✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
1. Thessalonians 4,1-8 5116
20. Sn. n. Trinitatis 065
Abraham, Patriarch
Dionysius the Areopagite, Martyr, Acts 17,34
Leif Eriksen, † 1020
9. Oktober 2016
1. О Lord God, Heavenly Father: We thank You, that of Your great mercy You have called us by Your holy word to the blessed marriage-feast of Your Son, and through Him does forgive us all our sins; but, being daily beset by temptation, offense and danger, and being weak in ourselves and given to sin, we beseech You graciously to protect us by Your Holy Spirit, so that we do not fall; and if we fall and defile our wedding-garment, with which Your Son has clothed us, graciously help us again and lead us to repentance, so that we do not fall forever; preserve in us a constant faith in Your grace, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One True God, world without end. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for 20. Sn. n. Trinitatis).
2. Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, so that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; so that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; so that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives His Holy Spirit to you.
3. The Apostle Paul often closes his Epistles with specific exhortations of how Christians should live. As one of my theology professors in college taught us: The life of the Christian community is shaped by the gospel Paul preaches (Keller).
4. Saint Paul specifically tells the Thessalonians Christians: »Abstain from sexual immorality; so that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.« Thessalonica is a Greek port city on the Thermaic Gulf of the Aegean Sea. In Paul’s day the Thessalonians were heavily influenced by Greco-Roman culture in which it was not unusual for people to have multiple sexual partners, spouse-swapping, same-sex encounters or paying for the services of polytheistic temple prostitutes. Christians refrained from such licentiousness and thus there was a clear separation between how a pagan Greco-Roman acted as opposed to a Christian Greco-Roman. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians Christians to adhere to the morality and virtue that spring from the gospel. As 21. century Western culture is the child of 1. century Greco-Roman culture, St. Paul’s exhortation is as relevant for Americans to day as it was to Greeks back then.
5. Paul tells us: »God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.« „Negatively, this requires abstention from every form of evil, but here particularly from pre- and extra-marital unchastity (4:3b-6). The motivation for such avoidance of sexual sins is two-fold: negatively, because the Lord is the avenger of all wrong-doing, 4:6a; positively, because the Christian has been given both the call and the power for a God-pleasing life, 4:7-8. Positively, this leads toward mutual love within the Church, 4:9-12; 5:14-21, and Christian love toward those outside the Church, 3:11; 4:12“ (Keller).
5. Progressive Americans take pride in undoing the ethics and virtues that have been part and parcel with the Church since her foundation. The Sexual Revolution of the 60s lead to the Free Love of the 70s and the uncoupling of sexuality, gender and marriage from both natural law and Christian morality. While these milestones are heralded as breaking the shackles that the Church has imposed upon society for nearly 1700 years, it fails to deal with the consequences of sin.
6. The gospel doesn’t merely absolve sinners but continues afterward to provide the balm and comfort of God’s love and mercy upon people who daily struggle with their sinfulness. The mainstream media touts the Progressive talking points that transgender people should be accepted as healthy individuals and that homosexuality is an happy lifestyle ignore the statistics. Most psychiatrists still label transgenderism as a mental disorder (American Psychiatric Association; WHO’s International Classification of Diseases). Depression affects the homosexual community at a higher rate than the heterosexual community; lesbian, gay and bisexual people are twice as likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual people (healthline.com/health/depression/gay). Sin causes real struggles and problems; simply labelling something an identity does not remove the internal struggle. Sinfulness is a condition we are born with and it resides in the deepest levels of our mind, body and soul. Everyone struggles with sin.
7. The Apostle Paul rightly diagnoses our condition: »I know that nothing good dwells in my flesh. I have the desire to do what is right, but I do not have the ability to carry it out. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God that Jesus Christ delivers us from our body of death« (Romans 7,18.24-25). The law says: The wages of sin is death; the gospel then says: but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6,23). »God has pardoned our impurity and made us holy through His Son.« From this imputed holiness the gospel empowers us to live sanctified lives pleasing to God. The struggle against our flesh and its sinful desires remain, but the gospel promises us forgiveness and exhorts us to discipline our flesh into obedience to God’s will (Romans 8,13).
8. Thus the Church separates herself from the world, for we are in the world but we are not of this world (John 17,14-16). This world rejects Christ and His gospel; they likewise reject us and chaff against the preached gospel and the virtuous deeds of Christians that are contrary to the world’s opinions. Jesus calls us to be the light and salt to the world. We enlighten the world to Jesus and His gospel; we pour salt on the wounds of the broken-hearted. At first the gospel is hard to perceive because it gives Christ alone the glory of our justification, and the gospel stings when first applied to sinners but that sting quickly fades and the gospel begins to heal the wounded. May we be bold in proclaiming the gospel so that hearts turn from unbelief to faith and the wounded begin to heal from the sores from their sinfulness. For as Jesus taught us: »Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful« (Luke 6,27-28.36) so that in doing so the gospel turns enemies into friends and fellow Christians. Amen.
10. Let us pray. O Christ Jesus, our Lord, teach us the way of Your statutes, and help us to observe them to the end so that we may be the light and salt to those needing the gospel. 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, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Keller, Walter. THEO 319 Studies in Pauline Thought course notes. Copyright 1990.
No comments:
Post a Comment