Trinity 1
Today’s readings have a very Lenten feel about them--it is that battle of Jesus against the devil. The OT reading places us in the midst of the Garden of Eden right after Adam and Eve had fallen into sin and God is calling them to account--and Adam blames Eve and ultimately God: The woman you gave to be with me--she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it; and Eve blames the serpent/ the devil: The serpent deceived me, and I ate. And then God curses the serpent, making it crawl on its belly; and then God turns to the devil who had used the serpent and curses the devil--He pronounces the devil’s doom/ destruction by Jesus: I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head and you will crush His heel. That seed/ offspring/ descendant of the woman [and here the virgin birth is hinted at]--Jesus, true God and true man--would crush/ destroy the devil. That’s why Jesus came--to destroy/ undo the works of the devil [1 Jn 3.8]. That’s what Jesus’ whole life, suffering, death and resurrection was all about! Again, a very Lenten theme here at the beginning of summer.
Today’s Gospel also has this Jesus versus the devil theme. When Jesus casts out demons the Jews accuse Him of having a demon, of being in league with/ working together with the devil. Jesus tells them how foolish such thinking is: How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand but is finished. Then Jesus points out His work of coming to destroy the devil and his works and kingdom. When Jesus casts out demons, Jesus is showing that He is the stronger one who has come and is destroying and plundering the devil’s kingdom. He says, No one can enter a strong man’s house to steal his possessions unless he ties up the strong man first. Then he can plunder his house. That’s exactly what Jesus did by His life, suffering and death! Jesus conquered sin; by bringing us the forgiveness of sins, our sins cannot rise up and drag us down to hell; He destroyed death by rising from the dead, so death no longer has hold on us and we, too, will rise bodily on the Last Day and for the Christian we will be soul and risen/ glorified body eternally in heaven.
Dear Christian, not only has Jesus undone the devil’s work but He has plundered you, me, and all Christians out of the devil’s kingdom. He foreshadowed this as He cast demons out of people, showing His power over the devil. We have been rescued from/ plundered out of the devil’s kingdom as by baptism and the word the Holy Spirit has created faith in Jesus and His work in our hearts. It is this faith that trusts in and receives from Jesus His gifts of forgiveness of sin, peace with God and eternal life. Rescued out of the devil’s kingdom, we have been brought into God’s holy family through baptism and faith. Dear Christian, through that bond of faith that the Holy Spirit worked, we are gloriously united with Jesus and also with all Christians--both living and dead, the communion of saints--in our Lord’s holy family, the Church. Look at what Jesus says in our text: [Jesus] looked at those who sat around Him in a circle and He said. “Look, My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God isMy brother and sister and mother.” Through faith, we are in a new and glorious relationship with God and each other--all because of Jesus and His work.
Here is our salvation-- by the work of the Holy Spirit we are brought from spiritual death to life through repentance, faith and baptism. That is our rescue and our being plundered from the devil. Once we are brought from spiritual death to spiritual life, that is faith, that is instantaneous; but we then live out our lives as Christians and that is our whole life long until our Lord calls us to Him in heaven or until He returns in Judgment on the Last Day. Our lives as Christians is a whole life long process of growing spiritually and maturing in the faith. And that’s the theme that St. Paul picks up in today’s epistle: But even if our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day. That inner renewal that the Holy Spirit is always working in us--let us grow in our Christian faith and life!
Our text begins with St. Paul saying: Since we have that same Spirit of faith… Dear Christian, we have in us the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of faith; He is the one who works faith in our hearts--faith in Jesus; faith in the salvation Jesus has brought about. The very fact that we are Christians is the proof that we have the Holy Spirit in us. We cannot come to faith in Jesus on our own--by our own strength of reason. Earlier St. Paul wrote [1 Co 12.3]: no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. So, if we believe/ trust in Jesus and His saving work--if we are Christians--that’s because the Holy Spirit has come to us, plundered us from the devil’s kingdom. Think about that for a moment, dear Christian. We have the Holy Spirit in us; God Himself has come to us and dwells in us. He is the one strengthening and leading us deeper into the faith and into a life of good works; He is the one renewing us inwardly cleansing us from sin and purifying our faith.
And the amazing thing is that it is the one and same Holy Spirit at work in each of us. Since we have that same Spirit of faith, notice what St. Paul does here next: he quotes from a psalm of David which corresponds to what is written: “I believed; therefore, I have spoken”. The point is this: the same Holy Spirit that David had, is the same Holy Spirit we have! We have in us the same Holy Spirit as the great saints of the Church. He worked great, mighty things in and through them--can’t He do the same with us? Absolutely! Again, think about it: we, dear Christian, have the Holy Spirit in us! And where He is, there is faith in Jesus, and there we know and love God rightly. And what is it that Jesus tells us as we know and love Him in Spirit-worked faith? He says [Jn 14.23]: If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make Our home with him. Each of our Lord’s dear Christians can say: our inner self is being renewed day by day. That’s because the living God is dwelling in us; our bodies are His temple. Think about the great mystery/ miracle: the very God whom the entire universe cannot contain has come to each one of us and made His home in us. Since He has done that, how blessed we are, dear Christian! How can our lives not reflect God, who is in us and renewing us inwardly?
But if we are honest with ourselves we will see and feel ourselves far from being perfectly holy/ renewed. The thing is, when the Holy Spirit creates faith in Jesus in us, we have a new self--the Christian in us. This new self/ the Christian in us loves the Lord and wants to do His will. The Christian in us agrees with the will of God and wants to do it. But we still have our old sinful nature in us that does not want to do the Lord’s will and fights against it. That’s why we still struggle against sin. And with St. Paul, that’s why we don’t do the good that we as Christians want to do but instead do the bad that we as Christians don’t want to do [Rm 7.19 ff.]. Because we love the Lord, that struggle against sin, dear Christian, shows that our faith is very much alive and active. Yes, the bad that we do is very much sin and certainly deserving of God’s wrath and punishment. And that’s what the devil is very keen on reminding us of all in order to try to get us to despair. But where there is the Holy Spirit, there is faith, faith that receives the forgiveness of sin and the holiness of Christ.
But, again, we still have our old sinful nature/ self. That’s why this side of eternity we will never be holy and perfect and why we need our inner self [to be] renewed day by day. That renewal is fighting against our old sinful nature. The nicest garden will become a weedpatch if left unattended. So too our new lives we have in Christ need renewal daily lest the old sinful self come to the fore and by our sin and rejection of the work of the Holy Spirit we drive Him out of our hearts and lives. By fighting against and putting down the evil desires of our old sinful nature--and that by the power and strength of the Holy Spirit in us--our renewal goes forward and is made more complete. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. This is not something that happens all at once when we become a Christian. Yes, the moment we become a Christian, through faith every gift and blessing Christ won for us is ours--forgiveness of sin, peace with God, heaven, eternal life, etc. But we still need that daily inner renewal. Our life of growing in faith and holiness is ongoing throughout our lives. By the word and sacrament that inner renewal is going on. That’s why it’s vital for us to be here in church around our Lord’s word and sacrament where He feeds us! It’s vital to make the reading and the contemplation of Scripture a part of our daily lives; and that leads us into prayer --that heart to heart talk with God. After all, we want to talk to the one we love. The word and sacrament give strength for each day of life and lead us into repentance: sorrow over sin and faith in Christ.
Something else amazing happens as we grow in our Christian life--we get a whole new perspective: what so many people regard as vital, we don’t; instead our gaze turns to the things of God, to things unseen. Our text: ...our inner self is being renewed day by day. Yes, our momentary, light trouble produces for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond ant comparison. We are not focusing on what is seen, but on what is not seen. For the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal. Look what happens when we turn our gaze/ attention to what we now see and experience. What happens is that the devil frightens us because of our sin and the evil that we experience; and the world oppresses us and wants to conform us to its way of thinking so that we turn away from Christ and seek instead what the world offers: wealth, pleasure, power. Yes, these things are very real; they are before our eyes; we experience them. We endure various sufferings. But, dear Christian, as we are being daily renewed by the Holy Spirit’s work in the word and sacrament, we can turn our gaze away from what we are suffering or even from that which simply surrounds us--like water surrounds a fish--and in the midst of everything lift up our hearts in the hope of eternal glory. We get a whole different perspective--even the horrible things that we may be suffering, we see as momentary and even light trouble compared to the glory that is ours in Christ eternally. We see what we suffer as the way God is leading us through this world into eternal life. In short, as we are being daily renewed by the Holy Spirit, we begin to see things more and more from an eternal perspective.
The wondrous thing is that the more we are renewed, the more we have the gift of seeing the unseen things. What we can see and experience, especially in our sorrows and sufferings, is simply the parade before our eyes of a fallen world. But as we turn our gaze to look at and focus on what we cannot see--the things of God, heaven, eternity, the grace and mercy of God, in short, heavenly goods there is the true, enduring , eternal reality! So, in other words, if we are concerned with the temporal and transitory, what will happen? --We will lose the true and lasting goods of heaven. But if we direct our gaze to the heavenly and our heart longs for it--and this because of the Holy Spirit renewing us day by day--we will not lose it. This is vital because God made us for the eternal, for fellowship with Him. We will never be satisfied with the temporal things, only the invisible heavenly things of God. INJ