Today I set before you life and death: Meditations on Deuteronomy 30

Of the many theological errors prevalent in the Church over the centuries, two come to mind in regard to this passage of Scripture.  The first is the error of Pelagius, who thought that we could reach out to God on our own terms, and at least make a beginning of meriting what God gives to us as grace.  This is condemned by St. Paul as “works-righteousness,” and as the heresy of Pelagianism in the early Church—something St. Augustine worked hard to combat in his day, and Lutheran Reformers in their day.  The other error is a kind of fatalism or despair which seeks to shift human fault to God, while either excusing or condemning ourselves as too weak to please God.  This emerges as Antinomianism (the Law doesn’t matter, so I can do whatever I want, which is an idea condemned by St. Paul emphatically in his letter to the Romans,) and a kind of hyper-legalism that in the end attributes all our evil actions to God omnipotence (since God either could have preempted our evil, or is too powerful to resist if made us for evil—an unfortunate consequence of the Calvinistic doctrine of double predestination, also condemned in Holy Scripture.)  These, and their various shades of errors, either seek to add honor and glory to man (earning something from God, and taking from His glory,) or evading man’s responsibility for his life and actions (shifting man’s fault to God.)

Against these errors, Scripture presents a very clear and simple orthodoxy.  God creates only good.  It is man who corrupts the world and himself through the Fall.  Fallen man continues to seek after the corrupted desires of his heart.  God alone remains holy and perfect, while man flails about in his corruption and wickedness.  If the holy and immortal God had not reached out to save wicked and fallen men, there would be no salvation of man at all.  To this end, God sends the Word of His Law, to show man how far he has fallen from the holiness he was created to be, and his desperate need of salvation in the face of certain death and condemnation.  To the repentant and faithful sinner, God sends His Word of Gospel, His own Son, Jesus Christ, who suffers for the sins of the whole world, to be the Vicarious Atonement and grace that saves from death and hell.  All those who find themselves at peace with God, absolved of their sins, find themselves reconciled by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, simultaneously sinner and saint.  The Christian awaits, in faith, hope, and love, the final victory over death, which is the resurrection of the dead at Christ’s Second Coming.  In all of this, the Christian finds nothing to brag about, save Christ alone.  They own the guilt for all their sins, and cling to the grace of God which pays for them in Christ alone.

In such a state, the Christian recognizes that even their decision, their choice, to cling to Christ and His grace, is itself a gift from God.  This principle is shown not only in the New Testament, but the Old, as well.  In Deuteronomy 30, we have these famous words of Moses, very near the end of his 120 year life, as a servant of God and of His people:

See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess.  But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess.

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live

For us, as for the ancient Israelites, there is an inescapable reality.  For all our philosophy and politics, our games and our theology, two paths always lay before us:  Life and Death.  We can play mental gymnastics and try to convince ourselves that we are strong or clever enough to live forever on our own, but the icy grip of the grave shatters that delusion for everyone.  We can try to shift blame to God for our own inadequacy and evil, but in the end, it is still we who go down into the grave, and it is our breath that is stripped away from us as we die.  God is not mocked, and we shall reap what we have sown.  Our first parents, all the way down to us, have sown wickedness and evil, and each of us shall taste death.

But God does not leave us, to suffer our just fate alone.  Instead, wicked and condemned though we be, He sends His Son into our flesh, to bear our sin, and to be our Savior.  Jesus descends into our wickedness and misery, and with His perfect and immortal Life, suffers death and condemnation for us, that His Life might overcome death for all who will be found in Him.  Jesus becomes the Way, the Truth, and the Life promised to Adam and Eve at the Fall, and the One in whom all are saved from the way of death.  Even as He dies for the sins of all mankind, of all time and place, once and for all at Calvary, those who looked forward to Him and those who look back, are all saved by grace through faith in Him.  His is the great Work that saves, and His timeless Life is the light that penetrates every moment and corner of history.

And so, to the end of time, when the Lord of Glory returns to culminate history, these same two paths remain before every man, woman, and child.  There is the way of death which we know so well, and upon which our feet are so pleased to tread.  And there is the way of Jesus, which is Life forevermore—a life that begins in this world through imitation of His sacrificial Cross, and that erupts in imitation of His Easter Resurrection glory.  By Jesus’ Word, His servants continue to point the way to Life, to clear the brush and clutter that our world so often uses to confuse the junction of the paths.  From the earliest days of the Creation, to the earliest days of the Church, and down to our very day, when pastors and theologians have done their best, they have cleared away the humanly devised junk that clouds, obfuscates, or points away from Christ, so that all might hear precisely what God has said to the people.

Behold, I show you two ways this day; a path of Life, and a path of Death.  The way of Death you already know.  It is strewn with sour and bitter fruit of selfishness and wickedness, whose poison leads inexorably to death and hell.  But the path of Life is laid before you, as well.  This path is ever and always lighted by the selfless love and mercy of Jesus, who has given His life as a ransom for all who will believe in Him.  He calls to you, to walk with Him on the path of Life, and in Him, to live forgiven and free forever.  Turn from the path of death, and by the power of the Spirit of the Living God working through His Word, rise up to a new life in Jesus.

God created you for life.  Jesus came to give you His Life, for the life you lost.  The Spirit calls you through His Word to live forever by grace through faith in Jesus.  Choose Life.  Amen.