Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, the fifth chapter:
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving… But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
The reality that we face as Christians is knowing that we are called to be imitators of God. Of course, this is difficult, if not impossible, but that is the call. Paul in his letter this morning makes no excuses for you. He calls you right into obedience, the obedience of his words and the obedience you must have towards God.
But, of course, it is not just random obedience you are supposed to have. It’s not just that you should go out and do generic good works. It’s not that YOU get to decide what it is that you shall do this day to be obedient. No, Paul tells us what this obedience is: to walk as beloved children of God, beloved of each other, giving ourselves up for the sake of our brethren, forgiving each other, just as Christ did.
For indeed, is there anywhere in the entire world where we see a better example of what love is, or what love does? Love caused Christ’s incarnation, love brought Christ down to us, His love of us caused Him to grow in strength, and wisdom, and stature, love caused Him to live a perfect life, love caused Him to die, to be crucified, love, love even caused His own resurrection from the dead. But this is not some generic love; this is the love of God shown to sinners like us. This is the love that causes someone to lay His life down for His friends. This is love, and there is no greater love than this.
And, of course, this is good news! Jesus comes to save sinners! And so He has! But I’m still, even now, a sinner. And I know that I sin because so often I do not want to walk as a beloved child. I want to walk as a child that has to be dragged by his arms because he won’t pick up his feet. I want to walk as a child that does nothing but cause hell for those around me. I want to walk as a child of Satan and not of God.
But, then, Jesus does declare in the Scriptures, that according to my fallen nature, my sin, my father is indeed the Devil, so I suppose that’s no surprise. He has spawned my evil heart after leading our father and mother, Adam and Eve, into sin. He has poured his death into my mouth, like black sludge, so that it is the only thing that enters my heart.
In all of our hearts exist all the things that Paul warns us about. Filthiness of life, foolish talk, crude joking, idolatry, covetousness, sexual immorality and fornication. And darkness. Darkness covers over us like a heavy blanket, and only the things that are strong enough can survive underneath. Only the things that are so disgusting will survive, thrive, and show their faces. But this is all our work. This is how we do it.
Yet, there is greater hope, is there not? There is greater truth than the sludge that we have. There is greater forgiveness than the sin that we bear. There is greater power than the darkness we love. There is light. There is Christ.
There is the Christ who forgives. There is the Christ who lives. There is the Christ who died. There is the Christ who was resurrected. There is the Christ who promises everlasting life. There is the Christ who continues to come to us in Word and Sacrament. There is this Christ, and He is for you.
In fact, a way that Christ is for you is that He gives to you a heart which desires to imitate Him. This is why Paul encourages us to go forward in love with one another so that Christ might even be more seen among us. For He is indeed here, He is here every time we gather together in Word and Sacrament, and He is always with us.
This is why we do not walk as children of darkness, as sons and daughters of disobedience. This is why we should not do the things that Satan loves, those things that put barriers in the way of our love, those things that cause us to believe false doctrine, doctrines of the devil, those things that lead us into temptation, those things that lead us into filthiness, foolish talk, crude joking, sexual immorality, including adultery, pornography, premarital relations. We avoid those things that lead us into idolatry and not loving the Lord alone. We jettison those things that make us avoid loving one another. These things are unfruitful, and Christ has called us to bear much fruit.
But, like a tree trapped under this winter’s mud, unless that mud, that sludge is cleared away, unless it is taken away from us before it dries, the tree of fruit that Christ desires for us will die under the sludge. It will suffocate and its roots will only drink up even more and more filth. We shall never bear fruit in the works of darkness. We can’t. We can’t free ourselves.
But our hope is not in our own work. Can a tree clear away that sludge? Can a mouse move a mountain? Can a dark room create its own match to light? Never. These are things we cannot do. Not on our own. We need Christ.
This Christ washes away the sludge. This Christ skewers the Devil through the heart. This Christ remakes my father and mother, Adam and Eve, into new people by the promise of the coming Messiah, and He makes me the same. The Christ gives to me Himself, so that I may delight in His will, and walk in His ways, always to the glory of His holy name. This Christ makes me righteous on His account, for the Lord has loved us this much. But this righteousness isn’t just so I get to sit around marveling at how righteous I am. As Paul says here, it is also so that we may help and serve our neighbor, so we may walk in love with them, walking in the light of Christ. Though, of course, we know we shall do even this imperfectly because of our sin.
Yet this Christ, even through our sin, even through our sludge, even through all of our ill deeds, this Christ still loves us. This Jesus will still be with us. To Him, all of it is gone; it’s just taking us a long time to finally see that for ourselves. Jesus knows that the washing He has given to us is immediate and yet we, we according to our flesh, must wait a lifetime to see the final event, the final evidence, the final time where we shall stand in front of the mirror, and no longer see all the things that tear us down. We will no longer see ears that are too big and hear all the Law’s accusations, the mouth that is too wide because of all our gossip, the belly too low because of our gluttony, our legs too fat for never walking with our neighbor. These things shall be made new. And they shall be made whole. And they, like even our hearts, shall be remade sinless.
Our entire beings shall be remade in this Resurrection. We shall have imperishable bodies, and our souls shall be given back to them so that, indeed, we shall never sin, for we shall now depend solely on Christ’s righteousness, and never our own.
Yet, not all of Paul’s words today are for that Resurrection; it’s not just a picture of our perfect eternal life, but it’s to give us hope pertaining to the Resurrection, until we reach that day, and our walk ever closer to that day. That is why he finishes this passage with these great words, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” For when we rise from the grave, we shall see Christ. His light shall awaken us, it shall invigorate us. It shall be the thing that sustains us for all eternity, the rest of our lives.
And this light in the Resurrection, it even has its place now. For when there is no wrath, no anger, no clamor among us, no railing against one another, we are walking in love and these works of darkness are put away. We imitate God now, for we have been already, in this life, in the waters of baptism, we have been made like God, like Jesus. It is more our duty to forgive one another the trespasses against us, than it is to seek after reminding everyone how we’ve been wronged. This is what His beloved children do. Just as a child imitates his father by putting on his hat, tie, and his too-big shoes, pretending to go to work, we imitate our Father, and it may look ridiculous and cute to our Father’s eyes, but we do it because He shows us what His work is in Christ. His work is forgiveness.
There is, according to Paul, much to do, but if you leave with nothing else, hear this: the greatest work that we do for one another in this world, aside from serving the needs of our neighbor, is to forgive that neighbor in Jesus Christ. In this, we set them free from their sins against us because we have been set free from our sins against God. We imitate our Father, who has forgiven us, by forgiving others. We seek after Christ, because we know how great our sin is, and He forgives us. We also ought to forgive. For this is pleasing to the Lord. This is wisdom. This is something to which one can hold, for they may say, I am a great sinner, but I know now of a greater Savior, one who has saved me, forgiven me, and caused me to live in love with my brothers and sisters.
Now, I’m not saying just gloss over sins. I’m saying forgive. By all means, recognize sin for what it is, an unfruitful work of darkness, shameful before the Lord. To cover over sins is to partner with darkness. But you are now light in the Lord. You are not darkness. We expose sin, because in the light of Christ, sin dies. We don’t expose sin to lord it over others. We expose the works of darkness so that person may be lead to repentance. We expose the works of darkness so that person may hear the words of forgiveness. We expose it to bring to that person Jesus Christ.
This is a small resurrection of the dead coming to us even now, for when our Old Adam, that dead man of sin in us, is exposed to the light, he shirks away, and the New Adam, the New Christ in us arises from the dead, just as he arose out of the waters of baptism, and Christ will shine on us. Jesus will shine upon us always His forgiveness, always His cross, always His resurrection, always the hope of the promise we have. For even when we do not obey, even when we can’t, we have a greater Savior, a greater light that will guide us safely home to our Father in heaven. This light is Christ. And He shall make us imitators of His Father, for we, being His children, will naturally do so in Christ. And when we are unable, we have always the promise that God has forgiven our sins, and will raise us to everlasting life in the light of Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment