The Value of Life

I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are Your works; my soul knows it very well.  (Psalm 139:14)

This Sunday we celebrate Life Sunday – a day that we set aside to look at the value of life as a wonderful gift of God.  When you look in the mirror, do you say along with the psalmist, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”?  Did you know that you are wonderfully made?  It’s true – God personally created each and every one of us!  Psalm 139 tells us that God knitted each of us in our mother’s womb.   

The fact that God has created us each by hand and breathed into us His life-giving breath shows us just how valuable life is – and how valuable you are!  What an amazing difference that makes in our lives!  Satan though, loves to show us the effects of sin – to show us our frail bodies that are slowly dying.  The devil says to us, “How valuable could you be?  You sin constantly, your bodies are full of imperfections, you fight and quarrel even with your closest family members – how valuable could you really be?”

God answers that question by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Savior.  We are so valuable to God that we couldn’t be bought with silver or gold – but only by the blood of Christ.  1 Peter 1:18-19 tells us, “knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” 

So the next time you look in the mirror, remember the words of Psalm 139, and rejoice in the gift of life our Heavenly Father gives us – and rejoice in the fact that you are His creation – fearfully and wonderfully made!

 

Resolution Check-Up

How are you doing on your New Year's resolution?  I know we are only twelve days into January, but that doesn't mean resolutions are still being followed.  The statistics are pretty amazing when it comes to New Year's resolutions.  Almost half of Americans make a resolution each year.  Out of those, only one out of three keeps their resolution through January.  Over the course of a year the statistics say that only 8% of people are successful in keeping their resolutions.

With such low success rates when it comes to New Year's resolutions, we can be thankful that our life in Christ is not lived in that kind of way.  As Christians we can rejoice in the fact that we are not saved by how well we live up to God's standard for our lives.  We are saved by grace alone as Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8-9. 

We are all sinful and in need on God's forgiveness.  That is why we take joy and comfort in what Christ has done for us through His life, death, and resurrection.  The victory over sin, death and the devil and the forgiveness and salvation Christ won is given to us - free of charge, without any merit or worthiness in us.

So back to New Year’s resolutions.  We’ve all made them, and we’ve all broken them.  Some of us have made new ones and already broken them, and some of us have given up on the whole idea.  But instead of making a resolution that is all up to you - make one that relies upon God to be at work so you can do everything in Christ.

Our resolution, then, is not the one we make and fail to keep, but the one God has made for us.  God the Father made a resolution to send His Son to secure us unto life everlasting.  Jesus made a resolution to live, die, rise and intercede for us 24/7 - and He does.   The Holy Spirit made a resolution to create and strengthen faith within us.  God is faithful and He does it!

 

 

Baptized into Christ

A lot of times we talk about the gift of life – and it certainly is a precious gift.  But, we don’t hear much about the gift of death.  Perhaps that’s due to our realization that death really isn’t much of a gift.  At least, its not a gift we’d typically want, and with good reason – death is our enemy.  But St. Paul speaks to us about Baptism in such a way that it gives the gift of death….and life!

In Holy Baptism, Christ bestows on us the gifts of His death and resurrection.  Holy Baptism is all about gifts – gifts from your Lord and Redeemer to you.  And yes, those gifts include both His death and His resurrection.  Without Christ’s death, Baptism would have no power, for the forgiveness that it bestows is dependent upon His sacrifice on the cross.  Likewise, without Christ’s resurrection, Baptism could never give you life everlasting, because the power of sin, death, and the devil would be proved stronger than even God.

We’ve been rescued from sin, death, and the devil – not by our work, but by the Lord’s work and mercy.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has become flesh in order to die for our sins on the cross.  But, Christ is risen!  He lives forever!  He has died and risen for all the world – and for you and me.  That is what Holy Baptism is all about.  In Baptism, we were buried with Jesus Christ into His death.  In His death, He suffered God’s judgment for our sins; in Baptism He joined you to that death.

Instead of the scourge and nails, you only felt a splash of water.  But by that water and His holy Word, when God looks at us, He no longer sees our sin: He sees those whose sins are gone, because – with Jesus – we’ve already died to sin.  And “the one who has died has been freed from sin” (Rom 6:7)

In Holy Baptism, Jesus also joins us to His resurrection.  While God originally created Adam and Eve to live eternally, the wages of sin is death – death of the body and soul.  Jesus has conquered death, and conquered death for us!  While our body must suffer the wages of sin in this world, we already have eternal life in Christ Jesus.  We are alive!  We have new, eternal life!  That’s what it means to be baptized.

We do not declare, “I was baptized”, but “I am baptized”.  It is the difference between saying, “I was alive” and “I am alive”.  We are baptized and so we are alive – forever!  We live in the newness of life right now.  It makes a difference in how we face the day – knowing that not one failure, not one mistake, not anyone’s words of hatred – nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord – for we are the Baptized children of God – His beloved.

Your baptism birthday is the most important day of your eternal life.  It is our defense against satan who accuses you of your sin.  It’s our spiritual marker that defines our identity.  It’s our frame of reference to see the world from an eternal perspective rather than merely a temporal one.  We bear the mark of the cross of Jesus claiming us for eternity.

As long as we have sinful flesh, we still face death of our body unless the Lord returns first.  The spector of death is a haunting thing, and as it approaches we can be sure the devil will use it as his final attempt to make us doubt our Lord’s promises.  At such times, should you wonder whether or not God loves you, remember the answer and say, “I am baptized.  Jesus has joined me to His death – and He also joined me to His resurrection.  Just like sin, death is not my master – for is death no longer has dominion over Jesus, then it has no dominion over me.  Just like sin, death is like that would-be robber who would seek to destroy me; but it is also a conquered enemy, one that Christ will use to deliver me from this world and raise me up to eternal life.”

Thanks be to God – the gifts of Christ’s death and resurrection are real, certain, and everlasting.  Without any merit or worthiness in us, Christ our Lord has suffered death on our behalf – taking all the power away from sin, death, and the power of the devil and all the circumstances of life that discourage us.

Beloved of God, it’s not that you were baptized – but you are baptized.  It’s not that you were alive in Christ, but that you are alive in Christ.  It’s not that you were forgiven for all your sin, but that you are forgiven of all your sin!

All this is yours, because Jesus has joined you to Himself, to His death and resurrection.  Baptism is all about the gifts and all those gifts remain yours – now, and forever!

 

Connected to the True Vine

“As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” 

The image of the Vine and the branches is one that has great importance in our day to day lives.  Each day we are confronted with the truth of what would happen if we are separated from the Vine:  we die!  What happens to a body that’s separated from its head?  Apart from the Vine, branches can do nothing!  We have no life apart from Christ.  The sap that flows from the vine nourishes the branches.  We confess that our very lives sprout forth from our Heavenly Father, and that by our sin, we have cut ourselves off from our source of life.  Yet, by His grace through the blood of His Son, shed on the cross for the sins of the world, our sin, we have been reconciled to God, grafted back into the true vine!

The life that flows from the side of Christ Crucified and Risen now nourishes us with His life and forgiveness, so that by faith we might live in union with Him.  The message of the Vine and the branches gives us hope!  Through being grafted into the Vine and by the care of the Vinedresser – we bear His fruit!

So how can our lives be altered, changed, transformed?  Remember, we don’t produce fruit – Jesus does.  When our lives are so consumed with all sorts of things other than bearing the fruit of Christ – then we are the branches that need to pruning of the vinedresser.  The word for pruning in Greek means “Cleanse”.  It takes this pruning – this cleansing – to remove bugs and disease that will cause the branch not to produce fruit.  It’s for that reason that we need pruning.  When we experience this pruning, we must trust that God is in control and the Vinedresser knows that He is doing – He’s working for our very best!

Satan would love for us to think otherwise though.  Satan works very hard to convince us that we don’t need pruning – that He would never cut into our lives – that we would be in compete control.  But jointed to satan – we are dead!

Thanks be to God – for we are alive in Christ.  One of my favorite parts of God’s Word is Galatians 2:20 which says, “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  We are alive in Christ – the true Vine – and through Him we produce His fruit.

That fruit that we produce is what Paul speaks of in Galatians chapter 5 - the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”. These are, above all, characteristics of our Savior in his relationship with us.  But they are also the fruit that He produce in us as we are joined and grafted into Him.

Being grafted into the True Vine, may the Holy Spirit use the good fruit we produce to be a blessing to each other, our families, and our community and to give the glory to God the Father.

 

Heart Transplant

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”  Proberbs 4:23

God looks at each and every one of us and proclaims that we need a brand new heart.  He’s not talking about the organ beating in our chest – but that which really makes us tick from the inside out.  God wants us to have a new heart that recognizes sin, mourns and repents of this sin, and treasures God’s forgiveness.  Having this heart transplant is literally a matter of life and death.

The process for this heart transplant begins with repentance.  What is the definition of repentance?  To turn away from sin – to believe what God says is the truth about you.  We were all conceived with a heart that doesn’t want to take responsibility for sin, a heart that doesn’t believe that sin is worthy of death.  The wages of sin IS death.  We know that we are powerless to turn because we are dead in sin, incapable of returning to God.

God reveals that our problem (as his people) is not outright disobedience – but its with the heart.  There is no such thing as a “safe sin”.  We tend to justify our sin because we haven’t done anything terribly disobedient or we haven’t done anything that isn’t being done by everyone else – or my sin is far less than what so and so has done!  But God is blunt, saying, the soul that sins shall die.  God demands perfection.  Every last one of us falls short of that.  Therfore, the result is death.

Our self righteousness can even run so deep that we find ourselves blaming God for the mess we’re in.  It’s as old as Adam saying to God, “The woman who YOU gave to be with me…she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.”  Things haven’t changed.  Every one of us at one time or another has pointed the finger at others, even God, as the reason for our wrong-doing – as if this excuses our sin or removes us from any accountability before God.

Only in repentance can we be restored so that our thoughts, words, and deeds match God’s will.  It is not repentance that saves us; but rather repentance is the sign that I realize what God has done in Christ Jesus.  We are made right with God because prior to all else, Christ lived, died, and rose for us.  Sinful men and women can only be changed into new creatures by the marvelous work of God in Christ Jesus.  Through the atoning work of Christ, we are able to do the will of God – to answer gladly when the Lord calls.

The true and reliable source of life is in Jesus Christ.  How does God give us this new heart for life?  It’s a lot like the way you would receive a new heart if you checked into the hospital for a heart transplant.  Before you can receive a new heart, someone has to die.  Not only that, the person must be willing to give of their heart and it has to be a match or your body will reject it.  You see the similarities with Jesus, don’t you?  Jesus give us the new heart that God demands.

He made that possible by living the perfect life that God demands and dying the death our sin deserves on the cross.  An organ donor is only willing to give you their heart once they’re done with it, not a moment before.  Jesus willingly went to the Cross so that you could receive His heart – now!

And how do we treat this new heart?  We treasure it!  We treasure the new heart and forgiveness God has given to us.  We “cast away all our transgressions” or as Luther put it – our entire lives are lived in repentance – treasuring our relationship with God above all things.  We nurture our new heart with the Word and with the life-giving food of Christ’s body and blood.

Therefore, when we face sin and temptation, we TURN away from it and rejoice in the promises of God that give us strength.  When we face doubts and circumstances that take away our confidence, we TURN to the promises of our Baptism and the sure and certain truth that we belong to God and we have been given a clean heart and have been restored in salvation.



Clothed with Christ

In the month of October we often times talk about dressing up.  Usually we are speaking of dressing up for a Halloween celebration.  The real reason I want to talk to you about dressing up is because of what the Bible says we, as Christians, are clothed with – Christ’s righteousness.

Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ lived the perfect life that we are totally unable to.  He died the horrible death that our sin deserves.  He then rose victorious from the grave to ensure the promises of forgiveness, life, and salvation for us!  This is good news!  It’s even better news when we realize that through Baptism, we have been clothed with the very righteousness and innocence of Christ.  This Good News affects everything we do as renewed, redeemed, and reformed children of God.

We have been clothed with Christ!  Galatians 3:27 tells us, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ."  As Christians who have been clothed with Christ’s righteousness, we have the awesome opportunity to give witness to the forgiveness, life, and salvation found in Christ alone.  May the month of October serve to remind us of the most important garment we have – the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

 

God's Labor Through Us

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.  James 2:17

With the words of James, we are thrown into an age-old debate. It is a debate that is more often sparked by the words that follow in verse 26: "faith apart from works is dead." The problem we have is understanding how these words jive with others of Scripture, like Paul’s in Romans 1: "The righteous shall live by faith" (1:17). But ours is a tradition based on faith alone, grace alone, and Word alone.

It’s all about order. Works do not count for our salvation. We are saved only through the righteousness of Christ, a righteousness carried out in His perfect life, His suffering, death, and resurrection and given to us by the grace of God in our Baptisms. We know the words. But then it’s the actions that follow that seem so inconsistent.

There are two sinful outcomes of a Christian’s life when he or she dismisses works because they can’t save. We either do whatever we want because God’s grace is there to pick us up (which is exactly the problem Paul had to warn the Romans against), OR, we do nothing because it counts for nothing. Instead, it’s important for us to understand that what we do or don’t do does matter. It matters to God and your neighbor. Moreover, those actions are connected to our faith, not in order to be saved, but because we are saved.

And so James is writing also to each one of us. In his day, James was confronting a problem in the
Church. There was a disconnect between the faith they professed and how they lived out their faith.
The same caution is extended to us in our day, especially as we hear the example of this disconnect that James gives. Two men enter the assembly, the gathering of believers in the presence of God. One is dressed well, the other not. The one dressed well is distinguished among the church family. The other is given a lower place because he doesn’t measure up. "If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself, well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it" (vv 8–10).

So what we do really does matter! And what do we do now? It can seem as though all of James’s words, including those about faith being dead without works, all add up to this: "Do better!" Is that it? Do better? Do better so people can see you’re a Christian? Do better so God knows you’re serious about Him? If that’s all James is saying, then why don’t we simply do better? Why don’t we just do everything God says? After all, God said to do it; just do it! But we don’t. In fact, we can’t. If James is saying nothing more than "Do better!" he’s actually doing exactly what he condemns in vss. 15–16 of our text: "If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, filled, body, what good is that?"

On our own, we can’t "do better" just because James says so any more than the indigent person can be warmed and filled by our words alone. That’s because our sinful nature always has its own selfish agenda. Our sinful nature always looks out for itself, not for our neighbor in need; that’s just what the sinful nature is: all out for itself.

So the age-old debate is set before us: Either James’s words are empty encouragement for us as we live our lives in perpetual disappointment to God, or there’s more...

Indeed, there is more! We don’t have to look far for a hint at where to turn in our confusion. In verse 7, James makes what seems to be just a passing comment in the middle of his encouragement to do good. He refers to the "name by which you were called." However, it’s not just a passing comment; it’s filled with the answer to the problem here. It suggests there was action prior to ours. That action is the action of the One who called us, for we can’t call ourselves. It’s God, of course, who has called us. He’s called us into a relationship with Him that is lived out in relationship to one another. It really is all about order.

It all begins with God’s action toward us and continues as we live out His action toward us in our actions toward others. To understand, let’s put the shoe on the other foot. What if God made distinctions? What if God analyzed our worthiness and acted accordingly? What if God analyzed our works and dealt with us according to what He saw? - and He sees all!! What if God kept a scorecard and awarded our place before Him based on that scorecard?

Here’s the content of our faith: God does not! If God did make such distinctions, we would be left
to work out our own salvation. And as hard as we might work, we would never know if we had done enough. Instead, He has worked out our salvation for us. The content of our faith is Jesus Christ and His work of salvation on our behalf. He lived the perfect life we cannot live. He died to pay the price we cannot pay. He rose to defeat death and make it possible for His righteousness to become ours. Our faith is in a labor, but not our own. Our faith is in a labor accomplished on a cross and emanating from an empty tomb. Our faith, without Christ, is dead! Our life begins, continues, and ends with Him and in Him, which is why what we do and what we don’t do really matters.

The life we live is the life God has labored for us in Christ. His life—what He has done for us and what He has given to us—animates and motivates our lives. He is the content of our faith and the content of our living. Therefore, He is the content of our labor. Any other understanding of the relationship between faith and works creates an either/or proposition—either faith or works. Rather, Christ in us and Christ through us creates a both/and proposition—both faith and works; first faith, then works, and never ever one without the other.

Now, what about when I fail? In the either/or proposition, our failure means one of two things. Our
failure means either we have no faith OR our failure doesn’t matter. We know our failures can’t simply be overlooked, so in the either/or proposition, we’re sent back within ourselves to do better. We’re left to find our own inner strength. Our faith, though, isn’t in ourselves; it’s in Christ and in His atoning work. This is where the both/and proposition of both faith and works finds a firm hold on
our lives as God’s children. Because if everything begins with Christ, then He is where we go when we fail. When we fail to live as we should, we’re sent back to Christ. We’re sent back to His Word and Sacraments and the reassurance of God’s grace given in Baptism as we hear His Word of forgiveness. We’re sent back to feed on Him in His Supper in order to receive from Him strengthening of our faith and strengthening of our lives lived in that faith. We’re sent back to the One true God, who holds no distinctions but lived and died for all. That is, He loves us whom He has graciously called and to whom He has given His name. His grace is our salvation, and His grace is our strength to live, to live lives that look like what they are—God’s Labor of love – Christ in us and Christ through us.

"So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead" (v 17). However, we are not dead. We are alive in Christ, and so we live and labor in Christ who works in and through each one of us!