Ash Wednesday
Dearly beloved. Today we enter the holy and penitential season of Lent. Lent is the time that we use to prepare our hearts and minds to hear once again the glorious proclamation and foundation of the holy Christian faith: Christ is risen! With Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, sin, death, devil and hell all lay defeated. Our faith is not in vain; we are no longer in our sins; the devil is our defeated enemy and heaven stands open to us—we are, in Jesus, God’s dear children.
Precisely this proclamation and its results in us and for us is precisely the thing the devil wants to take from us. He wants to destroy the Spirit-worked faith we have that rejoices in and receives Easter’s proclamation. One insidious way that he tries to do this is by making the glorious proclamation “Christ is risen!” something that’s “old hat”; he wants to get us tired of that announcement so that we no longer desire to hear it. One way he tries to do that is to try to get us to think that our sins are no big deal: we aren’t really all that bad; we don’t sin too much; or, at the very least, we are certainly better than most. But if the devil succeeds in that with us, then what? Then “Christ is risen and my sins are forgiven me” are no big deal—after all, I really didn’t need it all that much anyway. But what is our antidote to this? Lent! Lent is the time of year that we take special time to hold up our hearts and lives to the mirror of God’s holy law and examine them all the more closely. As we do so with honesty and humility, we will see our sin all the more clearly.
Ash Wednesday with its ashes remind us of the end result of our sin—death. The holy apostle clearly testifies [Rm. 6.23]: The wages of sin is death. Death teaches us that our sins are indeed a great affront to a holy God. When we realize what our sins really are and what we earn and deserve because of them—death and God’s wrath and eternal damnation in hell—how we long for that glorious announcement of Easter that Jesus did rise from the dead, that in Him our sins are forgiven and that we will one day be with Him in heaven, soul and body. Recognizing our sin drives us to our Savior from sin. That’s the purpose of Lent and its inward focus on heart and life.
But Lent also has an outward focus—on Jesus. Again, Ash Wednesday’s ashes remind us of this. Not only do the ashes remind us of our death, but they also point us to the death of Another—Jesus. In Lent, we ponder Jesus’ holy suffering and innocent death. There we see His great love for us; there we see the Father’s great love in sending Jesus, His Son. Yes, Jesus’ suffering and death drive home to us the seriousness of our sin—that it took the death of the holy God Himself to reconcile us sinners to God—but it also drives home to us the love of God for us sinners. That love draws us to our gracious and merciful God; it leads us to sorrow over and confess our sins all of which we committed against our gracious and merciful God; that love draws us to receive that forgiveness that Jesus won for us by His holy life and innocent suffering and death and now offers and gives us in His holy word and sacraments. This outward focus of Lent gives the solid foundation to faith and our repentance. It’s why we can confess our sins—our God is gracious and merciful to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness; and Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion show that beyond any shadow of a doubt. Having looked inward at our hearts and lives and seeing and being full of sorrow for our sins and looking outward at Jesus and His suffering and death for our sins, how we love Him and long to hear Easter’s proclamation: Christ is risen!
Our text today gives us a further comfort during Lent, lest we despair thinking only of our sin and seeing ourselves only as the sinners we really are. In our text, we see the glorious dignity that we have as Christians: we share in the divine nature. Here we see a reflection of Luther’s insight that we are at the same time both total sinners and total saints. We share in the divine nature. This is both God’s greatest gift to us and our most holy task!
- St. Peter begins our text: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Here is God’s great gift to us: His grace and peace. But how is it that we receive His grace and peace? Through faith! Faith grabs ahold of God’s grace to us in Jesus. That’s what we do each time we say Amen after the absolution/ after we receive the forgiveness of our sins. At the announcement of the forgiveness of our sin, faith says Amen! This is the true word and pronouncement of God! It is true. It is mine! Where faith receives and clings to that word, Forgiven!, there is peace—peace of conscience. Our sins are forgiven us. There is nothing separating us from God; we are forgiven in Jesus.
This grace and peace are multiplied to us; we continue to receive their blessing and benefit as we, by faith, know the true God rightly— in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. The point? It’s not true knowledge of God to say that there is a God. We have true knowledge of God when we can say: I know God and Jesus as my God and my Jesus, my Savior from sin. That’s knowing God rightly; that’s saving knowledge of God; that’s faith. The more that we grow in faith, in this knowledge, that God is my God and Jesus is my Savior, the more grace and peace we have.
This faith that we know God rightly is God’s gift to us. When all is said and done, we don’t need anything else. If we have the true faith and know God rightly, what more spiritually do we need? We have it all! God gives us all we need. Our text: His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. Through these he has given us his precious and great promises.
His divine power, that’s the Holy Spirit at work. He works through the word and sacraments to bring us to faith and to keep us in the faith. The fact that you are a Christian today is because of God’s divine power at work/ His Holy Spirit in the word and sacrament. So when it comes to eternal life—that is, our lives as Christians now and into all eternity—the Holy Spirit has given us everything we need. There’s nothing that we have or could add to it. God has done it all for us. What a glorious dignity we have! The Holy Spirit has brought us to spiritual life, to the true knowledge of God.
And what is more, the fact that we live a life of faith and good works, that, too, is God’s gift: His divine power has given us everything we need for … godliness. Let us not forget, dear Christian, that led and strengthened by the Holy Spirit we do good things; we do live lives of faith and good works. Although we are far from perfect —Lent’s time of examination of heart and life makes that abundantly clear—we at least make a beginning at living a life more and more free of sin and more and more godly. As we grow in faith, the Holy Spirit strengthens us to live a more God-pleasing life. To be sure, some days are better than others. But as Christians, who by faith know the Lord rightly, we have all we need; His divine power has given us everything we need for … godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. Do you want to live a life of less sin and greater godliness? The Lord has given you everything you need—in the word and sacraments the Holy Spirit is mightily at work in you and on you.
Now St. Peter reveals the great gift of God to us more fully. Through these he has given us his precious and great promises so that through them you may share in the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that sinful lust causes in the world. Through God revealing Himself to us in word and sacrament, the Holy Spirit has worked faith so that we believe and hold fast his precious and great promises. Notice, where the Holy Spirit works faith, we, then, share in the divine nature. This doesn’t mean that we become gods but that God comes to us and dwells in us. This is the greatest gift of God to us. By His grace He dwells within us and by that we share in the divine nature. Jesus told the disciples and us [John 14.23]: If anyone loves Me [that is, has faith in Me, and this by the work of the Holy Spirit in the word and sacrament], he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with Him. And the blessed Apostle asks [1 Cor 6.19]: Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? What a great gift of God! He dwells within us; we are His temples. He dwells within us so closely and intimately. It seems hardly possible, but it is true—we share in the divine nature. It is what our theologians call the mystical union. What a glory and dignity we have as Christians—sinful though we are, God in grace comes to dwell in us.
We have a beautiful example of this to look at and remind us of it. And that example is the Blessed Sacrament. There Jesus comes to us—each one—personally and individually and gives us His body and blood. He joins with us. We are in Him and He is in us. So also each of our Lord’s dear Christians—the Lord comes to us in grace and we share in the divine nature.
- Since we share in the divine nature, we are the recipients of God’s greatest gift to us. And it also means that we grow in our most holy task. God doesn’t come to us and dwell in us so that we continue on our merry way of sin. Instead, we are to grow in our shar[ing] in the divine nature. God wants us to exercise ourselves in godliness, giving evidence of Who it is who is in us. St. Peter continues: And, for this very reason [because we share in the divine nature], after applying every effort, add moral excellence to your faith. To moral excellence, add knowledge. 6To knowledge, add self-control. To self-control, add patient endurance. To patient endurance, add godliness. 7To godliness, add brotherly affection. And to brotherly affection, add love.
Remember: that we share in the divine nature means that God Himself is with us and in us. How can we not do the will of God? How can we not want to do the will of the Lord? Again, we are still sinful flesh and blood until our dying breath, so yes, we will sin daily and often, but our lives will reflect more and more that divine nature we share in. Again, when it comes to living a life of faith and good works that St. Peter had just listed, we aren’t left to our own devices and strength. But we share in the divine nature; that means the God Himself is in us. It’s not like a baker decorating a Valentine’s Day cupcake with frosting. He’s on the outside, decorating the outside. We share in the divine nature; God is in us. He changes us from the inside and makes us new, giving us a new heart and will.
That new heart and will fight against our old sinful nature that we still have. That’s why there’s a battle within us between the old sinful self and the new; that’s why the struggle with sin. How glorious it is when we see gradual and steady progress in our growth as Christians! For if you have these qualities and they are increasing, they are going to keep you from being idle or unfruitful in regard to your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We exercise ourselves in godliness; we strive to do the Lord’s will all the more as we grow in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, experience again and again His grace, mercy and forgiveness. Faith in and love of Him grow and that sharing in the divine nature becomes more obvious.
Indeed, the person who lacks these qualities is shortsighted and, in fact, blind, because he has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. It is horrible to be baptized, to know God rightly and to share in the divine nature but to fall away from Him and no longer share in the divine nature, losing it by living a life of sin, by not striving/ seeking to do the Lord’s will. Let us use this Lenten season not only to sorrow over our sin, but forgiven our sin all the more to strive to live a godly life, to share more fully in the divine nature. Therefore, brothers, be more eager to make your calling and election sure for yourselves. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. In fact, in this way you will be richly supplied with an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. INJ Amen.