Trinity 1
Beloved. St. John tells us in his first epistle [4.16], God is love. Notice that love is not just a characteristic of God, He is love; He is nothing but pure unadulterated love. This is something that we cannot fully fathom. We often think of love as some emotion that can come and go. But when it comes down to it, to love means to will the good of the other; it is an act of the will. How fully and beautifully we see this in God. We heard in the OT[Ex 19.2-8] the Lord reminding Moses and the Israelites: You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. What did the Israelites do to earn and deserve that? What did they do to earn/ deserve God leading them out of slavery in Egypt and through the Red Sea in such a wondrous and miraculous fashion? Nothing! It was God’s love at work. And then He goes on to promise them great things: Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The Lord’s love of His people! His gracious intent toward them! And what was the people’s response? All the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” They were the objects of the Lord’s love and they wanted to do His will; they wanted to love Him. But they, like you and me, had a love that was very far from perfect. Because of sin, we love self more than others, more than God. And that’s what each sin is—lack of/ imperfect love. That’s why St. Paul writes [Rm. 13.10]: love is the fulfillment of the Law. We do not love perfectly, we do not desire the good of the other but our own, and so we sin. Even if our intention is good, because of our sinful nature, we do not love perfectly. But God’s love of us is still perfect for He is pure love.
Look at the Gospel and there we see the love of God in action. When the Israelites sinned, God didn’t just leave them. He still sent them His Son to be the Savior of the world, just as He promised. St. Matthew records: Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When Jesus came, He undid/ destroyed the devil’s work. By His preaching and healing, Jesus had entered the battle for the salvation of the world—a battle He would win by His death and resurrection. This is the love of God—His willing our good, even our spiritual and eternal good and bringing it about!
Jesus is God in the flesh. Seeing Jesus is seeing God. Jesus told the disciples [John 14.9]: He who has seen Me has seen the Father. When we see the heart of Jesus, we see the heart of God toward us sinners. And what is the heart of Jesus? Again, St. Matthew tells us: When [Jesus] saw the crowds, He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. So when God looks out on this world of sinners; when He sees so many deceived by the devil and world following all sorts of paths that lead straight to hell, His holy heart is moved with and full of compassion because it is full of love of us. He doesn’t just leave us to wallow in our sin and then finally end up in the eternal torments of hell, which is really what we earn/ deserve for our sin. Instead, He has His word come to us by which He gives us His Holy Spirit, creates faith in Him in our hearts and gives us the fruit of His saving work: forgiveness of sin and eternal life. That’s why He here says: Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.
Seeing Jesus moved with compassion for the spiritually lost and confused crowds, we see in a real and concrete way that God is love; we see God’s love for fallen humanity. This is something St. Paul brings to light in our text.
The first thing we see is the mysteriousness of God’s love. It is mysterious because it is so different than what we usually see and call “love.” For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. What is really so amazing about God’s love is that it is so different than our love. In the usual human way of thinking, a person has to be “worthy” of our love—the righteous or good person. But what is God’s way? What is the object of God’s love? –The weak, the ungodly, the sinner; in other words, those most “unworthy” of love. God’s heart is attached to the sinner; it longs for communion with the sinner. Jesus tells us of Himself [Lk 19.10]: The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. That’s that divine love: it not only desires the good of the other, it seeks out the sinner.
And that’s absolutely vital for us. Remember that God created us for fellowship with Him; we can only be truly happy and content when we know Him and our souls rest in Him; when we know Him as our dear loving God and Savior. We need never fear that God will turn away from us, that our sin is too great, that He will reject us, etc. Because why? He Himself longs for us. He loves us. And it is His love that draws us to Him. No matter how great our sin—and really precisely because of the greatness and magnitude of our sin—God is calling/ drawing us to Him. That’s the mysteriousness of God’s love for us. His love of us prompts Him to reconcile us to Him.
And here is where we see God’s love, grace and mercy meet. Who is it that God loves? –All of lost, sinful, condemned humanity. Again notice, none of us are worthy/ deserve God’s love, for as St. Paul says in our text that we are the weak, ungodly, sinners, enemies of God. But God loves us and He acts on that love. He shows us mercy as He doesn’t give us what we deserve for our sins—eternal damnation in the torments of hell; in His grace He gives us every blessing in Jesus that He won for us!
How we need that love of God that shows itself in His grace and mercy! Look at the arrangement as St. Paul describes it in our text: because of sin all people as we are and come into the world are weak, that is, completely powerless; we are ungodly; we are sinners; we are enemies of God, opposing Him. None of us, because of sin, have the capacity on our own to become righteous; left to ourselves, we don’t and can’t change. All of us would stay that way. And where then would be our hope of heaven, of that peace of heart and conscience that comes from that right relation with God?
And remember God doesn’t change, either. He is a holy and righteous God who gave us His holy Law and who must punish sin. He cannot let His Law remain unkept. He just does not wink at our sin. Our sin, our going against the holy will and law of God is a great wall separating us from God.
So since we sinners cannot change and since the holy and righteous God cannot change, how does His love for us work through all this? –In Christ Jesus! In His love, through His Son, God reconciles us to Him. In love for us sinners, the Father delivered His Son into death; in His love for us sinners, the Son willingly took our sins on Himself, went to the cross and there paid the penalty for our sin; there He endured the Father’s wrath over the sins of the world. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus reconciled us sinners to the holy God—all this out of God’s love for us sinners.
And dear Christian, this is what our faith clings to! What a glorious comfort to us—our salvation rests on God’s love for us as it shows itself in Jesus’ work for us. What comes first? –God’s love for us; Christ’s death on the cross. God does the work; we can’t. Our text: Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. Look at the effect/ result of Jesus’ work. By His blood and death God declares us righteous. Our sins have been given to Jesus where He took them to the cross and died for them; His holiness and perfect keeping of the Law have been given to us. Now, in Jesus, we sinners are reconciled to God. Our sins no longer separate us; they are forgiven; we who have no righteousness on our own now have the perfect righteousness of Jesus and stand before God as His dear children and heirs of heaven in Christ.
This is a true and proper reconciliation. It is an accomplished fact! We were reconciled to God by the death of His Son…now that we are reconciled. A lot of times when people “reconcile” there is a lack of trust; there is suspicion; they keep at a safe distance; they don’t expect anything good from the other person. But when Jesus reconciled us sinners to God, there is nothing but the perfect, warmest friendship. After all, in Jesus we know God rightly as our dear God and Savior who loves us and saves us. We know that we can go to Him in confession; we can go to Him in prayer with all our needs; we know that He will hear and answer our prayers in the right and best way; we know that God is working out all things for our eternal good; we hear the Lord speaking to us as we read and ponder holy Scripture; we know that He comes to us in the Holy Supper, giving us His Body and Blood and forgiveness and every other blessing He won for us. We love Him.
How wonderful and glorious is our life now as a Christian living in this state of grace. We know God rightly and love Him—Him who loved us, while we were still weak, ungodly, sinners, and His enemies and who in love brought us to Himself, brought us into His kingdom, the Church, in which He showers us with every blessing. What a great peace of heart and conscience we now have: in Jesus, things are right between us and God.
And now we can be certain of our blessed condition come the Last Day. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. Our Christian lives are one of blessedness now, but come the Judgment Day, might we have to fear that maybe God will condemn us? No! He loves us; He reconciled us to Himself; He justified us; we are His dear Christians. He has in Christ declared us righteous. He will not condemn us on the Last Day or at the moment of death. Dear Christian, now we live in a state of grace. By faith we are constantly receiving God’s forgiveness. In Jesus our sins are always being forgiven. That’s what faith holds to and receives: we have now been justified by His blood. Since our sins are forgiven us, how can they rise up in the Judgment to condemn us? And on top of that: For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. For this very purpose Jesus rose and lives: to sanctify, protect and save us eternally. We live in this love now.
God is love. Because He is love, He saved us sinners. Let this mysterious love of God that showed itself in Jesus, that shows itself daily in our forgiveness and new life fill our hearts and minds as we ponder it. Let us become absorbed in the grace of God that we now enjoy and our lives now will be ones filled with God’s praise. We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through who we have received reconciliation. INJ