✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Romans 12,1-8 0816
1. Sonntag nach Epiphanias 014
Paul of Thebes, first hermit, ✠ 340; Basil the Great of Caesarea ✠ 379; Gregory of Nazianzus, Patriarch of Constantinople, ✠ 389; and Gregory of Nyssa ✠ 394
10. Januar 2016
1. O Lord God, Heavenly Father, who in mercy has established the Christian home among us: We beseech You so to rule and direct our hearts, so that we may be good examples to children and servants, and not offend them, by word or deed, but faithfully teach them to love Your Church and hear Your Blessed Word. Give them Your Spirit and grace, so that this seed may bring forth good fruit and our home life may conduce to Your glory, honor and praise, to our own improvement and welfare, and give offense to no one; through the same, Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One True God, world without end. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for the 1. Sunday after Epiphany)
2. Therefore I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.
3. The Apostle Paul writes in his Epistle to the Romans: »I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.« Jesus did this very thing when He arrived at the Jordan to be baptized by John. Recall how St. Matthew introduces us to John: »In those days John the Baptizer arrived preaching in the wilderness of Judea: „Repent, for the reign of heaven is at hand.“« (Matthew 3,1-2). Understandably, John hesitates because he understands that it should be the other way around: Jesus should be baptizing John because Jesus the Christ who is the very reign of heaven in the flesh. But Jesus responded by saying: no, you baptize Me for it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.
4. Jesus, the perfect and sinless Son of Man, thus received John’s baptism of repentance. In this action, Jesus shows Himself to be one of us. He arrived to save sinners, and in His baptism He numbers Himself as a sinner and welcomes us to draw unto Him. This was God fulfilling all righteousness. Or as Paul describes it: »Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.« John baptizing Jesus was the good, acceptable and perfect will of God. The Divine pleasure of God the Father is recorded by St. Matthew moments after Jesus’ baptism: »a Voice from heaven said: „This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.“
5. In His baptism, Jesus reveals His righteousness. God has become man, and He does not shy away from you or your sins. Jesus proclaimed: »Go and learn what this means: „I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.“ For I arrived not to call the righteous, but sinners« (Matthew 9,13). God’s righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees who based righteousness on the scale of the law: the more you obeyed the law, the more righteous you were accounted. This law-based righteousness was grounded on the individual: do this, and you will earn eternal life. Jesus taught that righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees if you want to enter the reign of heaven (Matthew 5,20). The issue then is: we can’t exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, because the Pharisees kept the external precepts of the law, and even that did not merit their righteousness before God.
6. The Apostle Paul says that true righteousness is received by faith. He writes: »For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and faith was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. That is why his faith was „counted to him as righteousness.“ But the words „it was counted to him“ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification« (Romans 4,3-5.9.22-25).
7. Saint Paul teaches that faith is counted to us as righteousness. Salvation is a synonym of righteousness. This righteousness or salvation is the merit of Jesus who was crucified for our sin and raised from the dead for our justification. This is the righteousness Jesus was speaking of in his discussion with John the Baptizer, and thus Jesus’ baptism was a part of His Heilsgeschichte (salvation history).
8. Paul continues: »Therefore, since we have been made righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us« (Romans 5,1-5). Jesus tells us that this salvation began its fulfillment when John baptized Jesus. Jesus stood with sinners in the Jordan waters of baptism, and three years later He took the pace of all sinners as their vicarious sacrifice on the Calvary cross.
9. The Holy Spirit gives us the merits of Jesus’ righteousness through the Word and Sacraments. The preached Word convicts us of our sins and promises us the gospel if full pardon and forgiveness. Holy Baptism brings us into the family of God and washes away our sins. Confessed sins are absolved by God’s bishops and ministers. The Lord’s Supper gives us the very body and blood of Jesus that was crucified for our redemption and shed for our salvation. Faith receives the gospel given out in these Word and Sacraments, and in receiving believes that we have what God promises us: sin is forgiven, death is overcome in resurrected life and the gates of everlasting life are unlocked and wide open for us to enter into eternal fellowship with the Triune God. Amen.
10. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus, Teacher of Your Heavenly Father’s will, pour out Your righteousness upon us so that we remain on the level ground of Your salvation. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
VELKD. Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. www.velkd.de. Copyright © 2013 Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands.
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