In Christ, You Can Hold Your Head High!

[This message was prepared for worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today. I developed a cough that erupts every time I take a deep breath. It's a cold both my wife and me have right now. So, I thank Mark Brennan, our worship director, for pinch-hitting for me.]

Romans 5:1-11
A Christian scholar writes of listening to a radio interview with a film star. The star said it was “ridiculous...to think that, if there is a God, he might actually be concerned with every single human creature at every single moment.” As the scholar, N.T. Wright says: “Put like that, of course, it seems absurd; and yet absurdity lies in the attempt to picture God as just like us only a bit bigger and more well-seeing.” [Italics are mine.]

People unfamiliar with the God first worshiped by ancient Israel and then disclosed to the rest of us through Jesus Christ don’t understand the enormity of God.

Nor do they understand the depths of His love for us.

As Wright says: “...his very nature is love, it is...completely natural for him to establish personal, one-to-one relations with every single one of us.”

That’s exactly what God has set out to do in Jesus Christ.

And it’s precisely through such a relationship with Christ that God can save us, give us strength for each day, and supply us with a hope that will never disappoint us.

All of this is what the apostle Paul writes about in our second lesson for this morning, Romans 5:1-11.

The New Testament book of Romans, you’ll remember, is a letter written by the apostle Paul to first-century house churches in Rome. It’s Paul’s masterpiece, an exhaustive presentation of the gospel that can bring eternal life to all who bet their lives on it.

In the chapters before our lesson appears, Paul has talked about the fundamental human problem, sin, which leads to death, among other things. Because sin is universal to every human being, Paul says, quoting a psalm: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

But, Paul says that’s not the end of the story. God is unwilling to see you and me die in our sin, forever separated from Him. So God acts.

God the Father sends God the Son Jesus to receive the punishment we deserve for our sin. Jesus dies, although He committed no sin. Jesus experiences separation from God the Father, the Maker of life, which is why Jesus cries from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) It’s also part of the reason Jesus descended into hell (1 Peter 3:19); He bore the full weight of sin and its fatal consequences.

God the Father then raises Jesus from death. As Paul explains elsewhere: “...Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).

All who renounce sin and trust in Christ have reconciliation with God and have life with God, an intimate and enduring personal relationship with the One Who loves us more than anyone in this world ever has or ever will.

Jesus tells us: “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25). Even more than that, Paul goes on to tell us at the beginning of today’s lesson, we have peace with God even when the sin, darkness, and imperfection of this present world makes war on us.

Take a look at what Paul says, Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…”

In other words, we who are born wrong and who have lived wrong are made right with God through our faith in Jesus.

Although we deserve death, God gives peace to those who trust in Christ.

A man saw me, deeply disturbed because he thought that his sins would forever separate him from God. A woman spoke with me, her conscience thunderstruck for some horror she had perpetrated. These are real people whose consciences convicted them.

They thought that they were too sinful to receive the promise of God given to us through the crucified and risen Jesus: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13; Acts 2:21). There is nobody beyond the scope of God's "everyone."

“You are stained red with sin,” God says in Isaiah 1:18, “but I will wash you as clean as snow.”

If you trust Christ with your sins, along with the rest of your life, you are made clean.

You have peace with God.

And you can keep having peace with God through faith in Jesus even when you, as is true of each of us every single day, sin again or experience life’s pressures and need to repent or take refuge in Christ.

That’s why Paul says what he does next. Verses 2 and 3: “...through [Jesus] we [believers] have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God…”

The word translated as stand is histemi. We get the word histamine from it. Histamines get released naturally by our immune systems to help our bodies to function properly, to help us to stand strong. (The New Testament Greek word for resurrection is rooted in this word and literally means to stand again.)

The idea here is that because of the charitable forgiveness--the grace--that God bears for sinners like you and me who open ourselves to trusting in Christ, we stand in God’s kingdom.

By this grace given to those who trust in Christ, God will always give us life, always give us hope.

The psalmist spoke of what it means to stand in God’s grace when he wrote: “I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side…” (Psalm 3:6)

Paul says that we who stand and keep standing in the gracious kingdom of God can brag, not of ourselves, but “of the hope of the glory of God.”

When God’s full glory is revealed to all the world at Jesus’ return, everyone who has believed in Him, will experience the fullness of God’s promises. You have been saved by God’s grace through your faith in the crucified and risen Jesus. So, hold your head high, stand tall, not from arrogance, but knowing that by the grace of God, you’re eternally free from sin and death.

Paul says that’s not the only thing in which we can glory. Verses 3-5: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

As believers we can glory in our sufferings.

Does that seem strange? It shouldn’t. Why?

Because in the person who stands in God’s grace, suffering produces endurance, the capacity to keep on believing as we meet the crucified Jesus at our crosses. And we can glory in our sufferings because through persevering faith in the midst of suffering, God forges our characters. We become more dependent on God the Father, as Jesus was as He bore His cross. We become more sympathetic to the suffering of others. We understand the depths of Christ’s love that reaches us even when we suffer. We’re humbled by the realization of our own limitations; we can no longer worship ourselves or our desires with straight faces or clear consciences. 

And a character forged through reliance on Christ’s grace in the midst of our suffering will be filled with hope in the Savior Who pours Himself into us. 

If you have experienced or are experiencing now the sustaining grace of Christ as you have suffered, you have a God-given rendezvous with an eternity about which you can boast, a story of grace to share, a track record with the Lord that can give you hope even “in the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4). When you have a hope like that, you “fear no evil” (Psalm 23:4).

Paul then gives the reason for our hope as Jesus people. At the time set aside by God, Jesus died for sinners like us. Paul says that this happened “when we were still powerless” (Romans 5:6).

The word powerless translates the Greek word asthenon, which means weak, unable to stand.

Paul is saying that those who once were so weakened by sin that they couldn’t stand in the presence of a holy God nor have any hope of standing beyond their graves, now stand in God’s kingdom of grace because of what Christ has accomplished for them...for us, you and me! 

Jesus lifts dead and dying believers out of everlasting separation from God and makes it possible for us to stand in the life-giving presence of God forever, even now!

In the last section of today’s lesson, Paul says that if by His shed blood on the cross, Jesus can save us from death, how much more as the One Who stood alive again and stands forever alive and forever first, can He give us life with God that nothing can destroy?

In Christ, we meet a God big enough to save us from sin and death.

He’s also loving enough to care about each of us, to die and rise for everyone, to hear our prayers, to stand with us in defeat, death, and darkness, and to give us the hope of living fully in His glory forever. This God cares about you as an individual person.

This week, I invite you to soak that reality up by reading the Gospel of Mark. Take a week to read this one gospel in the New Testament. Mark is just sixteen chapters long. That comes to 2.28 chapters a day. That’s doable. As you read, whether on your own or with your family or a friend--and this is key, ask God to help you see His love for you and show you too how you might respond to that love, His grace, that day or the next. Let Christ love you in every part of your life. There's nothing He wants to do more than that. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Ready to Meet Christ

[This was shared during worship yesterday morning with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 25:1-13
This past Thursday, I met my dad, three sisters, two of my aunts, and two of my cousins for a late lunch at the Route 68 Grill in Bellefontaine. (Yum!) Later, we went to my aunt’s house, where she treated us to desserts, including gluten-free fare for me. (Let me just say parenthetically, that I am now a fan of Amish Pink Salad!)

The lunch conversation got interesting when someone said, “I’ve been praying lately for Jesus to come back.” And someone else said, “Doesn’t it seem like the world is getting worse and worse all the time?”

I agreed, of course, that the day of Jesus’ return--His second coming--will be wonderful.

But, I said, that I actually am happy for Jesus to wait as long as God the Father wants Him to wait. Second Peter 3:9 says: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise [of His second coming, when He will put things right and unveil His new creation], as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

In other words, God has delayed Jesus’ certain return in order to give us time to turn from our sin and trust in Jesus and to give Christ’s disciples--you and me--the greater opportunity to make more disciples.

Which, of course, begs the question: How well and faithfully are we disciples using this time before Jesus’ return? Or this time before you and I will meet Jesus face to face?

We all agreed on that point and after a time, we also agreed that the world isn’t any more evil than it was the day Adam and Eve fell from grace. The world has been in bondage to sin, incapable of saving itself, and in need of a Savior ever since.

Different sins go in and out of style. But we can say as surely of the human race in 2017 what the apostle Paul wrote of it in 55AD, quoting the Old Testament: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” [Romans 3:10-12]

Given that reality about each of us, the second question that comes to the fore is this: Are we ready for Christ’s return? Are we ready for the judgment? Will we stand before Christ at the judgment in our sin and therefore, unworthy of His new creation, or will we be covered by Christ’s righteousness and enter His kingdom?

Frankly, I hadn’t given today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 25:1-13, more than a once-over when we had that conversation. But as I studied it on Friday and early yesterday, I realized that it points to the answers to the questions our table talk raised.

Through the centuries, people have tried to turn Jesus’ parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, told in today's lesson, into an elaborate allegory. They’ve said that the oil stands for this, the torches stand for that, and so on. The parable though is, as we’ll see, simpler and more direct than that. It has a simple and important message. So, let’s look at the parable now.

In the lesson, we catch Jesus in the middle of talking about the end of this world, when He will return and judge the living and the dead, an event that will happen in one fell swoop. Verse 1: “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.”

The word translated as lamps here is more appropriately rendered torches. It refers to a simple torch made of rags twisted on top of a stick after the rag has been soaked in oil. A soaked rag would burn for fifteen minutes. But one not prepared in that way would burn out in a matter of moments. That’s why some of the bridesmaids brought extra oil with them.

As we mentioned a few weeks ago when talking about first-century Judean weddings, the groom’s party might show up for the wedding and the subsequent week-long reception (!) at any time after the marriage agreement has been reached. Even in the dead of the night. The bride’s attendants would have had to be ready to escort the groom and his party to the site where the wedding will happen at any moment.

Here’s the thing: All ten of the bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable are looking forward to the wedding. All ten of them fall asleep filled with eager anticipation of the celebrating and the partying. They’re all picturing a happy time of dancing, feasting, and flirting. But they’re not all ready.

Now, I’m no judge of the human race. That job is God’s alone and I have no intention of applying to replace Him in that job. I’m too busy attending my own knitting to judge someone else for dropping a stitch.

But I have to say that sometimes, when I attend the funerals of people who never seemed to give God a thought and hear their loved ones talk about how the deceased is now with God, I can’t help wondering. Jesus says in Matthew 10:32-33, “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.”

None of us knows everything that transpires in a person’s life. None of us knows what encounters that even the most violent of atheists may have with God and His Word, as planted by some compassionate Christian disciple earlier in their lives, as they approach the gates of death.

But Jesus does say that His people will be recognizable to others “by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20). In other words, faith in Christ is demonstrated in our priorities, our decisions, the ways we treat others, the way we repent when we know we’ve done wrong, the way we own Christ as our Savior.

It’s in a faith in Christ active in love that we prepare ourselves for Jesus’ return, that we ready ourselves for judgment, confident that, though we are sinners, Christ has covered our repentant lives with His amazing grace!

It’s one thing to know about Christ’s return. It’s another thing to be ready for Christ’s return. 

The bridesmaids knew that a wedding could take place at any time. But they weren’t ready for it.

Are you and I ready to meet Christ, now, today, tomorrow? That’s an enormously important question.

Verse 6: “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. [That literally means, they lit their torches.] The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’”

Don’t misunderstand. Jesus is not here commending selfishness.

As Lutheran Christians, we believe in letting the whole of Scripture interpret Scripture. This principle of Lutheran Biblical interpretation prevents us from isolating a piece of Scripture and riding it like a hobby horse, making it say what we want it to say. When you let Scripture interpret Scripture you look for the meaning of individual passages in light of the witness of the whole Bible.

And in this case, Scripture tells us that the God we meet in Jesus never has been selfish and has never commended selfishness. The Lord Who underscores the Old Testament command to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 27:39) and gave His Church a new command that we as disciples “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34)...This Lord is not going to tell you to be selfish or refuse to share with others the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus.

What Jesus is saying here though, is that no one can make your preparations for meeting Jesus for you. Christian faith is lived out with support and encouragement from and accountability to Christ’s church. The Church is indispensable. But each of us is either saved or damned individually, one by one. On the day of Christ’s return, He will judge us on our individual faith in Him. Not our parents or grandparents’ faith. Not our spouses’ faith. But on our faith in Christ alone.

About a week after Jesus had risen from the dead, the apostles encountered Him on the lakeshore. Jesus feeds them fish He’s prepared. The dinner done, Jesus asks Peter three times and in different ways, “Simon, do you love me more than these?” Whether we’re seeking to answer that question with a, “Yes!” through lives of daily repentance and renewal, will tell us whether we’re ready for Christ’s return or not.

Do we love Christ more than we love our sins?

Do we love Christ more than we love things we covet or lust for?

Do we love Christ more than the fears that keep us from doing God’s will?

Do we love Christ more than our desire to be in control?

More than our desire to give our kids way more than they need?

More than anything?

If we are seeking day by day to say, “Yes,” to Christ and no to the finite, dying stuff of this world--no matter how imperfectly we may seek them, we will be ready. Our lamps will be trimmed. We will be ready to meet the Lord face to face.

In verse 12 of our lesson, Jesus says that after the foolish bridesmaids had finally gotten oil for their torches, they showed up late for the wedding feast. They bang on the door, trying to get inside.

But the bridegroom, standing in for Jesus, says from inside, “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.”

You’ve probably heard me say it before: The Christian faith isn’t about what you know or what you do. The Christian faith is about Who you know and what He has done for you on a cross and from an empty tomb. 

If we expect Jesus to know us at the judgment, He must know us now, in this life. He must know that we trust in Him, follow Him, and draw life from Him and not from the world. The door will be shut to us if we wait until the party has started.

So, Jesus says in verse 13: “...keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” We don’t know the day or hour we’ll meet Jesus at the end of this life or the end of this world. But we get ready to meet Him and for ready for everything in this life by knowing Him and following Him now, trusting in Him now. Be ready for anything; surrender your life and your priorities to Jesus every day. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Who's Your King?

[This was prepared for delivery during this morning's worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio. But it barely resembles the actual sermon delivered. If you visit the Living Water web site in the next several days, you should be able to listen to the sermon.]

Luke 23:33-43
Today, the last day of the Church Year, is Christ the King Sunday.

Our Gospel lesson this morning may seem like a strange text to use on a day devoted to declaring Jesus to be the King of kings. It’s Luke’s sparse account of Jesus’ crucifixion on the first Good Friday.

Kings are treated with honor by their subjects. They get parades, 21-gun salutes, brass bands, palaces. The person sentenced to crucifixion, by contrast, was not only killed, but also labeled as nobodies, the refuse of the world.

On Good Friday, Jesus doesn’t fit our usual picture of a king.

And yet on that day, one man at least, did understand that Jesus Christ is King.

Please go to Luke 23:33-43 (page 737 in the pew Bibles). It begins: “When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals--one on his right, the other on his left.”

It’s interesting how Luke describes the two men between whom Jesus was crucified. The other gospel writers use words to describe them that can be translated as bandits, revolutionaries, or thieves.

But the word used by Luke, which is translated in our Bible as criminals, is, in the original Greek, kakourgous. It’s a compound word which means simply doers of bad.

To me, this is a clever word choice by Luke because we have to admit that we all can be doers of bad. Look, please, at Romans 3:10-12, page 784 in the pew Bibles. It says: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good [not good-doers, in other words, but evildoers] [And, lest we think we can get off the hook, the passage says again] “no not one." Sinless Jesus was crucified between two sinners who weren’t Osama bin-Laden or Adolf Hitler. They were doers of bad things, just like you and me. That’s important to remember on this Christ the King Sunday.

Next, we’re told: “Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’"

In those days executed people usually prayed something like, “May my death atone for all My sins.” But Jesus, supremely confident that He has led a sinless life, is concerned for the sins of others. He in essence prayed this His death might atone for their sins.

This isn’t a man at the mercy of His accusers or executioners, but a man in control, in charge. A king. On a cross. Willing to accept the punishment that His people--the whole human race--deserve in order to set the free to live in God’s kingdom.

Let's face it though, giving of self to the point of death for the benefit of others is not the way we usually see kings--be they magnates, the superstars of film, music, and sports, presidents, prime ministers, and royalty--act.

Their usual M.O. is built on a simple consideration: What’s in it for me? 

Three different times, Jesus is challenged--mocked, really--to act like a king, to look out for Himself at the expense of others.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Three times the devil went after Jesus to behave like an earthly king, to take power over the world without first conquering our sin and death through His cross and empty tomb. “If you are the Son of God...” the devil had taunted Jesus, “then turn this stone to bread, worship me and you’ll be on easy street, throw Yourself from the temple and give the world a convincing demonstration of Your power that will wow the crowds and do no good for them.” Jesus had resisted every temptation, you’ll remember.

But remember how that encounter between Jesus and the devil ended. Luke 4:13 (page 718): “When the devil had finished all his tempting, he left [Jesus] until an opportune time.”

Good Friday was that opportune time.

Jesus, suffering so much and knowing, because He was also God, how much more there was yet for Him to suffer in fulfilling His mission as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of every doer of bad things on the planet, was deemed ripe for temptation by the devil and those who worked for him in the world.

The devil, through his agents, once more tempted Jesus three times on that Good Friday.

And each time, the temptations were the same as those of the devil in the wilderness: "If you’re King, act like the kings we know. Take the easy way. Look out for number one. Wow us with your power. Seize control of this world."

In verse 35, we’re told that “the rulers [that’s the religious elites of the time] even sneered at [Jesus]. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’" In verses 36 and 37, we read: “The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’" And verse 39 tells us: “One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!’"

What’s interesting is that in two of these temptations, there’s an acknowledgment that Jesus had the power to save!

They knew that Jesus had raised people from the dead, saving them from death.

That He had given given fresh starts and new lives to notorious sinners, saving them from the consequences of their sin.

They knew that Jesus had fed thousands with a few bits of bread and fish, saving them from weakness and hunger.

They knew that Jesus had healed many diseases and infirmities, saving them from calamity.

But that wasn’t what Kings did! Kings only did things for others as a way of buying their loyalty, their gratitude, their subservience.

And maybe those who mocked and taunted Jesus, like the devil himself, really knew the truth about Jesus, that He was and is the King.

In that case, they might have really wondered, why Jesus didn't save His own neck, take control of the world by power wielded for whatever ends He chose?

That’s the way kings have behaved for centuries. The Roman emperors gave the people bread and circuses in order to keep the reins of power.

The moguls of the entertainment industry are committed to giving people what they want.

They want a king who will look out for number one and to placate them, give them what they want and who will never tell them that they’re sinners lost from God, sinners in need of God's grace and salvation. Kings are egotists who through the wily use of lies, feed human egos!

But Jesus Christ came to bring God’s kingdom not to those who are confident of their own goodness or righteousness.

He doesn’t play to our egos. “...the Son of Man came,” He says in Luke 19:10,  “to seek and to save the lost."

If we don’t know that we’re lost without the forgiveness and new life that Jesus died and rose to make possible for all who believe in Him and know that things of this world that earthly kings might give us are dead and useless, we will never see Jesus as our King.

And, absent that soul-shaking realization, none of us can ever see His kingdom or be part of its. Until we understand that we need Jesus and His cross, we remain outside of the Kingdom.

No one--not the religious leaders, not the soldiers, not the first of the two criminals quoted in our lesson--understood this.

In verse 40 though, we hear though from the second criminal: “But the other criminal rebuked [the first]. ‘Don't you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence [as Jesus]? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’"

I love this man more than almost anyone we meet in Scripture! He is so honest, so humble, so open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, so ready to enter the Kingdom of God!

This man knows that Jesus is the King.

And he understands that the only way any of us can see the Kingdom is if we first see that we are sinners in need of a Savior and can confess that Jesus is that Savior, allowing Him to be our King, to reign over us with His forgiveness and grace.

But, notice, he does not ask Jesus to take away his cross!

He understood somehow what we must all understand if we are to have Jesus as our King. Jesus calls all of us to take up our crosses and follow Him.

The wages of sin is still death and those of us born into sin will, unless Jesus returns during our earthly lives, die.

And even in this life, we will face all sorts of crosses, all manner of death.

We must, like the second criminal, own our sins and crucify them through daily confession, repentance, and renewal through the crucified and risen Jesus.

And along life’s way, we must refuse to follow the path of ease and self-glorification.

In this world, we can only follow Jesus on the narrow path of the cross and self-denial.

On this path, we are called to resist the temptation to please ourselves, instead of God.

We’re called to forgo the applause of the world in order to one day hear the “well done” of our Savior.

We’re called to live according to God’s will even at those times when God’s will is the last thing we want in our lives.

We’re called to keep trusting in God even when our prayers seem unanswered or are answered in ways that leave us grieving and inconsolable.

And we are called each day to confess our sins and, like the second evildoer, ask for mercy without any pretense that we deserve it and in the full conviction that we cannot live without God or the mercy He gives through Jesus Christ alone.

Each day, we have before us the way of death or the way of life. Jesus is the way of life. Like the second criminal, we must see that there is life only in Jesus!

In verse 43, Jesus responds to the confessions of the second criminal: “Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.’"

This self-confessed evildoer was assured by Jesus that because of his faith in Jesus, he would not be lost to God forever. By repentance, his old sinful self had been crucified and by his faith, Jesus assured him, wherever Jesus is, there is His kingdom and there are those who have become citizens of that kingdom by faith in Christ the King!

And when does that happen for us?

Today! Salvation and life with God comes and is revived within us whenever we confess our sins and confess our faith in Christ the King.

At the very moments we repent and trust in Christ and at every moment we are renewed through repentance and God’s gracious forgiveness, we are in the Kingdom!

The kingdom of God can come to us through every today of our lives, no matter what’s going on in our lives or in the world.

The angels announced at Christmas, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you...”

In the synagogue of Nazareth after reading Isaiah’s prophecy about the messiah, Jesus said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

To the tax collector who turned from his sin and trusted in Christ, Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house.”

God wants us in His Kingdom, even now in this imperfect and dying world.

But you know what?

We can know that Jesus is King.

We can know what the Kingdom of God is.

We can even know how we become part of Jesus’ Kingdom.

But the real question for each of us is this: Is Jesus Christ our King?

Are we daily reclaiming our faith in Him as the only Lord over our lives, priorities, and decisions?

Are we daily turning to Him in humble recognition of our sins and our need of His forgiveness?

Is Jesus Christ our King?

I ask the question not to incite guilt or fear. That would be presumptuous on my part because I know that I am a sinful human being who falls way short of the glory of God!

Instead, I ask the question to give hope.

You see, the God we know in Jesus Christ is the King Who gives second chances.

And third chances.

And unnumbered chances.

To an evildoer who was being justly executed for his sin, but who sought a new chance, a new life, Jesus eagerly and lovingly gave not just the promise of eternity, but also the promise of being with him today, now, in all the remaining moments of this life.

If you’re anything like me, I know that you need those second chances.

Not breads and circuses.

Not tax breaks or the latest bauble or googog the world offers.

You need Jesus Christ.

Today, Christ our King offers no less than life eternal with God, beginning with His stubborn, loving presence with us today, right now, to all who turn from sin and latch onto Him as their only God.

May Jesus Christ be our King every day we live! Amen