1 John 5:4-10
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith. And who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for the witness of God is this, that He has borne witness concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son.
Sermon for Quasimodogeniti Sunday 4/24/22
The Victory that Overcomes the World
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
There is a lot of confusion in the world concerning religion. There is a great deal of unbelief, of course, but that is not what we want to focus on this morning. Those who worship false gods, like the Hindu's and the Moslems, and such, are confused, to say the least. Actually they are what we once would have called pagans. Then there are those who claim to worship the same God we do - Jews, and the Baha'ai and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and the like. They also worship false gods, by denying who God is and what He is like and what He wants from us and for us. Theirs is confusion of a sort too. We call that paganism as well. There are also those who do not acknowledge the existence of a god - atheists and Buddhists and so forth.
Our direction this morning really has nothing to do with that sort of confusion and unbelief. We want to look at the confusion that exists among those who call themselves "Christians." There is still a great deal of confusion among this group about what the Gospel is and how we access all that it promises and conveys. What it promises, of course, is the victory of Christ over sin and death and hell. Our text calls it "the victory that has overcome the world". That is our focus, this morning, and our theme is "The Victory that Overcomes the World".
"The victory that has overcome the world" is our faith. Our faith receives all that Christ has won for us. Our faith receives the forgiveness of sins. Our faith receives blessings and strengthening. Our faith receives eternal life. In this life and in this world we see none of what we receive. Our flesh experiences none of it. The world would have us sin and die like the rest of humanity. Our victory over this desire to destroy is our faith, which shares in the victory of Christ over sin and death and hell.
It is not our will, as so many like to think, that brings us the victory. Our will is corrupt and sinful even as Christians. We don't make the choice to believe. It is not our decision. Scripture tells us we do not have the ability to make that choice.
Our salvation does not depend on our good behavior, or our good works, or the depth and sincerity of our repentance, or on our doing some sort of penance, or anything like that. Most religions teach that it does, but this is simply not what the Bible tells us. The simple truth is that Jesus Christ has won us the victory, and it is ours by grace through faith. There is nothing else required of us and there is nothing else expected of us, and there is nothing else possible.
Faith is the victory. By faith we see the things of God and we live in the light of His promises. By faith people turn from pursuing works and riches and fame and all sorts of things to follow Jesus. By faith we expect things we have never seen and we struggle to be better people than we really feel that we are.
Not everyone who calls themselves "Christian" agrees – or believes, for that matter. Some people who want to claim a place in the Christian Church deny the Word of God altogether. They would tell us that it is a fiction, or a re-telling of history with a decidedly "Jesus-Movement" spin on it. Some call the Bible Man's Word about God, or Man's encounter with God. C.S. Lewis once wrote that if Christianity was a myth, then it was a true myth, by which he meant that it was so true to spiritual realities and truth that we could overlook the lack of historical truth in it. C.S. Lewis was a great writer, but not a great, or orthodox, Christian theologian.
Most who call themselves Christians do not consider the Bible to be false or misleading. They profess that they believe it is God's Word and honest and true in every word it says. Their most common problem is that they do not know what it says, or understand what it means, and what they do believe is often in direct contradiction of the Bible. Most common among the mistakes and confusions of a great many people is the idea of having to earn, deserve, work, merit, live up to, and be somehow worthy of salvation.
For such people, the victory of the Christian faith is often conceived of as managing to stop doing something they really like to do – or something really awful that they can't seem to control their desire to do. The less ambitious set their sights on making a decision, and praying a prayer. Still another group considers the victory to be remembering the day that they had a particularly powerful or religious feeling within them, so that they may be certain that they have what it takes - or had it once upon a time.
Our victory, that is to say the victory that overcomes the world, however, is faith – and by that I mean faith in what God has revealed. Those who try to find the victory elsewhere are calling God a liar, because His Word speaks clearly and teaches the Gospel clearly. John writes that those who do not believe what God has taught about Christ are guilty of "making God a liar" because they do not believe "the witness that God has borne concerning His Son." Remember those words the next time someone tries to tell you that sound doctrine is not important, or that feeling good about one another is more important than agreeing on what the Word of God teaches.
John also mentions the three witnesses - the water, and the blood and the Spirit. This is where John refutes the Gnostic heretics of his day. The Gnostics said that Jesus was fully human, and that at His baptism, the "Eon Christ" descended and took possession of the ordinary man, Jesus, making Jesus a great and wise teacher. Gnostics also taught that the "Eon Christ" departed from the man Jesus just before the passion, so that all Jesus suffered was merely one ordinary man suffering, and that His death was merely the death of man, not the death of the Son of God for us - and that His death had no particular redemptive power. This idea would destroy the Gospel, of course. The Gnostics didn't mind, because they believed that it was knowing and understanding the true nature of the universe, and of God - who they understood as different from the creator of the world - that saved one. They also denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ because material things – the physical things in and of this world – were evil and undesirable to the Gnostic theology, so who cares about a body?
John was saying here that Jesus came as the Son of God, the Christ, not just by means of a baptism, and not just to teach, but also to suffer and die. The water is not the only witness, nor the cause of salvation, but the blood shed on the cross is the very blood of the only-begotten of the Father - the Son of God. Jesus was Christ already at His baptism and He was Christ still at His death - and the witness of the Spirit is added - the Holy Spirit of God. It is the Spirit who bears witness to Christ, and His witness is truth because the Spirit is truth Himself.
John also makes a Trinitarian statement here - calling the Spirit "the Truth" . Jesus proclaims God is true and His word is the truth. Jesus also proclaims that He Himself is the Truth. Now John connects the Holy Spirit here, saying that "the Spirit is the Truth."
He takes this talk of the Spirit one step farther, saying that "The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself." When you believe in the Son of God - which includes believing all that God reveals to us about Him - then you have the Witness, which is the Truth, which is The Holy Spirit, which is God Himself, within you! This is something we teach, but I don't think people consider what it means very often. It means that God is always aware of your situation, and wrapped up in your life. God reveals this truth to us for our comfort.
John also uses this wonderful truth to contrast those who believe and those who do not. He says, "The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son." What a contrast! The one who believes has God dwelling within him and blessing Him, and the one who does not believe is guilty of calling God a liar, publicly. He doesn't need to say anything - his unbelief itself asserts that God is dishonest and lying simply by not believing what God has taken the time to reveal. He is guilty because he has not believed the witness that God has borne concerning His Son. The witness of God is what He has revealed in Scripture - so false doctrine is more than just a silly error, in the face of God's clear revelation of the truth in Holy Writ, false doctrine is blasphemy - it is calling God a liar.
It is what the world does. The world proclaims that God is not truthful, and that we cannot trust what He says. And so, our faith is the victory, just as John teaches us. We believe, and we have God in us, and we have forgiveness of sins and life everlasting and salvation, by grace, and received through faith. This faith, your faith, this is the victory that overcomes the world.
Your victory is not "out there". "And who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith."
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)
Monday, April 25, 2022
The Victory that Overcomes the World
Sunday, April 17, 2022
The New Celebration
1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Sermon for Easter Sunday 4/17/22
The New Celebration
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Hallelujah!
Although the celebration of Easter as a special holiday is ancient to us, if the Apostle Paul were to have encountered it, it would have been a new celebration. The earliest Christians did not have a special Easter holiday. They did celebrate Easter, but it was not a holiday. It was every day. They worshiped on Sundays, instead of the Jewish Sabbath, on Saturday, because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday. Every Sunday worship service was, to them, an Easter celebration.
Easter was much more than a holiday to the earliest believers. It was their entire faith. They lived in the afterglow of Easter. They had no battles between Lutherans and Catholics to consider. They had no family traditions, at least not at first. They worshiped in the heart of the excitement of the resurrection. Death was close and intimate in their world. Life was hard and often dull. The gods of their society were capricious and silly, and all authority tended to be dictatorial -- at home, in their temples, and from their government. The sudden reality of love and freedom from God and of the resurrection and glory to come was worth dying for, and so it was worth living for. So Easter was their entire faith.
We celebrate Easter as a holiday because it is not our entire faith. It should be, but we have grown content and complacent. We keep death at arm's reach with hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral parlors. We only occasionally stare into its face, and usually it is wearing make-up.
Our faith too often is about feeling good. Our faith is about nervous tension and relative (not real) economic changes. Only occasionally do we think much about dying, and only now and then do we ponder the resurrection. Forgiveness is a self-esteem thing, not a spiritual power. So naturally, Easter is a holiday -- a ‘set aside' for once a year.
But our comfort with this life and our satisfaction with ourselves and how we live is what St. Paul refers to in our text as boasting. Just prior to our text, Paul was writing about immorality that existed among the Corinthians. A man had taken his father's wife. We don't know if his father had died, but it seems unlikely, or she would be called his father's widow. She was not the man's mother, but probably a second wife - perhaps one of many, or perhaps the second wife after his father had been widowed.
What that man did is called "incest". If his father and his wife were divorced, such a thing was still totally out of bounds, even among the pagans. The Corinthian Christians, however, had tolerated this immorality without excommunicating the evildoer. Paul accused them of arrogance, in their patience with sin, and commanded them to reject such a man.
Then He said, "Your boasting is not good." Our comfort with our lives, and our contentment with our own immorality is such boasting. Patience with divorce and adultery and fornication and homosexuality and such is pagan and worldly, not godly or Christian. Open-mindedness with the rampant immorality of our television shows and movies is ‘boasting'. Approval of false teaching in the church, and in our society -- like praising the show Touched by an Angel, even though it contradicts Scripture at almost every single turn -- is such boasting. The boast is that we are so strong, that we can endure such evil among us and not be turned. We are so righteous that what God vehemently condemns, we can patiently approve.
"Your boasting is not good". The reality is that "just a little leaven leavens the whole lump". Proverbs said it too, "bad company corrupts good morals." If we wink at sin and tolerate sin and patiently endure sin, we will become twisted by sin again and lost. "Clean out the old leaven", Paul says. Don't give sin a foothold among you.
But then Paul says something strange -- he says that we are unleavened already! We are unleavened because Christ is our Passover -- the feast of the unleavened bread -- and He is not just the feast, He is the lamb, sacrificed to remove our guilt and shame. We have been unleavened by the forgiveness of sins, purchased and won for us by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the cross. That is what we celebrated on Good Friday.
Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Paul is inviting us to a new celebration. He is inviting us to celebrate not just a holiday, but life set free from sin. And we don't just celebrate it by having a special service once a year, or with the traditional ham dinner at home. We celebrate this feast with a life of purity and truth!
The feast he is talking about is not a meal, it is life itself in the presence of God for the sake of Jesus Christ. Jesus referred to eternal salvation and heaven as the wedding feast, but life here in this world, lived by faith in Jesus Christ, is also part of that feast.
Paul says, "Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." The old leaven is the old evils of life without Christ. They have been set aside by God on the cross. The resurrection of Jesus from the grave is God's unmistakable method of telling us that our sins have truly been forgiven. The leaven of malice and wickedness and deceit has been purged from us. Now we are invited to the new celebration without malice or any evil intentions. We are invited to the new celebration without wickedness of any sort. We are invited to celebrate with sincerity and truth.
We are invited to celebrate the new celebration of living a new life in Christ. That life is a life of honest worship. Not just singing hymns in a church, but living our lives in the knowledge of the resurrection and the sincere expectation that we shall rise too. Such worship is lived in the light of forgiveness. That means that we set aside sin, for we have been unleavened. Just as the Jews cleaned out all the leaven in their homes for the Passover, we must clean out all of the dishonesty and evil from our lives so that we may remain unleavened, unpolluted as best we are able by the pollution of sin.
It means humbling yourself. Boasting is living in sin as though you can handle it, as though you are master over sin. But if we do what is not right, if we lie and gossip and entertain ourselves with the lives and sins of others, that little bit of leaven gets in us and works in us to produce sinful desires and sinful thoughts, which lead inevitably to sinful actions.
Every day is to be a celebration that we have been set free from our guilt. We celebrate with thanksgiving. We celebrate by choosing to see the hand of God in all our blessings and opportunities, and trusting in and expecting the hand of God even in those things which trouble us and tempt us. Like those actors on Television who shout and leap for joy that they have kicked the habit of smoking, or lost all that weight, we should celebrate our forgiveness and salvation.
Jesus' resurrection means that we, too, shall rise from the grave. Our resurrection will be just like His, because it is tied to His and, in a sense, is His resurrection. We will rise because He paid for our sins, and death has no claim on us. We will rise suddenly and with the same sort of glory and excitement as we witness in the Biblical accounts of the first Easter.
We celebrate that resurrection now with faith and with a life which does not participate in the fear and frantic pursuit of hollow, sinful pleasures of this world. There are enough good and sincere and wholesome pleasures. We have no need for the private sins, the secret lusts, the sleazy, sinful passions. We don't need to do them, and we do not need to wink at them in our entertainments, or among our families and friends. Rather we need to hold up the love of God toward us. We need to remind one another of God's grace and forgiveness. We need to encourage one another in prayer and faith.
Jesus said, "I am the Bread of life." He is the unleavened bread with which we shall satisfy ourselves in the new celebration of the feast. His resurrection means that the promises made to us are true. There is life, even beyond death. There is so much that is so good, so much that it is well worth waiting for, and for which it is well worth disciplining ourselves.
Our boasting is not good, so let us set aside the boast, and humbly repent, knowing our forgiveness is as certain as the resurrection of Christ. And let us not presume that we have wisdom to righteously live our life as it seems good to us, but let us resolve to humbly seek His guidance and wisdom. Then we will celebrate the new celebration, where Easter is every day, because we look back at Jesus on the first Easter, and because we see what He has done and we hear what He has promised us if we live in Him, we can confidently look forward to our personal Easters.
He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Hallelujah!
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)
Sunday, April 10, 2022
The Mind of Christ
Thursday, April 07, 2022
Passions of the Passion: Betrayal
Mark 14:43-49
And immediately while He was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, came up, accompanied by a multitude with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. Now he who was betraying Him had given them a signal, saying, "Whomever I shall kiss, He is the one; seize Him, and lead Him away under guard." And after coming, he immediately went to Him, saying, "Rabbi!" and kissed Him. And they laid hands on Him, and seized Him. But a certain one of those who stood by drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear. And Jesus answered and said to them, "Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest Me, as against a robber? "Every day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize Me; but this has happened that the Scriptures might be fulfilled."
Sermon for Lenten Wednesday 6 4/06/22
The Passions of the Passion
Betrayal: Judas in the Garden
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I have to tell you the truth. We have already looked at the beauty of the Passion. It was the topic on Ash Wednesday, the love of Jesus Christ for us. In the words of the old saying, "that's all there is, there ain't no more." Everything else about the passion is ugly. The fear was huge and ugly. The anger and hatred, which was so undeserved, was ugly. The humiliation before Herod was so unjust and ugly. The abandonment by all those who were so close to Him was painful and ugly. And tonight is uglier yet.
Tonight, our passion of the Passion is the betrayal which Jesus experienced at the hands of one of the twelve He chose. The act was not a passion but a deed. But the sense of betrayal and the horror of it had to be painful and hideous. It was doubly painful for Jesus, for He was betrayed by one of the closest and most trusted of His disciples, and He knew what it meant and would mean for all eternity for Judas. Let us pause briefly on our passage to Good Friday this last Wednesday mid-week service, and examine the betrayal of our Lord as a passion of the Passion.
The betrayal did not come to Jesus as a complete surprise. There was no prophecy about a betrayal, explicitly, but Jesus knew it was coming. He had announced it at the last supper. Modern musicals and plays and such try to paint Judas in a sympathetic way. Judas is pictured as trying to protect Jesus, or as misguided but good. Those are fiction. Judas had been stealing from the group treasury for his own gain for some time, and when he betrayed Jesus, he was selling out his friend and teacher for the money.
Jesus undoubtedly knew these facts. Knowing probably did not make it any easier to deal with. When Jesus sent Judas off with the cryptic instructions to do what he must do quickly, He did not want it done, but He knew that it would be, and that it must be done if He was to complete the passion for our salvation. All the Scriptures could have taught Jesus about this was the price that would be paid, Zechariah tells us that, and that the money would profit Judas nothing. But Judas had been an early follower, and at one time so trusted that they made him treasurer for the group.
Jesus had invested those three years in Judas too. He had loved Him and taught Him, and chosen him too. To be clear, Judas was not fated to be the traitor. He chose that for himself. Jesus pointed out that the offense had to come, someone was going to betray Him. But Jesus did not elect Judas. Judas elected Judas to the awful task. Jesus was sorrowful about it. Jesus said that it would have been better for that man if he had not been born. The fact that one of His twelve was to turn against Him tore at Him.
Judas was not concerned about Jesus. That concern did not arise until it was far too late - something typical for us all in our sins. We often sin without a concern for the consequences to anyone else - sometimes without concern even for consequences to ourselves. Then, when the deed is done, and it is time, as they say, "to pay the fiddler," then we discover concern for the damage we have caused. Even after he witnessed the awful effects of his sin, Judas was more concerned with himself, crying out not that He had betrayed a beloved teacher, nor pleading for Jesus, but simply horrified for himself that he had betrayed innocent blood.
Judas proved that he had never really learned much from Jesus either. Judas did not repent. Instead, he despaired. He had not learned that God is loving and forgiving. He had not understood what Jesus was all about or what Jesus had come to do. He is the perfect illustration of the truth that just because someone attends church regularly, and seems to be one of us, does not mean that they know, or believe, what this is all about. Not every "church member" is a true member of the True Church - that is, a believer. Judas certainly had no concept of who Jesus really was, or Judas would not have had the temerity to betray the Son of God into the hands of those who hated Him. Poor Judas had been with Jesus the whole time and had not yet figured out what was going on. Nor would he. He committed suicide rather than confess, repent, and be forgiven.
And there can be no doubt that Judas would have been forgiven. It is not a simple coincidence that the greatest hero among the disciples and the traitor were both guilty of turning away from the Lord. One of them repented and saw the risen Lord and was forgiven. The other despaired and took matters into his own hands and died. The contrast cannot be more striking.
Jesus' comment about how it would have been better for the one who would betray Him to never have been born tells us of the other pain of betrayal. Jesus had come to rescue mankind from sin. He was about to suffer the unimaginable. He did it all so that none might perish, but all who would not reject His grace, but who would believe, might have forgiveness and life everlasting. But here was one of His own, one of the twelve. This one, near and dear to the Lord, was about to betray Christ, and despair of his sin, and die without forgiveness and go to hell. And there was nothing that Jesus could do about it.
What pain and sorrow must have filled Jesus at the thought that Judas was going to die. We might be tempted to think that Judas deserved it, but then, don't we also deserve what Judas got? Haven't we all sinned? It is true, we haven't sinned the sin of Judas – but knowing the price paid and believing the Gospel, we have gone on to deliberate sins at times, acting as though Christ had not suffered for us to buy us out of sin. Yes, Judas had it coming, but so do we.
But Jesus had spoken through the prophets in the Old Testament saying, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that all should repent and live! He came to redeem us - and even Judas - but He also had to know that Judas would not taste the goodness of God but would die, none the less. What a betrayal! Judas did what had to be done. He chose to do it, selling Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver, and then he threw the money away, and denied the goodness of his Lord and threw the greater thing, his own life, away as well. How awful, how painful, how frustrating and horrible to bear this must have been for Jesus! Even before He suffered all He would have to suffer, He lost this one, one of the twelve.
But Judas could have repented and been forgiven. That truth stands before us as a comfort and a challenge. We cannot view this passion of the passion without hearing the call to repent and to believe. We do not need to follow Judas into despair and death. We know that Jesus lives and that He forgives us when we repent of our sins and trust in His promise to forgive us. Lent is a penitential season. We take this time to consider our sins and our Savior, and repent. The sorry tale of Judas should urge us toward that faithful Lenten observance, that we might celebrate the joy of Easter all the more fully and sweetly.
This passion of the Passion was a dirty and ugly thing. It was not necessarily a major player in the agonies of Christ, but like the sense of abandonment last week, served to make every aspect of the pains of our Savior truly painful and awful agony - the cup of suffering filled right to the brim for us. It was suffering we earned, but Jesus bore in His body, and His mind, and His soul on the cross. Let us take this moment – take all the time you need – to full appreciate the passions of the passion. Then, let us repent of our sins, and believe the Gospel which Jesus purchased with His great Passion! Your sins are forgiven!
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)
Sunday, April 03, 2022
Cleansed from Dead Works
Hebrews 9:11-15
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, in order that since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
Sermon for Judica Sunday 04/03/22
Cleansed from Dead Works
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
We have all heard the slogan in laundry commercials – a deeper clean. I am not sure what it means, in terms of laundry. Either something is clean or it is not. I learned that from my mom. I would clean it, and it would look good to me, but my mother would say it was still dirty, and I would need to clean it again. Just about the time I figured out my mother's standards, I married a wife, and she made my mom look positively unhygienic. One more time, I learned that either it was clean – or it wasn't.
Our text actually speaks the same way. It talks about cleansed, and then it talks about more cleansed – but the reality is still that clean is clean – the comparative language is used for effect and instruction. So, who am I to argue with God's own words? Our theme this morning is "Cleansed from Dead Works."
The lesson is aimed at those who were raised and schooled in ancient Judaism. It speaks to those who witnessed and understood the sacrificial system of Israel, and who had been to the temple. They are the ones who would understand the High Priest talk and the sacrificial system and its meaning. If we want to appreciate what Hebrews is saying here, we have to be able to make the same sorts of connections in our minds that they would have made.
The comparison here is between the heavenly and the earthly. Hebrews says that Christ entered as High Priest into the greater and more perfect tabernacle, one not of this creation. He entered into the heavenly tabernacle. Every Jew knew that the tabernacle of Moses and the temple of Solomon were merely earthly representations, copies if you will, of the heavenly tabernacle. Each element and the size were representative of the reality of the temple in heaven. Is that temple a physical place, like the one on earth? Don't know. But the earthly reality reflects and represents the heavenly reality – and the heavenly is more real and substantial that the earthly whether it is a building or the reality of the glory and worship of God.
Jesus entered into this heavenly tabernacle, the heavenly holy of holies – the very presence of the Father – having made atonement for our sins. The entire life of Jesus from His conception in the Virgin Mary on and His suffering and death and burial are all part of that atoning sacrifice. The cross was the altar of sacrifice. It was the blood of the Son of God, shed for us, that gave meaning to the animal sacrifices throughout the ages. It was the Lamb of God that made the Passover Lamb significant – that caused God to choose the lamb for that sacrifice, and for the sacrifice of Yom Kippur – the day of atonement each year in the Jewish calendar.
It didn't work the other way around. The Jewish sacrificial system did not give meaning and substance to what Jesus was doing – He was the meaning and substance of the Jewish sacrificial system. He was the meaning of every holiday and every offering and every Sabbath. Those customs and those celebrations and those sacrifices were all teaching tools to prepare the minds of the Jews – and our minds – to understand the reality of Jesus and the cross and what it all means.
Jesus entered the presence of God with the blood of the sacrifice, just as every high priest had done since Aaron. But he did not enter with the covering of the blood of sacrificial goats and calves. He entered with the covering of His own blood – the very life-blood of the Son of God.
Hebrews makes the logical, theological case. If the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled worked for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of the very Son of God be effective for cleansing? Of course, to follow this argument, you have to be aware of the sacrificial system and how the blood of these various animals was used. You have to go back in Exodus to the establishment of the covenant and how it was sealed. The people were sanctified and the original covenant was ratified through the blood of goats and bulls – and the blood of a heifer was sprinkled on the tabernacle and the ashes were kept for purification from sin in the divinely ordained processes of the original tabernacle.
If a mere animal could make such a difference, then how much more of a difference does the blood of the very Son of God make? That's the marvel of it! If the blood of a goat or the ashes of a heifer could cleanse anyone, and sanctify one to approach the altar of God or the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies, what kind of power must the blood of Jesus Christ have? How deeply must that blood cleanse? How blessed and full of glory it would be to be sprinkled with the precious blood!
And you have been sprinkled! Of course, the blood of the animals got their power to cleanse from this life giving flood of the blood of Jesus. It was looking forward to Jesus and the sacrifice of the true Lamb of God that gave the power to cleanse to the Old Testament sacrifices. It was trusting in the promise of God to work out this salvation through Jesus that imparted such cleansing power.
How much more now? How much deeper a cleansing. This is not simply the cleansing of the flesh, as was the Old Testament cleansing. This cleansing goes right through to the spirit! This cleansing is a deeper clean. It cleanses us right to the spirit to cleanse your conscience from dead works so that you may and you will serve the living God! Ancient Israel constantly failed and waffled and turned away from the Law of God. It did not matter if we were speaking of the Law for the individual in the living of their daily life, or the Law of the Temple. Israel kept wandering. The people turned to idols stupidly and unfaithfully. The Temple priest abandoned the ancient practices time and time again – and finally even installed altars to other deities and the worship of false gods in the very temple of the Lord. They were not cleansed from works and enabled to serve God.
Their apostasy was a lesson to us. We have been sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ for a deeper clean. Your sins have been forgiven. The Law of God has been taken out of the way, between you and God, and no longer figures into the calculation of your salvation. Only Jesus and His life and His death are a factor. You have been set free from dead works – doing things just to look religious, or doing things to earn you way to heaven. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved. Heaven is a gift which is poured out for all and received through faith. And you, who believe, have the Holy Spirit dwelling within you, strengthening you and guiding you and giving you the power and desire and ability to serve God.
This doesn't mean that what you do doesn't matter – it means that what you do doesn't earn salvation. But if you are God's and you have been sprinkled with the blood of the very Son of God, and you have been cleansed clear through to the conscience – then what you do matters a great deal, and your works serve God. What you do, then, is vitally important.
Our text calls this new reality of forgiveness and life, set free from the Law, a new covenant – or, as it is better translated, a new testament. The death of Jesus Christ has changed the rules, so to speak. Once, faithfulness to God and trust in Him was indicated and revealed and measured by faithfulness and obedience to the Law. He who trusted God did what the Law said, trusting that it was best, and that God would bless their faithfulness. They brought their best to the sacrifice, trusting God to make the rest enough and more. They brought the tithe, trusting that God would make the other 90% sufficient and even abundant, just as God had promised. Faithfulness meant obedience and was measured by obedience.
In this new testament, because of Jesus, faithfulness means faith and trust, and is measured by faith. That means that we cannot see the faithfulness of others – only what they do. Hopefully, what they do is good and decent, but it not the measure of faithfulness or salvation. We don't earn salvation by what we do. It has been earned for us, and given to us, and we have received it through the faith we have, as through a pipe. Jesus did all of the work, and He mediates this salvation to us by grace through faith. That means He chooses us for His own good reasons, and makes us His own by the power of His Word preached – we call that whole thing "grace" – and having made us His own, He pours into us forgiveness, life, and salvation though the faith He has created in us.
So where do we come in? Where does our "stuff" – our works – come in? It comes in at the point of serving God. We live a witness. We support His work, His church, His pastors. We do missions, not as though God cannot do it without us, because He can and does. We do it to serve Him and please Him as loving children often do things to please their parents, just because they love Him. We give and serve and love with abandon, because Jesus had already done what we needed done, and given us all that we need so that those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
So we serve Christ, having received the deeper clean of the Gospel. So, step up and serve. Give freely, do what you do from a willing and free spirit. There is no law, but the law of love. Only love and the Holy Spirit should compel you to come, to go, to give of your time or talents or treasures. Freely you received, Jesus said in Matthew 10, freely give. You have been cleansed cleansed from dead works, that you may serve the living God.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Persecuted by the Flesh
Galatians 4:21-31
Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise. This is allegorically speaking: for these women are two covenants, one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. For it is written, "REJOICE, BARREN WOMAN WHO DOES NOT BEAR; BREAK FORTH AND SHOUT, YOU WHO ARE NOT IN LABOR; FOR MORE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE DESOLATE THAN OF THE ONE WHO HAS A HUSBAND."
And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. But what does the Scripture say? "CAST OUT THE BONDWOMAN AND HER SON, FOR THE SON OF THE BONDWOMAN SHALL NOT BE AN HEIR WITH THE SON OF THE FREE WOMAN." So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman.
Sermon for Laetare Sunday
3/27/22
Persecuted by the Flesh
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
Repetition is the mother of pedagogy. I could say that in Latin too, but I figure the English is stupefying enough. It means that repeating is the foundation of teaching - specifically of teaching children. But it works for adults too. Let me illustrate: You have all learned that our failing economy is former President Trump's fault, not the current administration's. Whether you believe it or not is not important, you've heard it until you could say it in your sleep. You know that the evils of capitalism stand at the heart of our nation's troubles, that Republican is bad and Democrat is good, unless you listen to Tucker Carlson or that evil Fox News. You know that anything but open handed acceptance of the GBTQ+ Agenda is homophobia, saying anything about people of color except praise is racism, that noticing that Jews are present is anti-Semitism, and the silly idea that terrorists tend to be Moslems is both racist and Islamophobic. And Critical Race Theory establishes that white folk are racist by race and from the womb.
Whether you agree with any of the statements I just made or not is not the issue – it is the politically correct line repeated to us until you know it without thinking about whether you agree with it or not. This same process that has been used to tell us that our religion belongs in private - or in your church on Sunday - and that holding faithfully to the teachings of the Bible is superstitious, fundamen-talist, uneducated, old-fashioned, and bigoted, and that you have no right to impose your religion – or morals – on anyone else. It doesn't seem to strike any one that every one of these statements is some else's religion and/or their values imposed on you repeatedly until you don't stop to think about its rightness or wrongness. You simply live with a sensitivity to these social rules and allow the arrogance and judgmentalism of the pagans among us to silence you, and train your public and private expressions, and force you to kowtow to their sensibilities.
This constant drumbeat of proper public opinion - or politically correct expression - is a part of what the Bible describes as being persecuted by the flesh. That is the focus of our Epistle lesson, and the theme of our sermon this morning: Persecuted by the Flesh.
Now I chose the most egregious political examples I could think of because I know that everyone has heard them, and you probably have an opinion on each one - so I can count on getting more than just your intellect focused for a moment. It doesn't matter how you might respond to them - I reckon some of them are hot-buttons for some of you, and perhaps different ones are for others. My point is not to address these slogans and values individually but to make you aware of the process – and the hostility of the world - and our own flesh - to the Christian faith.
The world hates Christ, Christians, and the Church. To the world, they are indistinguishable as objects to be lied about, disabled, or destroyed. You may have noticed that every time anyone with any sort of religion does anything that we don't like, somehow Christians get thrown into the mix. News reports about a child abuser almost always focus on the religion of the abuser, if there is one, as though the religion actually played a part in making the pervert perverted. When a politician speaks what our culture does not want to hear, if he is a Christian, we hear complaints about someone forcing our religion on others – or about some supposed plot to bring about a theocracy in America. Even when the evil-doer is not Christian - such as when Moslem terrorists attack us - somehow the news report gets around to Christian extremism, or Fundamentalism, and by that term they mean faithful Christians like us. In such reports, we are likened to the terrorists, or it is suggested, at the very least, that Conservative Christians are every bit as much of a danger to society as "they" are, whomever they may be.
Our culture is drifting - some would say speeding - toward thought control. We hear about thoughts which are unspeakable in polite society - and there is an effort to make certain thoughts illegal to express. They call it a hate crime. Speaking negatively about homosexuality, or denying the holocaust, is already illegal in some countries. Expressing the wrong opinion about climate change in America can cost you your job, in some places and in certain professions. Christians have to stand on the politically incorrect place in such a debate, because to take the politically correct point of view is to imagine that God is not in control.
But when the Apostle wrote about being persecuted by the flesh, he wasn't just thinking of society outside of the Church, but of the opposition in the church and even within ourselves to the Gospel. Paul was facing the Judaizers. They were the ones who wanted the law first, who taught that you had to keep the Law before you were fit for the Gospel. Now, the specific Law they often focused on was the law of circumcision - but it doesn't matter which Law you use. Whenever you make even a part of the Law a requirement of salvation, you destroy the Gospel altogether.
You see, the Gospel is the gift of forgiveness, life and salvation. It is grace. The Law is about obedience, worthiness and ‘earning it'. If you must first prove yourself worthy before you can receive the gift, it is not really a gift. When you earn something it is called a wage. But the Gospel presents us with that which we do not deserve and have not earned.
Following the law leaves one constantly unsure. Luther called it "the monster of uncertainty". Have I done enough? Have I done it well enough? Did I follow the right rules? Have I kept the faith enough? Was my commitment pure enough? Did I start early enough? As long as any part of my salvation depends upon me, I can mess it up. I can fail. I can fall short. Therefore, I can never be confident.
The Gospel takes all of that uncertainty away. My salvation does not depend on me . . . it depends on Christ. Did He do it right? Did He do enough? The resurrection says, "YES!" Jesus did what I needed to do, and died in my place for my sins and failures. When Jesus arose, He was proclaiming first and foremost that His death was enough - - and more than enough! If He had not fully paid the penalty, He would not have risen from the dead. But now Christ has risen, and the promises of God are secure. I have been redeemed. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.
Nevertheless, most churches teach some sort of earning, deserving or ‘first you do your part, and then God will rescue you'. These false teachings are also part of being persecuted by the flesh. With Rome, the doctrine is that Jesus cleanses you from your original sin, and then you must work your way through the pearly gates, with the help of the saints and Mother Mary.
With some Protestant churches, you are expected to live without sin, if you are really a Christian. Strict Calvinism said that it didn't matter, since you were predestined for heaven or hell anyway. Your goal was just to show forth your election by holy living. Most modern Protestants, on the other hand, believe that all you need to do is make the decision, or pray the prayer of faith, sincerely. Of course, those who fall away after seeming to be Christian raise the question, "Was my decision sincere, or sincere enough?" Or, "Do I really believe?"
The answer to those questions is found in my conduct, or so they say. I must live purely enough, or I prove that my decision was not genuine. The result, however, is that I am left unsure, hoping but not confident. Some seek to assuage the lack of certainty by stirring up good feelings, religious and uplifting emotions. This leads to entertainment worship and "praise services" which focus on stirring up the right sorts of feeling in me. The problem is, there is no mention of ‘feelings' in the Bible as that which saves you. Even if it were true that how you felt was a measure of your relationship with God, it still doesn't help. People don't often die in the praise service. They don't usually die feeling good and religious. They die in pain. Or, they die suddenly, without a moment to feel out how they are doing. Or, they die in sickness and sometimes wondering why they are suffering and not others who appear to them to deserve such agony more.
In the end, the Monster of Uncertainty is still there. That is also being persecuted by the flesh. Only the Gospel can silence that monster. The Catholic wonders if he – or his or her loved one – has done enough. The Gospel tells us that Christ has done everything needed, and more! The Protestant wonders if he or she was sincere, or if it was really enough. The Gospel teaches that Christ took up you sins, paid the price by dying for you on the cross, and pours out freely the forgiveness of sins.
Human nature even fights against this. This is the final form of being persecuted by the flesh, although this time it is your own flesh that does the persecuting! There is no such thing as a free lunch, or so they say. The Gospel tells us that it is not free — but Christ picked up the tab, so to speak. He paid. He won. He is sufficient. You are forgiven. You are redeemed. You have the promise and the gift of everlasting life, and resurrection from the grave on the last day, just as Christ rose - and just as certainly as Christ rose from the dead. And that is history.
In our Epistle, Paul used the events and people of the life of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar as an allegory in order to teach. Sarah is the Gospel, and Hagar is the Law. The son of Sarah is the heir and free, the son of Hagar is the slave. Just so today, the Gospel sets us free from condemnation and uncertainty and fear of what is to come. The Law still accuses and makes one more aware of failing to measure up than confident of meeting the requirements. The Law always accuses, that is a theological principle. That is particularly true when you know that the standard required by the Law is perfection. I might be perfect today – but I am certain I was not always so. And to get to perfection, you must start with perfection. You cannot un-ring the bell of sin.
But Jesus never did sin. His perfection is pure and sinless and from start to finish. It is this perfect righteousness which He gives to you as He takes away your sin. It is what is left after forgiveness. He got your just deserts on the cross. You get His, all that He has earned and deserved, in the absolution, and in the Holy Supper, and in eternal life. In the Gospel you are free.
That freedom gives you the power to be holy also in your conduct. It gives you permission to aim for it without fear that your sin - your missing the mark of perfect holiness - will destroy you. Your sins are forgiven. You can aim for holiness - and each day put to death the man of sin in the waters of your baptism, and start fresh again, because your salvation does not depend on you. It depends on Jesus Christ. And His victory is, as they say, history. It is also our future. And it is our present, right now.
The creeping doubts, the feeling that we ought to be better, the desire for greater holiness and the fear of sin are all part and parcel of the law. Some of those feelings are true. They remind us that we are sinners, and we still need our Savior. But as the foundation of one's hope for salvation, they are the baggage of the sons of Hagar, the heirs of the Law and of condemnation. There is no comfort, and no salvation in them. They are the remnants and evidence that we are still and always Persecuted by the Flesh. But they are not part of the Gospel.
"So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman."
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)
Sunday, March 20, 2022
Imitating God
Ephesians 5:1-9
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints; nor filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather the giving of thanks. For this you know, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them; for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit of light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth).
Sermon for Oculi Sunday 3/20/22
Imitating God
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I suspect that it is not always so. Sometimes people imitate others to mock them. That is not possible, however, when the one being imitated is God. God is holy and good - it is difficult to imagine how one could mock goodness by being good, or holiness by being holy.
I imagine that it sounds redundant to say ‘God is holy' and ‘God is good' in the same sentence, but it is not. God's holiness is much more than His goodness - although we often lump the two together. But when God calls on us to be holy, He is asking for more than just being good. He is asking for us to be different than the world around us. "Holy" means "set apart". It means reserved for special purpose. It means "unique" and "peculiar". Just as God is One-of-a-kind, and we would difficulty imagining God out for a night with the boys, bowling and having a few beers, we are to be – and to consider ourselves – set aside for something different, not like everyone else, made for something special.
As we wrestle with the Epistle lesson, this morning, we are going to consider what it is that God expects of us and what it means to be an imitator of God. Our theme sums up the exhortation of the text, where Paul exhorts us work at Imitating God.
First, this text is chiefly a law text. It is all about what we are to do and not to do, and how we are to be. Paul is preaching sanctification here. That is why it is a Lenten Epistle. We read it, and see how we are to be, and discover how far short we fall from what we are called to be by God. That leads us to repentance. Repentance is appropriate any time - and every day - but Lent is a penitential season, and so the particularly pointed texts tend to that lead us to feel guilty, and therefore lead us to repentance, are appropriately Lenten texts.
Paul tells us to be imitators of God. We cannot do all that God can do, so this imitation is supposed to be in a particular sense. Paul spells that out too. We are to walk in love just as Christ loved you. Now the way that Christ loved you was not just a warm feeling in His heart. He may have had that too, the Bible never says. What Jesus did – the way that Jesus loved you – was to give Himself up for you - an offering and a sacrifice to God.
I found it interesting that the word for "gave himself up" is also the word for "betray." Just as Judas betrayed Christ, Jesus betrayed Himself for us. He turned against His own self-interest on our behalf. He surrendered Himself into the hands of those who would kill Him for you. That is the nature of His love. Paul describes this betrayal as "an offering and a sacrifice". The two words are very similar in the Greek. You could use the words interchangeably. The distinction, I think, is that the first word points to the act of making the offering or sacrifice, and the second word points more directly to the thing sacrificed.
We sing about this wonder in the communion hymn, "Draw Near and Take the Body of the Lord", with the words, "Himself the Victim and Himself the Priest." The love of Jesus Christ does not consist primarily in the affection that He feels toward us, although I believe He does feel genuine affection for us as well. The love to which Paul was pointing was at work in the giving of Himself into torment and death for our salvation. It is the cross, and the bitter passion which surrounds it, that marks the love of Christ that we are to follow as we imitate God. His love purchased your salvation, your resurrection to eternal life, and your forgiveness. Your sins are forgiven!
Therefore, Paul writes, be imitators of God. The imitation may not require you to suffer as Christ did, or die a grisly death. It might, but maybe not. But it will require you betray yourself into holy living - which is to say, that holy living may not always be fun, or seem to be in our best interest. Specifically Paul is intending to address your conduct. But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints; nor filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather the giving of thanks.
Immorality refers to sexual immorality. The word is also used for male prostitution, which is heterosexual men allowing homosexual men to use them for gratification. The word translated "impurity" refers to any sort of uncleanness. Anything not clearly above board and decent is included here. Greed is greed, grasping and selfish. These things are to be so far from our character and conduct that they are not even talked about among us. When Paul says not to let them even be named, he is saying that we should not even mention such things. This is part of walking as children of light.
I would hazard a guess that most of us have little problem with behaving in these ways - or at least we think we have these mastered. Paul tightens the noose: nor filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather the giving of thanks. Here he marks out filthiness - obscenity or indecent behavior. He names silly talk, which we would call foolish talking, saying things that are silly or foolish, or unhelpful. How much of our conversation is foolish - not edifying, not uplifting, not about real things, but foolish and to no point, or even about things that are detrimental? We babble about TV shows which fill our eyes and ears and minds with obscenities and sex, and show us people doing things for our entertainment that we Christians are not even to contemplate! So we end up talking about things that we have just heard are not even to be mentioned among us. How foolish!
Then Paul includes coarse jesting. The Greek word literally means "well-turned". It refers to double entendres, to dirty jokes and vulgar wit - the stuff most of our comedians spew forth. Humor which pries open our souls with laughter and pours into us lust, sex, cruelty, and a spirit of ridicule toward others is what Paul is referring to. Sadly, much of our humor ridicules us – Christians, moral people. To ridicule means to make look ridiculous. These are the things – silly talk and coarse jesting and filthiness – which are not proper for God's people. Absolute avoidance of them, not even allowing them into our speech is what Paul tells us is proper among saints - among holy people. Instead, we are to be giving thanks - and not just silently, but allowing it to pepper our talk. We should be saying, ‘thank God!' or "Thanks be to God!", or "This is God's doing!" We should be giving thanks all of the time. The other things, the silly talk, the filthiness, and the coarse jesting, these are the things which, according to God, are the reason that the wrath of God falls on the sons of disobedience.
Now sons of disobedience does not refer just to their behavior, but to their nature. They disobey the Gospel that is, they do not believe it. The condemnation of the unbeliever is due to his or her unbelief, that they do not obey the Gospel, that they do not obey Jesus Christ. Then, in the judgment, the wrath of God is poured out on them for their conduct, since they are not willing to receive the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation. It is also poured out on them in this life, many times, because they stubbornly and wickedly refuse the grace of God - purchased by Christ betraying Himself into torment and death for them and on their behalf. They do not place their trust in God nor do they hope in Jesus Christ. But you do. Therefore do not be partakers with them.
It is simple to comprehend. God reminds us through Paul, this you know, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. That is who you once were: You were formerly darkness but now you are light in the Lord. Now you are holy – not in and of yourself, but through Christ, and by His grace. Now you have been made light and holiness and blessedness in the Lord. Just as those who are of darkness and of disobedience walk in those twisted ways, so you, who are of the light and holy are to walk as children of light. This is who you are now. This admonition is very much like when my mother would ask me if I was too dumb to be left alone, or too immature to be trusted, or something like that. I would say, "No." Then she would say, "Then act like it." You are God's people. These sorts of behaviors are not holy. They are not becoming of God's holy people. You are children of light. Walk as children of light. That is how you go about imitating God!
Of course, we have all failed in this. We like our jokes. We enjoy our TV. We want to talk about stuff that isn't always the sort of stuff we should talk about. That is where the imitation of God comes in - specifically the imitation of Jesus and His love. We need to make an offering of ourselves. We need to sacrifice our lives, our conduct, our humor, our entertainments. We need to set aside what is natural for our flesh and deliberately cultivate the holy things of God in us, in our speech, in our conduct. This is the same thought as Romans 12:1 and 2, I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Living in the light of the Gospel will be natural in heaven. Here, on earth, among sinful men and trapped in bodies of sinful flesh, it is going to be painful at times, difficult when you least expect it, unnatural seeming, and will require constant, deliberate attention. Our love for God will be as it was for Christ, evident in our behavior, our actions, our words. Our love for God is revealed in our imitating God.
We are light in the Lord; walk as children of light. Paul even tells us what that means - the fruit of the Spirit of light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. That means just what you think it means. Goodness, not evil, is appropriate to us. The Spirit of God in us will guide us into holiness and righteousness, not sin. Above all, we will walk in truth. That means being honest with one another - and being honest with ourselves. And if we are honest, we will confess how far short of the goal we have come so far - and we will repent, and we will eagerly hear the word of absolution, and eagerly come to the altar to receive the gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation offered here. Paul says that you already know all this, so the only reason for bringing it up is to remind you, and encourage you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)