Rogate—Easter 5
Dear friends in Christ. Our Gospel readings in the latter half of the Easter season are pointing us forward—to Jesus’ Ascension, which is this coming Thursday, and to Pentecost. Jesus did do the work He came to do; He kept God’s holy Law for us; He suffered the curse of our sin and the wrath of God; He reconciled us sinners to the holy God. With His ascension, with mission accomplished, Jesus’ ascension into heaven, does not mean that He is no longer with His Church, no longer with each of His Christians; it means just the opposite—He is not confined to one place at one time like He was during His earthly public ministry. Now Jesus can be everywhere with His Church, with each of His dear Christians no matter where they may be; He can be and is with us as both God and man. Because Jesus is true God, He is everywhere—that’s the Right Hand of God; and because He one Person, where He is as God, there He also is as man.
Also with Jesus’ ascension, there is another blessing/ comfort to His Church: the apostle puts it this way [Heb. 7.25]: [Jesus] is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. Jesus presents our needs to the Father, praying on our behalf that we may receive the gift of life to the full. Here we are pointed to the theme of this Sunday—Rogate! Pray! This theme comes from today’s Gospel account where Jesus, shortly before His betrayal, suffering and death, tells His disciples: Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you... Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. Prayer is an aspect of our lives as Christians. It is a wonderful privilege we have as Christians to be able to go to our Lord in prayer placing before Him our needs and desires—not that He doesn’t know and not that He doesn’t know the best way to answer our prayer, He’s the all-knowing God after all, but so that we recognize our need and our Lord’s glorious answer and help.
Prayer is the result of Easter. Because of Jesus and His work, we sinners are reconciled to God and are bold to approach Him with our needs and desires; because of Jesus God is our dear, loving heavenly Father. Prayer is part of our Easter life. It is a privilege our Lord has in grace given us.
Our text this morning from St. James also talks about our privileges as our Lord’s dear Christians. Here he talks about hearing and doing God’s word. As Christians we are first hearers of the word and then doers of the word.
1. St. James begins: But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. It just naturally follows: first we must hear the word and only after hearing the word do we do it. But that raises the question: what word? In the verse right before our text begins, St. James writes: receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. The implanted word? What a beautiful image: just like you put a seed into the ground—you implant it—so too the word of God comes from outside of us and is implanted in us.
On the surface, it sounds like James is writing very oddly: receive with meekness the implanted word. If the word is implanted in us it’s already ours; it seems as if the Holy Spirit is here saying we should receive what is already ours. But that’s exactly what He’s saying because this is baptismal language. Through St. James, the Holy Spirit is telling us to receive, to keep receiving in/by faith, to take full spiritual advantage of what is already ours in baptism—the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. We are as Christians to keep receiving the gifts and blessings and benefits that God gave us in our baptism—the word He implanted in us at baptism. So, far from being just a one-time act with no meaning/ significance after that, as Christians we are in faith daily remembering our baptism—that we are now part of God’s holy family, the Church, that we are in Christ and He is in us, that we are reconciled to God who is now our dear loving heavenly Father.
So now our text: But be [or perhaps more exactly translated: “keep being”] doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. So what is that word we are to do? It is the word God has implanted in us. This is not the word of the Law: “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not”; instead, it is the word of the Gospel: baptism, what God has done for you in Christ. That’s why, yes, we are to be “doers” of the word, but before we can “do” the word, the word has to come to us first. It has to be implanted in us; we first must hear the word, be a hearer of the word before we become doers of it.
Again using the image of the implanted word: with gardening season fast upon us, you will not get the flowers or vegetables you want where you want unless you put the seed there. If you don’t, you will have a useless garden plot full of weeds. Same way with us spiritually, unless Christ implants the Gospel seed in us we will be nothing but a spiritual weed patch good for nothing but to be chopped down and burned. Unless Christ implants the Gospel seed in us, we on our own produce nothing good spiritually only sin and works deserving of God’s eternal wrath and condemnation. That’s the wretched spiritual state/ condition that we are all born in. There’s nothing good in us that makes us worthy of God, of Christ’s blessings, grace, eternal life. Instead, Christ must come and implant the word in us.
That’s where the “hearing” comes in. St. Paul writes [Rm. 10.17]: So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. First we hear the word—be it from the Gospel preaching, from the absolution, or from the water and word of Holy Baptism. God’s word, that Gospel proclamation is a mighty thing. One apostle describes [Hb 4.12] it as living and powerful; another [1 Pt. 1.22] calls the Gospel word the word of God which lives and abides forever. That’s because the Gospel and sacraments are not just words on a page, words that we hear, or mere water, bread and wine. Instead, they are [Rm. 1.16] the power of God to salvation. That’s because the Holy Spirit is in and with the word creating faith and strengthening faith where it already exists; that’s because the Gospel and sacraments are not just words about Christ, but in them Jesus actually gives the blessings of forgiveness of sin and eternal life. That’s why the word must be heard. Without the Holy Spirit’s coming and implanting that word in us, without His coming and offering and giving us the blessings Christ won, without His coming and working faith in our hearts to believe/ receive them—we, on our own, could never receive them. The word must be implanted in us; we must first be hearers of the word for it is through that hearing that we are brought to spiritual life.
2. But dear Christian, hearing the word is first, but it is only a means to an end. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. What does the word say to do? What does the word demand? Faith! That we believe! That’s doing the word. So often among those calling themselves Christian, the word has no effect on them. They may be in church, they may like to hear that their sins are forgiven but they don’t do what the word says; they don’t believe it and so it makes no lasting impression on them. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. People will very often hear the Gospel but only superficially and think they have all they need. They will think “O good. Jesus loves me. He wants me to be the best me. He wants to make me healthy, wealthy and wise.” Such do not take their sin seriously and think, “Since I’m forgiven, I can live any way I want. God will forgive that one too.” Notice where the emphasis is: it’s on me/ self! Others will indeed hear the Gospel but will merely go about their business. They do not let the word take root and grow deeply in their hearts and lives. They go back to their everyday lives and do not retain the Gospel message; they do not let that word be implanted or if it is, they let it go unwatered and unnourished so that it again dies out.
The vital thing for us, dear Christian, is that as James earlier said, we continue daily to receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls, that we hear the Gospel and do it, that is believe it. Believing it has consequences/ results in our lives. In our text St. James writes: But he who looks into the perfected law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. Notice now what, by the Holy Spirit, he calls the Gospel, the implanted word: he calls it the perfected law of liberty. The Gospel is the perfected law of liberty because in Jesus the law is perfected; it is completed—He kept/ obeyed it. It has its end/ fulfillment in Christ because He absorbed all of its accusations—every sin the law could accuse us of not doing, Jesus did; He absorbed God’s wrath over sin—all of God’s anger and condemnation for us not doing what the Law demands of us, Jesus endured that first Good Friday on the cross. The Law is, in Christ, perfected/ completed.
That’s why, yes, we will still continue to examine our hearts and lives in the mirror of God’s holy Law and so recognize and sorrow over that sin, but as we recognize our sin and our need for a Savior, we then are pointed to Christ, driven to Him and His saving Gospel word in which He offers and gives us forgiveness of sin and eternal life and so we once again receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
Jesus both kept the Law for us and paid the price for our disobedience of the holy Law of God. By Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross, we have been freed from the condemnation for not doing it. Does that then mean that we can go and serve self and sin as much as we want without impunity? Hardly! What it does mean as we both hear the Gospel word and do it, that is, believe it, is that strengthened by the forgiveness of sins we strive, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to live according to God’s law; but we do not worry about coming under its condemnation. Yes, the holy Law of God is there with its just demands but also its fulfillment in Christ. That’s the absolution. The law, fulfilled in Christ, becomes for us guidelines—what we as Christians, forgiven our sins and doing the word—believing in Christ, receiving His forgiveness and life—now want to do because we know it is pleasing to God since the Law is the expression of God’s will.
Notice again our text: the perfected law of liberty. In Christ, because of His work for us, because of His work in us implanting in us the Gospel word, because by His Holy Spirit we now first hear and do the word—believe it—we now live in a joyous freedom. No longer are we slaves to sin, self and Satan. Instead, as we receive the forgiveness of sins we grow in faith and love of the Lord and grow in holiness and that shows itself in our lives: If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. The power of the word shows itself in our lives. Our blessed condition as Christians shows itself in what we do. We are reckless in doing good because we first heard the Gospel word and now, by the power of the Holy Spirit in that word, we are doing the word—that is, we are believing it and receiving all its gifts and blessings. INJ Amen