one chooses to sin. So, what’s the remedy? Stop sinning! Make better choices! Control yourself, and you will become less and less sinful. We can clean ourselves up by keeping the dos and don’ts of the Law. A person, in theory, by avoiding sin, has the power within to make themselves pleasing to God. In other words, we become our own saviors. Jesus had a problem with this sort of religious self-cleaning attitude and practice.  

Jesus gets to the heart of the matter by getting to the source of our “sin problem.” We sin because we are sinners. We have a heart problem. We were born with an unclean, defiled heart, and we can’t “fix it” by changing our behavior or by our self-determination to do the things we know we should and to stop doing the things we know we shouldn’t. You do not cure a disease by simply making the symptoms go away, and you cannot cure our sin problem by doing this or avoiding that. We need a new heart, and we can’t fix that! We need a physician of the soul to do heart surgery.  

Jesus not only helps to identify our sickness (our hearts), but He actually does something about it. He’s not into symptom management; rather, He goes after the disease for it’s a fatal one. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:12). Jesus has taken our disease upon Himself and dealt with it once for all. He has given us a new heart wrought by the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:9). God no longer sees us as “sinners who sin” but as new creatures in Christ purified in him! You are a walking miracle of redeeming grace! In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

O my Savior, help afford By your Spirit and your Word! When my wayward heart would stray, Keep me in the narrow way; Grace in time of need supply While I live and when I die. (LSB 611:5)

-Rev. Darrin Sheek, pastor at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church Anaheim, CA.

Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.

The new Guiding Word series takes you through all the books of the Bible in six volumes. Starting with the Books of Moses—Genesis through Deuteronomy—you will explore every passage of every chapter of each book with the help of maps, diagrams, links between the testaments, and clarification points.