1. Corinthians 2,12-16. Pentecost

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum

1. Corinthians 2,12-16       2918

Pfingstsonntag  043  

Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, France ✠ 1115

20. Mai 2018 

1. О Spirit of Grace, who from eternity proceeds from the Father and the Son, You were visibly poured out on the apostles after the triumph and ascension of Jesus, we pray that You would also enter into our souls, so that we may become a temple of the Living God, prepared by You and fit to obtain that eternal life for which we were created and purchased by our redeemer, Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen. (Starck 100) 

2. »Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. The unspiritual/natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to know them because they are spiritually evaluated. The spiritual person examines all things, but is himself to be examined by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to advise Him? [Isaiah 40,13] But we have the mind of Christ.« 

3. On Pentecost Sunday, the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and Son; He gave the apostles the gift of languages so they could preach the gospel of Christ crucified and risen to those who gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of Pentecost. In his 1. Epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul tells us there is another spirit: the spirit of the world. Only by the Holy Spirit may we understand the things freely given us by God. Those who have the spirit of the world may not understand those God-given things. The spirit of the world is bound together with the wisdom of the world (1. Corinthians 1,20-21). In Paul’s day, the wisdom of the world was dominated by Greek philosophy and Roman lawyers. As useful as this wisdom is for education and civic responsibility, such worldly wisdom cannot know God through its wisdom.  

4. The Godly wisdom preached by the apostles on Pentecost and thereafter across the Roman Empire is the wisdom of Christ crucified and risen (1. Corinthians 1,23; 15,3-4). Human philosophies, wisdom and reason cannot perceive nor understand the gospel of Christ. The Apostle Peter preached: »Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works, wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know – this Jesus, you delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified, and of that we are all witnesses« (Acts 2,22-24.32-33.36). The result: 3000 people were baptized into the Christian faith that day. No Greek philosopher could accomplish such a feat, but the Holy Spirit can and does.

5. The apostles preached the gospel on Pentecost, that is, they preached forgiveness for the gospel proclaims forgiveness. The Jews asked what must be done for them to be saved. The apostles point them to Christ and the Sacrament of Baptism: repent, believe the gospel and be baptized. It is no different today, 2000 years later. Whoever calls upon Christ will be saved. God does not require any works from us, for the Holy Spirit creates faith when and where the gospel of forgiveness is preached. 

6. Faith in Jesus makes us spiritual people, and only Christians truly and rightly understand the mind of Christ. »God shows what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God shows what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God shows what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved the word of the cross is the power of God« (1. Corinthians 1,27-28.18). »O the depth of the riches, wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!« (Romans 11,33). Jesus told Nicodemus the Pharisees: »As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His Only Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned« (John 3,14-17). This is the message and the gift of Pentecost. Hear it, believe it and be certain that your sins are forgiven; rejoice that you are saved on account of Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen. 

7. Let us pray. O Holy Spirit, Creator of faith, fill the hearts of Your faithful and ignite in us the fire of Your Divine love so that we trust on Christ for our salvation.  Amen. 

To God alone be the Glory 

Soli Deo Gloria

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4^th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27^th 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.     

ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. 

Starck, Johann Friedrich. Starck’s Prayer Book. Copyright © 2009 Concordia Publishing House.