Baptism of Our Lord
1
Co 1:26-31
1/7/18
“After all, you’re not so
great.” That’s what the apostle Paul is
saying to the Corinthians in our text this morning. He writes, “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were
wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of
noble birth.”
It was a
reality of that was impossible to deny. For
the most part, the Church was comprised of the poor, women and slaves. To be
sure, there were a few Christians who fit the categories Paul listed, and they
were certainly important for the Church. We have seen in our Bible study that Luke goes
out of his way in the Book of Acts to mention when people like this converted
to faith in Christ. But Paul was right:
not many were wise according to worldly standards; not many were powerful, not
many were of noble birth.
In fact,
Paul goes on in our text to describe the Corinthians as weak, low, and
despised. He says, “God chose what is
low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing
things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”
The apostle
is using the Corinthians as an illustration of the way God works. God does not
do things in the way the world expects – in ways that make sense to the
world. If you want proof of this, look
no further than the cross. Paul has just
said, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us
who are being saved it is the power of God.
For
it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of
the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom
of the world?”
God takes the way the world does
things, and turns it on its head. The apostle explains, “For since, in the
wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God
through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand
signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block
to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of
God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
We see this truth on display today
in the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord.
You see it in John the Baptist’s response to Jesus. Jesus came to John who was baptizing in the
Jordan River. John’s ministry was
calling Israel to repentance. His
baptism was a baptism of repentance – by submitting to John’s baptism people
showed they repented of their sin and were looking for Yahweh’s salvation.
When John
saw Jesus he responded, “I need to be baptized
by you, and do you come to me?” In fact John
wanted to prevent it from happening. But Jesus said, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to
fulfill all righteousness.” We learn that when Jesus was
baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and the heavens were opened to
him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on
him. And a voice from heaven said, “This
is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Jesus submitted to a baptism of
repentance – a baptism that was for
sinners. At that event the Spirit descended on Jesus and God the Father
spoke words that drew upon Isaiah chapter 42 as he said, “Behold
my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my
Spirit upon him.” Jesus is identified as
the Servant of the Lord. And the Servant
is the One about whom Isaiah wrote: “But
he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon
him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are
healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one--to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
The cross
may be foolishness to the world, but Jesus’ baptism was all about the
cross. At his baptism, Jesus stepped
into your shoes – a sinner who deserves God’s judgment. You do because you don’t always obey your
parents. You do because you don’t always
carry out your vocation as parent – your calling to teach your children the
Christian faith by what you say and do.
You do because in your jobs you don’t always work as unto the Lord and
not unto men.
From the
moment of his baptism, Jesus’ life and ministry was focused like a laser on one
moment – his death on the cross for you.
He predicted it again and again.
But he predicted something else as well – resurrection. By his death he has taken away your sin and
given you forgiveness. By his
resurrection he had defeated death and begun your future.
After his
resurrection, Jesus instituted his own baptism – Holy Baptism. And it is baptism that grounds the way Paul
talks about the Corinthians in our text.
To be sure, not many of them were wise
according to worldly standards; not many were powerful; not many were of noble
birth. The Corinthian believers were
what is foolish and weak to the world – just as you are today. But this was God’s “foolishness” and
“weakness” at work. The world saw the
cross in this way, but the reality was that it was God’s wisdom and
strength. As Paul says at the end of our
text, “And because of
him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness
and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, "Let the one
who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
Paul says
that the Corinthians were “in Christ.”
This had happened in their baptism.
God had joined them to Christ and given them a share in his saving work.
What Christ had done in his death and resurrection, he had done for them. Through faith and baptism they were now “in
Christ” and so the saving benefits were theirs.
Later in the letter, Paul recounted the sin that had characterized their
lives. But then he went on to say, “And
such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
The same is true for you. In Ephesians Paul said, “Husbands, love your wives, just as
Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing
her by the washing of water with the word, and to present her to himself as a
radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and
blameless.” Through the washing of water
and the Word, Jesus Christ has washed away all your sins. The Lord Jesus has sanctified
you. That means he has made you holy. You are not holy in yourself – not even
close. But instead in Christ you are. Paul
opened this letter to the Corinthians by saying, “To
the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all
those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both
their Lord and ours.” A reading of this
letter reveals very clearly that the Corinthians failed in many ways. Yet Paul still describes them as saints who were
“sanctified in Christ Jesus.”
This is comforting. And when we are troubled by our sin – when
Satan wants to use it to raise doubts about whether we really are justified and
sanctified in Christ, we need this comfort. But that’s not the only way he
works. Satan is a master at twisting
what is good in order to harm us and use it against us. And he can use the certainty of the
forgiveness found in Christ and his Means of Grace to do this. For since I am
forgiven and am a saint, can’t it be said that my sin doesn’t really
matter? Why worry about struggling
against sin when my forgiveness is certain?
In fact if I am concerned about what
I do, am I not just smuggling in the exact opposite of what Paul taught –
that we are saved by faith in Christ apart from doing?
In fact, in this very letter Paul
teaches us about this too. The
Corinthians were treating the sacraments as if they were some kind of
protection against spiritual harm. They believed that they could be involved in
pagan settings of sacrifice and eating because, after all, they had been baptized; they
were receiving the Sacrament of the Altar.
But Paul warns them that things don’t work this way. In fact God’s word tells us the
opposite. Paul wrote in chapter ten, “For I want you to know, brothers,
that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and
all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same
spiritual food, and
all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that
followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”
Paul compares the miraculous experiences of
the exodus to the New Testament sacraments.
But then he adds, “Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased,
for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples
for us, that we might not desire evil as
they did.” The apostle declares to
them that the saving gifts of God don’t provide the ability to indulge in sin
without consequences.
Instead
Paul says in chapter nine that life in the faith is one that struggles against
sin. The apostle compares the Christian
life to that of an athlete. He says, “Do
you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the
prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in
all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I
discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I
myself should be disqualified.”
And so the
Christian life is one in which we constantly return in faith to our
baptism. When we fail in the struggle
against sin, in repentance we return to the promises that God has made about
our baptism. There our sins were washed
away. There we shared in Jesus saving death for us. We find forgiveness and comfort in the
knowledge that before God we are
saints.
Yet baptism is about more than just
forgiveness. Baptism is also the means
by which the Holy Spirit strengthens and endows us to lives as the new
man. As Luther writes in the Small
Catechism such baptizing with water,” indicates that the Old Adam in us should
by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil
desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in
righteousness and purity forever.”
Because of baptism, the Spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead has
given you rebirth and is at work in you.
The Spirit is the resurrection power of Christ already at work in you
know – the same Spirit who will raise you on the Last Day. As Luther says in
the Large Catechism: “In baptism we are given the grace, Spirit,
and strength to suppress the old man so that the new may come forth and grow
strong.”
