Today we remember and give thanks for Patrick, Missionary to Ireland. Patrick is one of the best-known of the
missionary saints. Born to a Christian family in
Collect of the Day:
Almighty and
everlasting God, we thank you for your servant Patrick, whom you called to
preach the Gospel to the people of
Mid-Lent 2
Second
Article
Jn
1:1-18
3/16/22
During the years 93-94 A.D. a Jew named
Josephus wrote a work called the Jewish Antiquities. Josephus had fought in the Jewish revolt that
began in 66 A.D. He had been captured by the Romans, but had managed to
ingratiate himself to the Roman Emperors who then served has his patrons. His work provides one of the most important
pieces of historical evidence that we have about events in Palestine during the
first century.
In the
twentieth chapter he writes: “Being therefore this kind of person, Ananus,
thinking that he had a favorable opportunity because Festus had died and
Albinus was still on his way, called a Sanhedrin of judges and brought into it
the brother of Jesus who is called Messiah, James by name, and some
others. He made the accusation that they
had transgressed the law, and he handed them over to be stoned.”
Now Josephus
is making the point that the Jewish leader did something illegal. The Jews
weren’t allowed to execute people on their own, but since the Roman governor
Festus had died and the new one Albinus had not yet arrived, he used this
opportunity to have James stoned.
But what
catches our attention is the fact that James is described as being “the brother
of Jesus who is called Messiah.” James
is identified in relation to Jesus because two chapters earlier Josephus had
spoken about a Jesus who was a wise man, a doer of startling deeds, who had gained
a following. Josephus says that because of an accusation made by leading men,
Pilate had condemned Jesus to the cross.
This
evidence from Josephus simply confirms what we find in the Second Article of
the Apostles’ Creed. It is says that
Jesus was a real man who lived in Palestine at the beginning of the first
century A.D. The Roman governor Pontius
Pilate had him executed by crucifixion, a process that involved great
suffering.
Jesus was a
real man – a real human being. The reference to Pontius Pilate in the Creed
anchors the events being described in history. This is not a myth for which the
questions when and where did it happen are nonsensical. Instead, it happened in
Palestine in the first century.
What
Josephus tells us also fits with what we find in the New Testament which
clearly tells us that Jesus was a real human being. In the Gospel lesson for the First Sunday in
Lent we learned that after fasting forty days and forty nights, Jesus was
hungry. You would be too, because that’s
what happens when a person doesn’t eat for that long. We learn that Jesus got tired. When the storm arose on the Sea of Galilee
that threatened to sink the boat, where was Jesus? He was at the stern of the boat asleep on a
cushion because he was worn out by his work of ministry. We learn that Jesus
had human emotions – he wept at tomb of his friend Lazarus who had just died.
Ultimately,
we see that Jesus was a real human being – that he was truly a man – because he
died. That’s what happens to human beings.
Josephus tells us that Pilate condemned him to the cross. The Gospels narrate
what any first century reader knew this meant. Jesus was scourged with a whip
studded with lead or bone that shredded skin and muscle. He was nailed to a
cross in manner that caused slow asphyxiation, and left there to die. A person that the Romans raised up on a cross
came down in only one way – dead.
But if that
was all there was to say about the person of Jesus, we would not be here
tonight. He would have been just one
more person who died at the hands of the Romans. However, our text tells us that while Jesus
was a man, he was also far more.
John starts
by writing: “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made
through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” From elsewhere in the Gospel of John and the
New Testament we know that when John refers to “the Word,” he means the Son of
God, the second person of the Holy Trinity.
The Word – the Son – is God. John tells us that all things were made
through him.
And then John tells us the incredible
truth that we celebrated at Christmas: “And the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his
glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace
and truth.” We learn that the Word – the Son of God – became flesh and
dwelt among us. John is saying that the
Son of God became a man. He uses the
language of the tabernacle and temple to explain the fact that in the person of
Jesus Christ, God dwelt in our midst.
Paul describes this truth in Galatians when he says, “But when the
fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman,
born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that
we might receive adoption as sons.”
God sent forth his Son into this world.
He did so as he was born of a woman.
Now women give birth to sons all the
time. But God sending his Son to be born
as a man – the Word becoming flesh – was no ordinary occurrence. It was God
acting in a dramatic way to bring us salvation. The angel Gabriel announced to Mary,
“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you
shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son
of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne
of his father David, and he will reign over the house of
Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
When Mary asked how this was going to happen since she was a
virgin, Gabriel responded, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power
of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be
born will be called holy--the Son of God.” This was the same truth that
was shared with Joseph by an angel in a dream when he said: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for
that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a
son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people
from their sins.”
The explanation of the Second Article in the Small Catechism
begins by saying, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the
Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my
Lord.” Jesus is true God. He is also true man. That is the mystery of
the incarnation – of the Word become flesh.
Logically, these do not go together. It is beyond our understanding. And so,
people have always tried to deny or minimize one side or the other. The earliest was a denial that Jesus Christ
really was a man. John wrote in his
first letter, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the
spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false
prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of
God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the
flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is
not from God.”
Later, some like the heretic Arius tried to deny that the Son
who became incarnate is truly God. But because of what Scripture says the
Church rejected this and every Sunday we explicitly confess that the Son who
became incarnate it truly God when we say in the Nicene Creed that the Son is
“God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of
one substance with the Father.”
God’s word reveals that Jesus is “true God, begotten of the Father
from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary.” He is true God – God in every possible
way. He is true man, like us in all ways
except for one – he has no sin. Sin is not inherently part of human
nature. Adam and Eve were created in the
image of God, and so had no sin. It was
only the Fall – the sin of Adam and Eve – that corrupted human nature. Everyone
conceived and born in the natural way since then has been sinful – all of us.
But Jesus’ human nature is what we were originally created to be. He is the second Adam sent to restore our humanity
to what God intended us to be.
Jesus Christ is true God and true man. St. Paul says in First Timothy,
“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the
man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which
is the testimony given at the proper time.” The person of Jesus
Christ – who he is – is directly tied to his work – what he came to do. After all, when the angel announced to Joseph
about the conception through the work of the Holy Spirit he said of Jesus, “he
will save his people from their sins.”
We will focus next week on the work that Jesus Christ has
carried out. But Paul sums it up when he
says that he gave himself “as a ransom for all.” We will see during Holy Week that Jesus died
on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. He did this to win forgiveness
for us. But he also had come to renew our humanity – to free us from
death. And so on the third day – on
Easter - God raised Jesus from the dead with a body that can never die again.
Because we have been baptized into Jesus’ saving death, we know
that we will also share in his resurrection.
Paul told the Romans, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism
into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if
we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be
united with him in a resurrection like his.”
We will share in this resurrection when Christ returns in glory on the
Last Day, and raises and transform our bodies to be like his.
Lent 2
Mt
15:21-28
3/13/22
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel.” Excuse me.
What was that? Did I miss something there?
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel.” Yes, that’s exactly what Jesus says to the Canaanite woman in our
text this morning. And it is no
mistake. This is not like where our
political leaders say something that is false and misleading, and then later
they try to explain it away by saying that they “misspoke.”
Jesus really means this, and it is not
the first time he had said it. In
chapter ten our Lord sends out the twelve apostles on a mission trip in which
they are to proclaim as they go, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at
hand.” They are to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast
out demons. And as Jesus sends them out he gives these instructions: "Go
nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but
go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
We are confronted here by a reality that we often overlook. Jesus came as Israel’s Messiah. Matthew begins his Gospel by giving the
genealogy of Jesus whom he describes as “the
son of David, the son of Abraham.” He starts this list by saying, “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of
Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.” Judah and his brothers – those are the twelve
tribes of Israel. That is the people God took into a covenant at Mt Sinai. When
Matthew then continues to trace the lineage from Judah through David to Jesus,
he is telling us that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah.
Jesus came as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. Israel was God’s people. If you did not descend from Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, then you were not Matthew
make it clear that the focus of Jesus’ ministry was to Israel as her
Messiah.
However, in our text we do not find Jesus in
Israel. Instead, he is in the region of
Tyre and Sidon. Just before our text,
our Lord has had a confrontation with the Pharisees. They have asked him, “Why do your disciples break the tradition
of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” Now this washing of the hands had nothing to
do with health concerns. It was instead
an example of how the Pharisees had taken aspects of the Law that were directed
only to priests and applied to it all people. Things got heated as Jesus said,
“You hypocrites! Well
did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ‘This people honors me with their
lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching
as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
So as he does several times after a sharp confrontation like
this, Jesus withdraws to a different area.
Our Lord has a mission and a timing.
He is to die in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. He is to die
during Holy Week for which the season of Lent prepares us. And so he prevents
any kind of premature event by leaving to another place.
In the area of Tyre and Sidon, we find Jesus in the very
opposite of Israel. This region north of
Israel had always been pagan territory.
It had been the home of Jezebel, the daughter of the king of the
Sidonians, who married Ahab the king of Israel. She had vigorously promoted the
worship of Baal as she tried to kill the prophet Elijah.
This is the last place where we expect a person to appeal to
Israel’s Messiah. Yet in our text we hear: “And behold, a Canaanite woman
from that region came out and was crying, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son
of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.’” Matthew calls her a “Canaanite” woman which
in the first century A.D. was an anachronistic term. It would be like today calling someone from
Mississippi a “Confederate” woman. But the
description is intentional because it is a term that reinforces the pagan
associations of the area.
The woman’s appeal is remarkable because not only does she call
Jesus “Lord,” but she also addresses him as “Son of David.” She uses a term that identifies Jesus as the
Messiah – Israel’s Messiah. Word about
Jesus had traveled throughout the region of Palestine. This woman had heard
about Jesus, Israel’s Messiah who had the power to heal. And so she appeals to
him to help her daughter who is afflicted by a demon.
Jesus’ response seems shocking: he completely ignored her. He
did not answer her a word. It is apparent that the woman continued to cry out
to Jesus for help because his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send
her away, for she is crying out after us.”
They seemed to be asking Jesus to heal the woman’s daughter so that she
would just leave them alone. But Jesus didn’t do it. Instead, he answered, “I was sent only
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Yet the woman had faith in Jesus that he could help her
daughter. So she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” Yet
rather than helping her, Jesus answered, “It is not right to take the children's
bread and throw it to the dogs.” He called her a dog, in a culture where
the animal did not have any of the positive connotations that we associate with
our family pets.
Surely this would finally prompt the woman to give up. But instead, she replied, “Yes, Lord, yet
even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” She did not deny her status as a
Gentile. She did not claim that she had
a right to help from Jesus, Israel’s Messiah.
But what she did assert was that Jesus was so powerful and mighty that
even scraps of what he had to offer were more than sufficient to heal her
daughter.
Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your
faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” He praised the woman and
left no doubt that he continuing appeal to Jesus was one of true faith. And we
learn that her daughter was healed instantly.
Today’s Gospel lesson is one that seems challenging. We don’t see Jesus act as we expect him to do
so. He doesn’t seem to be the loving, caring Savior. But there are very important lessons in our
text that teach us about how, at times, God deals with us.
The first thing we learn from the woman is the manner in which
we must approach God. Jesus called her a
dog. He said that she was completely unworthy
of his help. We must confess that the same thing is true of us. In the dispute with the Pharisees that
prompted Jesus to withdraw to the region of Tyre and Sidon, the topic had been
what defiles a person. Our Lord said
that it was not some particular food banned by religious law that did so. He said: “But what comes out of the
mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the
heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft,
false witness, slander.”
This describes us. We are
sinners who spew forth sin in every possible way. We try to find ways to justify and excuse our
sin. We are so sinful that we don’t even recognize all of the ways we sin in
thought, word, and deed. We have no
right to be with God, much less ask for God’s help. This is what we must confess about ourselves.
This is what we must confess before God.
The second thing we learn is that the woman clung to what she
had heard about Jesus. She had heard the Gospel. She had heard God’s Word,
which was the word about Jesus. And she believed. She believed in Jesus because of this word
and she would not let go of faith in Christ no matter what happened.
You have heard the Gospel.
St Paul told the Romans, “So faith
comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” You have heard that Jesus Christ died on the
cross to in order to redeem you – to free you from sin. You have heard that on the third day God
raised Jesus from the dead. Through this
action he vindicated Jesus as the Messiah, and defeated death. God has used that word to call you to faith
in Jesus. As Peter said, “you have been
born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the
living and abiding word of God.” This
word is living and abiding because it is the means that the Holy Spirit uses to
create and sustain faith.
You believe
in Jesus Christ as your risen Lord and Savior. You are the baptized child of
God who is forgiven and has salvation.
But what we see in the woman’s experience is the way that God sometimes
deals with us. When he preached on this
text, Martin Luther commented, “But see how Christ drives and pursues faith in
His people, so that it becomes strong and firm.”
In our
lives, we encounter circumstances that make it seem as if God does not love and
care for us. If God loves me, why did he
allow me to get cancer, or have a stroke, or get diabetes? If God loves me, why is he allowing my family
member to experience these hardships? If
God loves me, why am I facing such uncertainty about my future?
But God’s
Word – his word of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for you –
remains. It stands firm. God allows these things that seem to be a
denial of everything he says about his love for us because they force us to
cling yet more firmly to the word – to Christ.
As Luther said, “This was written for all our comfort and instruction,
so that we may know how deeply God hides His grace from us, so that we would
not consider Him according to our perception and thinking but strictly
according to His Word.”
Like the
woman, we have heard the word about Christ. What is more we know the whole
story. We know about the death and resurrection of Christ. We know that
though Jesus was sent as Israel’s Messiah, Israel’s Messiah was ultimately sent
to carry out a mission that brings salvation to all people. Jesus may say in our text, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel.” But as the fulfillment of what
Israel was meant to be for the nations, he told his disciples after his
resurrection: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
There will be times when God allows us to experience things that
force this faith to deepen, grow, and mature.
The woman in our text this morning provides the example of what this
looks like. She believed in Jesus. She declared
that he was the Messiah. Even when it
seemed like she was being rejected, she pressed on toward Jesus in faith. She confessed her unworthiness, and but also
believed that Jesus was so powerful that even the smallest help from him was
more than sufficient.
Our faith in Jesus Christ does the same. Through the work of the
Spirit, we have been brought to faith in the Lord who died for our sins, and was
raised from the dead. In him we find
the “yes” of God’s love that overcomes every “no” that we are experiencing. In the midst of those times, we cling ever
more strongly to Jesus. We do not turn away, but instead focus our lives even
more on those ways by which he comes to us with the promise of his faith
sustaining Spirit – in his Word, in Holy Baptism, and in the Sacrament of the
Altar. We believe and trust in Jesus to
bring us through those times, because he died for us and now lives as our risen
Lord.
Mid-Lent 1
First
Article
Gen
1:1-31
3/9/22
“I believe
in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven an earth.” The First Article of the Apostles’ Creed is
very short – it’s only twelve words long.
But what it encompasses is mind boggling. It is confessing the truth of God’s Word that
God is the Creator of everything – heaven and earth – the entire cosmos.
The First
Article is, as we find in our text tonight, also the first verse of the Bible:
“In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth.” In Genesis chapter one we see that God
creates through the power of his Word.
He says, “let there be,” and there it is.
Genesis chapter one and the First Article of the Creed
establish a very important starting point that separates the biblical worldview
from much of what has existed, and still exists today, in human thought. It tells us the God is the Creator and
creation is what he has made. There is
fixed distinction between them that cannot be bridged. God and creation are not in some way joined
together. Creation is not in any way divine. Instead, God is the Creator who is
over his creation. He rules it. He
controls it. And as we will see, he also
provides through it.
We learn from Genesis one that God made a material
creation – a physical creation.
It is a place of land and water, plants and trees, fish and birds,
livestock and creeping things. And we
find that in God’s view this material creation is good. The refrain runs throughout chapter one, “And
God saw that it was good.” And then
finally we hear in the last verse of our text, “And God saw everything that he
had made, and behold, it was very good.”
Very good. That’s what God thinks about the material world he
made. God’s word tells us that it is
good stuff.
We see this fact also in the crown of his creation:
man. We hear in our text, “Then God said, ‘Let
us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over
the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps
on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he
created him; male and female he created them.”
Man alone was created in the image of
God. He alone was created to be like
God. He was created to know God as God wants to be known. He was created to live perfectly in tune with
God’s will – his ordering of creation. And created in God’s image, he was God’s
representative in the midst of creation.
Man and creation are not on the same level. The world may claim that we
are just one part of the big “circle of life,” but we are not. God gave man dominion over creation.
God created man as a pairing – he
created man as male and female. We learn
more about this act of creation in chapter two when we read, “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust
from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and the man became a living creature.”
God created the man’s body and then breathed into him the breath
life. He made physical body and joined it
with what Jesus called the soul. In the
unity of body and soul we are what God intends us to be.
And then God did more.
We learn that in the midst of what was very good, there was one thing
that was not good. God said, “It is not good that
the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” God
created woman from man. He created Eve
from Adam, as the one who perfectly corresponded to Adam. That correspondence was
demonstrated in the way they were created for sexual union – for becoming one
flesh. By creating this matching pair
God instituted marriage, for we learn in chapter two: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his
mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
This is what God did as the Maker of heaven and earth. But the First Article of the Creed also
teaches us that this was not the end of God’s creative work. Instead, God has continued to create. The writer to the Hebrews tells us about the
Son of God, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint
of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” God is the One who sustains creation – who
keeps it running and provides through it.
For this reason the Psalmist writes, “The eyes of all look to you, and you give
them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy
the desire of every living thing.”
This means that God is the Creator and
giver of my body and life. The
explanation in the Small Catechism says, “I
believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body
and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and
still takes care of them.” Notice how
the language is very specific in saying that God has given us our body, eyes,
ear, and all our members. That means the
body God has given to me – a body that is male or female – is his gift. It is how he has defined me and
therefore any attempt to reject that body as being the “wrong one” is a
rejection of his gift, and a demonstration that the mind is not healthy. This
is a condition that we need to address in love and support as we speak the
truth – the same way we would help a person suffering from any form of mental
illness.
As the God who continues to create, God provides us with the things we need for life. The Small Catechism says, “He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.” We are called to trust that God will give what we need to live, even it is not all that we want. We are to be content with the blessings God gives. Jesus said, “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Tonight we consider the First Article
of the Creed. Of course, “First,” indicates that there are more Articles. There are more Articles because while God
continues to create and provide, our life and creation itself have been damaged
by the entrance of sin into the world through the Fall. The words of Ash Wednesday last week,
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” echo God’s words to
Adam. He had told him, “You may surely
eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it
you shall surely die.” Now that Adam had done so, God said, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are
dust, and to dust you shall return.”
And the damage caused by Adam’s sin was not limited to us. Creation itself has been warped and twisted by sin. St. Paul told the Romans, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
During the season of Lent, we are
preparing to remember again what God did in order to provide the answer to sin,
death and the fallenness of creation.
When sin entered into the world bringing death to us and corruption to
all creation, God did not walk away from what he had made. It was no longer very good. But rather than abandoning it, he did
something incredible. He himself entered
into that creation as the Son of God was sent by the Father to be conceived by
the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
God showed that he still considered
our bodily existence to be very good, because the Son of God himself had a body
as the One who is true God and true man. As Paul told the Colossians about
Christ, “For in him the whole
fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
Jesus Christ came as the second Adam.
Because the holy and just God punishes sin, Jesus died on Good Friday and
received God’s judgment against sin. St. Paul told the Romans, “Therefore, as one
trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of
righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For
as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one
man's obedience the many will be made righteous.”
Our sin brought death for Jesus. But Jesus the second Adam passed through
death in order to kill it. On the third day – on Easter – God raised Jesus from
the dead. He rose with a body that can
never die again. The resurrection of Jesus began the transformation in which we
will all share. Paul told the Corinthians,
“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection
of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be
made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits,
then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”
And this saving action is not limited
to us. Instead, in Romans Paul says, “creation itself will be set free from its
bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of
God.” He identifies the return of Christ and our resurrection as the time when
this will take place
God will give us bodies that can never die again. He will
give us a creation that is renewed in which to live. He will make all things very good once
again. And this will all take place
because of the events we are preparing to remember. It will because Jesus Christ suffered and
died in his Passion on Good Friday, and rose from the dead on Easter.
All people are sinners.
Ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve, we have been conceived and born as
sinners. Jesus said, “That which is
born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). Sinful fallen nature gives birth to sinful
fallen nature. We enter into this world
as people who do not know God – who cannot know God. St. Paul wrote, “The natural person does not
accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him,
and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually
discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).
No parent has ever had to teach their child how
to be jealous, to lie, or to be angry.
It is already there, because we are sinners. As we grow in our abilities as people, so do
the ways that sin manifests itself.
Jesus said, “What comes out of a
person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil
thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting,
wickedness,
deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All
these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23).
The final confirmation
that every person is a sinner is found in the fact that, apart from the return
of Jesus Christ, every person will die.
Paul told the Romans that “the wage of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). This link between sin and death goes back to
the beginning – back to the first sin of Adam.
The apostles says, “Therefore, just as sin
came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so
death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).
The true issue, then, is not whether you are a sinner – you are. The real question is what kind of sinner are you? Jesus began his ministry by saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:38-39).
All
people are sinners. But there are two kinds of sinners. There are sinners who repent of their sin –
who confess it before God – and believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of
sins. Then there are sinners who do not
repent, and instead are entirely content to continue sinning. The first group
of sinners are saints and sinners at the same time. In themselves they are people who continue to
struggle with sin. But through baptism and faith they live as people who
are “in Christ,” and so when God looks at them he sees not their sin but
instead Christ who has won forgiveness for their every sin. Because they are in Christ, God views them as
saints – as holy ones. On the other
hand, those who do not repent are simply sinners in God’s eyes, and if they
remain in that status until death they will receive the judgment of damnation.
The
season of Lent is a season of repentance.
It reminds us that while yes, we are sinners, our life as Christians is
one in which we are repentant sinners.
We confess our sins before God.
And in turn, the season of Lent prepares us to remember the events of
Holy Week and Easter. We remember that
Jesus Christ suffered and died as the sacrifice for our sin. But then on Easter, God raised him from the
dead as he vindicated the crucified Christ as Lord and defeated death. Through
faith in the Christ, who was crucified and rose from the dead for us, we have
forgiveness and resurrection on the Last Day. Repentant sinners are the
children of God who have the assurance of salvation.
