✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
1. John 1,5-2,6 3318
3. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 048
Mamuold, Abbot at Regensburg, ✠ 1001
17. Juni 2018
1. О Jesus, our Perfect Redeemer, keep us steadfast in the Christian faith, but if we err or become lost, we know that You will search for us and find us, so that we live and die in fellowship with You. Amen. (Starck 326)
2. »This is the message we have heard from Jesus Christ and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. Whoever says: „I know Him“ but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him: whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked.«
3. God hates sin; He punishes sin and threatens to pour out His wrath upon unrepentant sinners. The Bible contains numerous examples of God executing such justice and judgment. Holiness and wickedness cannot abide together, and so neither can God dwell eternally among sinners. Thus hell was created for the rebellious angels to be their new dwelling place; wicked sinners will dwell there too apart from God’s fellowship.
4. „But isn’t God a God of love? Indeed He is! God hates sin and in His holy justice He must punish sin and condemn sinners, but God’s will is that sinners be saved and spared eternal separation from Him. However, God cannot simply overlooked mankind’s sin, for sin must be atoned for and the sinner must be punished.
5. The Apostle John uses two of the most important Biblical words in his 1. Epistle: propitiation (ἱλασμός), which means „to bring forgiveness or to have mercy“ and: advocate (παράκλητον). Saint John tells us that Jesus is our Advocate and our Propitiator. This is where we see the love of God, for God the Father sent His Only Son to atone for us. Jesus is our Advocate; He intercedes for us before His Father. He affirms the charge against us: we are sinners; we are guilty. Jesus then offers up His defense: these sinners cannot be found guilty, they must be pardoned, for I have taken their place. Jesus, our Advocate, became our Propitiator who appeased His Father through a sacrifice; Jesus atoned for our sins by sacrificing Himself. Jesus became the Chief Sinner on the cross who bore the sin of the entire world, bore our just punishment and bore our condemnation. Jesus has atoned for sin, paid the ransom price and merited the forgiveness of sin.
6. Nikolaus von Zinzendorf writes of Christ propitiation in his hymn Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness: „Jesus, be endless praise to Thee, Whose boundless mercy hath for me, For me, and all Thy hands have made, An everlasting ransom paid.“ (LSB 563,6). God’s wrath and punishment of sin is His alien work, for He must deal with wickedness and evil, while His love and mercy is His proper work, for He receives us into His fellowship through the merits of Christ His Son and our Lord. God had reconciled the world to Himself through Christ when mankind was still His enemy (Romans 5,8.10). This reconciliation occurred through Christ’s substitutionary death: He died in our place for us and thus has received the punishment we deserved. In exchange, Jesus gives us His righteousness (der frölicher Wechsel, the blessed exchange).
7. Christ shows us that God is love and He welcomes sinners. In this morning’s Gospel Reading, St. Luke the Evangelist tells us: »Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying: „This man receives sinners and eats with them.“« (Luke 15,1-2). Indeed, He does, and at the end of His ministry He shared a final Passover meal with His Apostles and instituted that they celebrate it often in remembrance of Him. Today we partake of this Lord’s Supper, remembering that Jesus became our Advocate who shed His own blood and gave up His body to death to be our propitiation. This is God’s love to us revealed in the mercy of Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
8. Let us pray. O Merciful, Gracious Lord, You are slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness, instill in us the great joy of our salvation so that we are assured of that if we become lost, we are comforted that You seek us out, find us, and return us unto Your holy Church. 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 28. Revised Edition © 2012 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.
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