Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the First Epistle of John, the fifth chapter:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! And it is for that reason that we may have the greatest confidence that our Lord is real and the testimony of His life, death, and resurrection are true. You see, it is good that you believe Jesus existed. It is good that you believe in God. But remember, even the demons believe such things and tremble. To believe that Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected, is fine, but that’s no deeper faith than that which the demons have.
Instead, to believe that Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected all for you, for the forgiveness of your sins, for the promise of your life lived eternally, that is the faith that is saving. If that is what you believe, you have no worries. That is the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. That is a faith that no demon has.
You see, anyone can believe that Jesus existed. They have. Thousands of people in Israel saw Jesus and knew that He lived. But they didn’t believe that He had saved them. You can believe that He died. That’s not hard. You can even believe that He was resurrected. Not really all that hard either, especially once you realize that tales of people coming back from the dead are all over the place. It’d be weird, yeah, because most people don’t rise from the dead, but you could do it.
But, that’s not faith. Faith grabs onto the grace given by God through Christ Jesus and faith will never let it go. Faith tells you of the incarnation, God in human flesh. Faith tells you that Jesus died for you. And faith tells you that Jesus was resurrected, certainly not a tale, a myth, a legend, but actual fact. And this faith isn’t something that you do, not something you create; faith itself is a gift from God, granted to you, presented to you, so that you would always receive the love of God in Christ Jesus, the forgiveness of all of your sins.
You remember, we talked last week about what the love of God is: the commitment to send His Son Jesus Christ into our flesh so that He would die. But He didn’t die for a lack of reason. He died to forgive the sins of the world. And the Gospel is that Jesus died for the forgiveness of my great and heinous sins, and He died for yours. It’s not enough just to say that Jesus died, it’s that He died for you, he died for me.
John says that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. But what does the word “Christ” mean? It’s not Jesus’ last name. That was probably something like Bar-Joseph, son of Joseph. Christ is the Greek word that means the same as the Hebrew word Messiah, they are one and the same word. They both mean “Anointed.” It might even be better, on occasion to refer to Jesus Christ as Jesus the Christ. It’s more specific. Anointed is just a way to say that something was poured on Him, as He received an office. You can anoint with oil, as King David was by Samuel, you could anoint with a sword, as is a knight, or you can anoint with water.
You see, you have to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, else you are not born of God. If you do believe this, good, you are His child. But, what was Jesus anointed for? And where was He anointed anyway?
The anointing of Jesus, John says, is in two ways, with the potentiality of a third. The first is in water. The second is in blood. And the third is the testimony of the Spirit.
In the first way, Jesus was anointed with water at His baptism. In this moment, we see the entirety of the Trinity, the Son in the water, the Father pronouncing His love for His Son, and the Spirit descending upon Jesus. Jesus wasn’t baptized to give us an example of what to do. Jesus was baptized, as He says, to fulfill all righteousness, to be anointed by the last of the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptizer. There, in the Jordan River, Jesus was baptized in the very same waters that would baptize, wash, so many clean of their sins. And there, He sanctified, made holy, all waters for us to be washed in, where our sins are taken away from us in our Baptisms and we are welcomed into God’s kingdom forever.
In the second anointing, Jesus was washed in blood. Where else is this but the cross itself? For there, Jesus was covered over, even with His own blood coming from whips and piercings and thorns and beatings. Jesus was anointed in a way we cannot even imagine, but the blood shows us His anointing, and the power of that anointing even comes to us today as we have been washed and fed with this holy, innocent, and precious blood. It has guarded us from great evil, especially unbelief, and will continue to do so.
These two anointings show us how it was that Jesus came. First, to fulfill all righteousness, that is to be perfectly holy for the benefit of all of the world and for their salvation, and, second, to take God the Father’s wrath against sin. Those are the very two reasons Jesus came: to give you all of His holiness and to take all of your punishment. Our Lord Jesus the Christ loves you so much, that He came into your flesh, to take all of your sin upon Himself, and die for you.
You see, the commandments of God? None of us have kept them. We are great sinners, each of us. We have sinned in thought, word, and deed. We have not loved God. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. Because of the sin in us, we’d rather burn the world down than face having to do what is good, right, and salutary. We don’t really want to serve God, the first three commandments. We really don’t want to love and serve our neighbor, the last seven.
But, John says these commandments aren’t burdensome. If you’re born of God, these should be easy. So, we gotta ask, who of us has kept these commandments? Not me. Certainly not me. Most assuredly, not you either. We think we’re pretty good, but we’re really not.
But, remember, though you haven’t kept these commandments, did Christ yet come and die for you? Of course. Jesus only dies for sinners. If you haven’t broken every one of God’s commandments, you don’t need Jesus because there’s a good chance you’ll get to heaven on your own. But that kind of person doesn’t really exist. Don’t think too highly of yourself. You’re not good. You’re poor and miserable. But Jesus came only for the poor and miserable.
And that is good news. Do you believe it? Do you believe Christ came for you, the poor, miserable sinner? I do. And you should. And if you do, as I believe you do, it is because of the third anointing, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, which is poured on Jesus in His baptism, through His life, through His death, resurrection, ascension, and poured out on the disciples at Pentecost. But the Holy Spirit is poured out on you as well. The testimony of the Spirit is received by you through His Word, and through His Sacraments, specifically through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.
There, in that water, the Holy Spirit is poured out upon you through the water and the Word delivering to you faith to believe the testimony of Jesus the Christ, the Good News, the Gospel, that Jesus Christ was sent by the Father to die for you. There, in that font, hundreds have been washed, there, in every font, millions have been washed from around the world, and the testimony of the Spirit is given.
This testimony only points to one thing: Jesus Christ. It points us to the Messiah. It shows us that He truly is the Son of God, the Son of the Father. It shows us that He truly did live righteously for us. It shows us that there was nothing He would not do to save the people that He loved. He went from being fully God to being both fully God and fully man. He took on our flesh. He took up humanity and just stuck it up into the Trinity. Who can comprehend this? Who can comprehend such love that God would come to take on the sin of humanity? Who can comprehend that a perfect God would become sin? That He would condescend to live with His creation?
None can. None can understand this by their own ability. None. Yet, we believe it. We believe it because we have been enlightened by faith. We have been granted this marvelous anointing by the very command of Jesus. The command that we be Baptized is not burdensome. The command that we be forgiven is not burdensome. The command that we eat and drink His body and blood in the Supper is not burdensome. These are easy. They’re all gift.
And they enable us to go out and love and serve our neighbor. They enable us to go with strength to serve without fear of sin. We don’t need to fear sinning anymore. We shouldn’t seek to sin, obviously. That’s what children of Satan do. But children of God, being born of God, being fully and completely saved, children of God desire to love and to serve all of humanity, just as the Lord served and saved all of humanity.
Do we have to fear our service, like if we get it wrong, God is going to punish us? No. It’s like a mother, teaching her daughter to talk, trying to get her to say, “Mama,” and the child’s first word is, “Dada.” Is the mom going to hate the daughter? No. It’s not what she was trying to do, but the joy that is still with the mother towards her daughter because the daughter is speaking for the first time, is the joy that the Father felt towards His Son, even while the Father had to forsake His Son on the cross. And it is how the Father feels towards you when we do righteous things with sinful hands, loving and serving our neighbor.
Jesus lived righteously, yet became Sin, and the Father turned His back on His Son on the cross. Yet, the Father was filled with great joy at His Son, for this is the Father’s love, that His Son would die for the sins of the whole world, your sins. And when the Father looks at you, baptized into His Son, though you sin, the Father continues to love you because, as a child of God, you continue to go out and love and serve others in His name.
God is not disappointed with you. He doesn’t hate you. He can’t. Just as the water, the blood, and the Spirit testify to our Jesus and what He did for you, the water of Baptism, the blood of the Lamb, and the Holy Spirit testify that you, you, are the Son’s forever, a beloved brother or sister. And by faith, you will always be His. By that faith, given to you by water and the Word, given to you in Baptism by the Holy Spirit, you shall overcome the world, rising in the very resurrection of the Christ on the Last Day. By water, blood, and the Spirit, as Christ did, you, too, shall rise and you shall be His forever. You believe. You believe by faith. And so you are His forever, because He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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