Ephesians 2,4-10. 11. Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever 

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

Ephesians 2,4-10 4216

11. Sonntag nach Trinitatis  056  

Afra, Martyr at Augsburg, Bavaria 304  

7. August 2016 

1. О Lord God, Heavenly Father, we beseech You to guide and direct us by Your Holy Spirit, so that we may not forget our sins and be filled with pride, but continue in daily repentance and renewal, seeking our comfort only in the blessed knowledge that You will be merciful unto us, forgive us our sins and grant us eternal life.  Amen. (Veit Dietrich for the 11. Sn. n. Trinitatis) 

2. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the approaching ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

3. The Apostle Paul tells us that we Christians are God’s workmanship created in Christ to do good works. The Holy Scriptures cut off at the pass our narcissistic human nature that proudly believes that we, by our own enlightenment and resourcefulness, can become God’s handiwork. 

4. „At no point do the Holy Scriptures urge us to make ourselves into something. Rather, the Bible describes time and again that wherever a person thinks to make something of himself, this activity goes horribly wrong and leads to separation from God“ (Wenz ¶ 11). Paul tells us that this outcome happens because we are dead in our trespasses. 

5. One prime example comes from the Enlightenment philosophy that has so deeply influenced our American culture for over 240 years. „The German philosopher Immanuel Kant urged his contemporaries to break out of  their self-imposed immaturity using the freedom and ability to use your own mind“ (Wenz ¶ 1). Kant grounded the ability to do this upon the Divine moral law, but in our day and age this is largely forgotten and many have taken Kant’s exhortation to mean we have the ability to think independently and therefore develop our own self realization without any external means. This simply translates as: I will define enlightenment myself (Wenz ¶ 2). This is relativism taken to its ultimate conclusion: I, and I alone, can determine and accomplish my self-enlightenment. This then begs the question: „Can I even really and truly enlighten myself all on my own?“ (Wenz ¶ 4).
6. Saint Paul says: No; we cannot really and truly enlighten ourselves because we are dead in our trespasses. Ergo: „One who is dead, cannot revive himself, one who is immature cannot become mature, one who is blind cannot give himself sight, one who is paralyzed, cannot stand up and walk. Unless he accesses an External One who can conquer death, blindness and paralysis“ (Wenz ¶ 15).

7. The External One is Jesus Christ our Lord. St. Paul tells us: »By grace we have been saved, for when we were dead in our trespasses, God the Father made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with Him.« Jesus is the Light of the world, and thus He is our true enlightenment. Paul tells us Christ has done it all for us. He has saved us. He has forgiven us. He has created us to be His workmanship for good works. There is no „me, myself or I“ energizing this workmanship but only Christ in us. 

8. „We rightly and truly honor God when we live by His grace, learn to understand ourselves exclusively as recipients of His goodness in Christ and talk instead about how great the grace of God is in view of our own lostness“ (Wenz ¶ 27). When all our time and energy are removed from propping ourselves up and in turn simply receives what Christ gives us, then we have that time and energy to devote to doing the things God wants us to be doing. We can serve our neighbor with joy. We can support our church with liberal offerings. We can speak well of others. We can utilize the freedom and ability of our God-given minds to truly enlighten ourselves using the Divine moral law and empowered by the gospel to do this in a God-pleasing manner that will truly make us an Enlightened human being who is a reflection of Christ the True Light. All this we have at our readiness because Christ has merited our salvation for us on the cross.  Amen. 

9. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, whose Name is holy, enlighten us with the gospel so we may proclaim Your saving deeds to our neighbors.  Amen. 

To God alone be the Glory 

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

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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. 

Wenz, Armin. A sermon preached on 15. August 2010 (11. Trinity) in Oberursel, Germany on Ephesians 2,4-10. Copyright © 2010 The Rev. Dr. Armin Wenz. The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind, Tr. © 2010.