In Luther’s day (1500’s) the main challenge for God’s people is thinking they have to do a long list of things in order to deserve God’s favor. There are pilgrimages to different cities in order to look at relics. In other words, you would get forgiveness points, as it were, for visiting museums with things like hairs from the beard of John the Baptist, or Peter’s toenail or whatever. Everyone is trying to earn God’s love.

So Luther placed a strong emphasis on God’s underserved favor for us. Grace. It is not what you do that is important; it is what Jesus has already done. This is a wonderful correction for trying to earn the love of God or buy it.

But this isn’t really our challenge today. Trying to earn God’s favor. O, there is still plenty of that going around, but the real challenge today is actually intending to follow Jesus. To be obedient to his teachings. An easy test of how far we have to go is to measure your emotional response when I say these two words.

“Love.”

“Obey.”

How did you feel when you read each of these words? Warm and fuzzy with the first? “Yuck” with the second? Now you see how far we have to go. Love is a beautiful thing. Obedience is a beautiful thing. To obey is simply to respond to God’s love by following the teachings of Jesus so that you respond more and more like Jesus would respond if he were you in any given situation.

The greatest challenge of the church today is to say you love Jesus, you trust in him, but you really have no intention of following him. That thought never even crossed your mind.