2 Corinthians 6:1-2
Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Christians have been using this Easter Sunday greeting for centuries. Even before “Happy Easter,” we affirm the truth that makes all the difference in the world. We celebrate together the good news of the resurrection. Jesus has broken the power of sin and death. Jesus has opened up the portal to life. He is risen! He is risen, indeed! The extraordinary chapters of 2 Corinthians 4 and 5 articulates as clearly as any biblical passage the reality of our mortality. It points to our great need for a Savior, ending with the core truth of Good Friday, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21). What follows after this final verse of 2 Corinthians 5 is an exclamation that is perfect for Easter Sunday. The Apostle Paul, urging people not to accept God’s grace in vain, borrows from Isaiah 49:8 and says, “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2) If you think about it, that would be another wonderful Easter greeting. We could begin by saying, “Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!” Then we might add, “See, now is the time of God’s favor.” To which another would respond, “Now is the day of salvation!” The resurrection of Jesus is essential for salvation. For one thing, it demonstrates the victory of God over sin and death. If Jesus had died on the cross for our sins but remained dead, we would have little confidence that His death actually saved us. But the resurrection assures us that His death does indeed have saving power. The resurrection isn’t only a sign, however. In the mystery of God’s providence, when Jesus arose from death, He broke its power. What He began on the cross was completed in the tomb as He came to life. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. In the moment of the resurrection, God was victorious. Sin and death were defeated. Therefore, now is the day of salvation. For many of us, we first were saved in the past when we put our faith in Christ. I did this 45 years ago. But today can be a day of salvation as we remember what God did for us in Christ and how Christ shattered the power of sin and death through His resurrection. For many, today will be the day of salvation in the most literal sense. I love preaching on Easter Sunday for many reasons. One is that we have so many visitors in church, many of whom do not know the Lord. I am grateful to be able to tell them about what God had done for them in Christ and to invite them to accept God’s grace in Christ. I was thrilled when people did this on Easter Sunday. For them, it was truly the day of salvation. If you’re reading this, chances are good that you have already experienced salvation through Jesus Christ. Let me encourage you to remember how this happened and to celebrate what God has done for you. In this way, today can be a day of salvation for you. If you are a Christian, I would urge you to pray for those who will hear the gospel today for the first time. Pray also for those who have heard the Good News before but never responded in faith. Ask the Lord to open their hearts to the truth so that, for them, today might be truly the day of salvation. If you’re reading this but have never experienced salvation through Christ, let me encourage you to take to heart what God has done for you. Accept God’s grace through Christ. Put your trust in the Lord. You may find it helpful to talk and pray someone who is further down the road than you. Look for an Easter worship service or call up someone you know to be a wise Christian. No matter where you are right now in relationship to Christ, may you take this to heart: See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! Help us, gracious God, to celebrate with joy and gratitude for what You have done for us in Christ. We pray for those who have yet to experience Your salvation. May this be truly the day of salvation for them! Amen. Since the earliest days of Christianity, two clusters of feasts started to grow around the events of Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection. One, centered on the day we know as January 6 and soon reaching back to encompass December 25, celebrated Christ’s incarnation as a baby. The other cluster of feasts centered around Easter Day. They soon reached backward as well to incorporate the week of suffering that followed Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, pausing especially to consider the three holy days that span from sundown and the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday’s resurrection glory. And the feasting also moved forward to include a full fifty days of celebration until Pentecost.
Sometime in the 380s, a Christian woman named Egeria traveled from her hometown in Western Europe to Jerusalem and recorded what she saw there, including the earliest description of how Christians celebrated Holy Week by visiting the places where the events of that week took place and worshipping there. She writes of Palm Sunday, for example: “On. . .the Lord's Day, which begins the Paschal week, and which they call here the Great Week, when all the customary services from cockcrow until morning have taken place in the Anastasis [the site of the empty tomb] and at the Cross, they proceed on the morning of the Lord's Day according to custom to the greater church, which is called the martyrium. It is called the martyrium because it is in Golgotha behind the Cross, where the Lord suffered.” When we celebrate Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, although in all likelihood we do so in our own congregations and not in Jerusalem, the liturgies we follow are meant to help us imagine ourselves there with Jesus, walking the way of the Cross. It has long been customary in many places to celebrate Palm Sunday not only as a memory of Jesus’s triumphal entry, but also of the suffering He endured during this holiest week. Today’s reading reminds us of the triumph; Holy Week will remind us of the suffering. As Jesus enters Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey’s colt which He’s asked the disciples to temporarily commandeer for Him, a great multitude of those who follow Him begin to cry out with blessings from the Psalms. While we associate these words today with cute parades of children waving palm branches, the entire event – the procession, the exclamations, the celebration – has overtones of claiming the kingship. It’s no wonder the Pharisees tried to shut the disciples up. It’s also no wonder that Jesus noted in return that shutting the disciples up would be useless. Jesus rightfully reigns over all of creation and all earthly rulers; if one group of His subjects is unable to praise Him, another will join in, down to the very stones. That is what makes it so tragic that He was killed during Holy Week by some of the very people He had come to save. That is also what makes it so crucially important – crucially important to every one of us, burdened as we are by death and sin – that ultimately, He reigned over death itself. As we enter Holy Week, reflect on Jesus’ love and passion and how Jesus may be calling you to walk with Him this week? Help me, dear Lord, Jesus, to surrender to You. Be Lord of this week and Lord of my life. Amen. 1Get Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. To God’s holy people [saints, ESV] in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: (Ephesians 1:1)
In many of his letters, the Apostle Paul says of the letter’s recipients that they are called to be “saints.” Even as God called Paul to be an apostle, so God called all of the Ephesians believers to be saints. What did Paul mean by “saints”? Though the translation of the Greek word hagios as “saint” is traditional and common, I would suggest that it’s not particularly helpful in our day. Besides using “Saint” as a name for a professional football player from New Orleans, we call someone a saint if that person is truly extraordinary. If we say, for example, “Anna is such a saint,” we mean that Anna is someone who acts in a particularly charitable and sacrificial way as she does good for others. In the church, “Saint” can be used as a designation of a rare Christian whose life of service to God and people is truly exceptional. In 2016, for example, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was declared a saint – “canonized” is the official word for it – by Pope Francis for her unique life of service to the poor and suffering. But this is not what Paul had in mind when using the Greek word hagios. The basic meaning of this word had to do with things being dedicated or consecrated to God (or in the Greek word, a god). Hagios is often translated in the Bible as “holy.” Things used in the temple in Jerusalem, for example, were holy in that they were set apart from ordinary usage in order to be used in the worship of God. A person could be hagios if that person was dedicated to God. In the Old Testament era, priests were thought of as holy in this sense. But so were all of God’s chosen people. In Exodus 19 God chose Israel to be His “treasured possession out of all the peoples” (v. 5). The Israelites would be for God “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (v. 6). Though some of the people would have an uncommon “holy” role as priests, all of God’s people were set apart for God and His purposes. In this sense, all of them were holy. Or, if you prefer, all were saints. What was true of Israel became true for believers in Jesus, according to Paul. They were “called to be saints” as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:1. A better rendering in today’s English would be, “called to be God’s special people.” All Christians are set apart by God for God and His purposes. This is just as true of teachers, carpenters, and realtors as it is of preachers, priests, and missionaries. To be a saint is a little like being an Olympic athlete who is set apart from the rest of humanity for a particular purpose. The fact that the biblical title of “saint” is not given only to especially worthy people is abundantly clear from Paul’s letters. For instance, the church in Corinth was quite a mess, actually. People were not getting along with each other as they divided up into opposing factions. Some were engaging in prostitution while others were getting drunk at Communion. The Corinthian believers didn’t earn their sainthood by their good works, that’s for sure. Rather, they were “called to be saints” by God on the basis of grace offered through Jesus Christ. And so, it is with you and me today. If you have embraced the Good News of the Gospel, then you are a saint, or as I would prefer to say, you are one of “God’s special people.” You belong to God and are a vital contributor to God’s work in the world because God has called you and set you apart through Christ. That is indeed Good News! Gracious God, thank You for calling us to be Your saints, Your special people on the basis of Your grace given in Christ. May I see everything in my life as an opportunity to live out my sainthood for your purposes and glory. Amen. 31Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:31-32)
Have you ever wondered why you should forgive someone who wronged you? There have been times in my life when someone has deeply hurt me. I didn’t want to forgive and I wondered why I should. Holding onto unforgiveness can feel so safe, even so justifiable. Forgiveness seems to require opening myself up to being hurt again, which is the last thing I want to do. So, what reason is there for forgiving someone who wronged you? If you’re a Christian who seeks to live according to biblical guidance, then there is a simple answer to this question. You should forgive because the Bible says so. Ephesians 4:32 makes this clear, even though the command to forgive comes as a participle (“forgiving”) following the main imperative (“Be kind”) Other passages in Scripture make a similar point (see Matthew 6:12-15; Luke 6:37; Colossians 3:13). But Scripture doesn’t merely command us to forgive and leave it at that. God’s word also provides a rationale and a motivation for forgiveness. In Ephesians 4:32, forgiving is an expression of kindness. As followers of Christ, we are to be people who treat others kindly just as God has treated us kindly. One way to do this is by forgiving them when they wrong us. Next, we are to be compassionate, which may also help us to forgive. When we see people as one-dimensional wrongdoers, we might find it hard to forgive them. But if we get inside their shoes, inside their hearts, we may be encouraged to forgive. Perhaps someone says mean things to you. His behavior was not right. But you know that he had been hurt by the far worse meanness of his own father. He was acting out of pain deeply embedded in his memories. When you allow yourself to feel the struggles of his wounded hearts, you find it easier to forgive him. This doesn’t excuse his behavior. He isn’t merely a helpless victim, but someone who is making poor choices. Yet his choices are reflections of his brokenness, for which we feel truly sorry. We forgive someone who wronged us because Scripture commands it. Also, because we are to show kindness to others and to feel compassion for them. Kindness and compassion help us to forgive. Yet this is not the whole story. Notice the final phrase, “just as in Christ God forgave you.” This phrase provides a rationale and a model of forgiveness, and motivation for forgiveness. We are to forgive, not because of our inherent graciousness, nor because the one who wronged us has done something to deserve forgiveness, but because of what God has done for you in Christ. You are to forgive as a response to God’s gracious forgiveness given to you through the cross of Jesus Christ. Why should you forgive others? Because God first forgave you. There’s a solid rationale for forgiveness. The phrase “just as in Christ God forgave you” also shows us a model of forgiveness. In Ephesians 1:7-8, we read, “In [Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that he lavished on us.” Similarly, Ephesians 2:4-7 reveals that even when we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive with Christ “because of His great love for us,” because He is “rich in mercy,” and because of “the incomparable riches of His grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Forgiveness flows freely from God’s grace, mercy, and love. So, God models for us what forgiveness looks like. Plus, by forgiving us, God motivates us to forgive others. The more we take in how God has forgiven us in Christ, the more we will be encouraged and empowered to forgive others. The more we let the model of God’s forgiveness in Christ guide us, the more we will want to forgive graciously, mercifully, and lovingly. The more we experience the freedom of God’s forgiveness, the more we will be free to forgive others. So, one of the most compelling reasons to forgive is the fact that God has forgiven us, thus showing us how we should act toward others and moving us to forgive even as God in Christ has forgiven us. Help me, dear Lord, to forgive others because You have forgiven me. May my experience of Your forgiveness set me free to forgive others graciously, for their sake and for mine, and for Your glory. Amen. "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children." (Ephesians 5:1)
When we have been saved by Christ, we can, if we choose, become passive Christians. We can sit back, secure in our own salvation, and let other Christians spread the gospel of Jesus. But to do so is wrong. Instead, we are commanded to become disciples of the One who has saved us, and to do otherwise is a sin of omission with terrible consequences. When Jesus warned His disciples that each one must “take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23), His message was clear: in order to follow Him, Jesus’ disciples must deny themselves and, instead, trust Him completely. Nothing has changed since then. If we are to be disciples of Jesus, we must trust Him and place Him at the very center of our beings. Jesus never comes second to something. He is always first. Jesus walks with you. Are you walking with Him? Hopefully, every one of us will choose to walk with Him everyday of our lives. Jesus loved us so much that He endured unspeakable humiliation and suffering for us. How will you and I respond to His sacrifice? Will you take up His cross and follow Him, or will you choose another path? When you place your hopes completely at the foot of the cross, when you place Jesus completely at the center of your life, you will be blessed. Do you seek to fulfill God’s purpose for your life and for our church? Do you seek His blessing over your life and want to partake in “the peace that surpasses all understanding?” Then follow Christ. Let us follow Him by picking up His cross today and every day that we live. Then, we will quickly discover that Christ’s love has the power to change everything, including you and me, the church. |
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