The coming of Christ, the Son of God, is at once the most wonderful and the most terrible thing.
He comes as the true Light in the midst of deep darkness, in order to lead you out of Egypt by His mighty outstretched arm, to save you from sin and death, and to bring you into the Promised Land.
But how shall you receive Him?
The sad fact is that you cannot; not by any wisdom, power, strength, or ability of your own. Your sin, which cuts you off and separates you from God, likewise prevents you from receiving Him and His salvation in faith. What is more, by your sins what you deserve from the Lord your God is condemnation, punishment, and death. For you are sinful and unclean, unrighteous, and unholy. Therefore, you cannot abide or survive in His presence, nor can you stand in His judgment.
And yet, for all of that, it is with tender mercy and divine compassion that He comes. It is by and with grace that He takes every initiative in coming to you with life and light and love and peace.
So then, in order to prepare you for His coming, the Lord raises up, calls, and sends a messenger before His face. He sends a preacher to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins. And in sending such a man to preach His Word, He sends one who is like Himself. For the Lord Jesus Christ is the very Word of God in human Flesh; He has become true Man for us men and our salvation.
Already ahead of the Lord’s own miraculous conception and birth, you see the grace, mercy, and peace of God in the way that St. John the Baptist is conceived and born and given his name. It is not by the reason or strength of his old man and his barren old mother, but by the grace of God.
St. John’s entire life, from even before his conception, and even while yet in the womb, is bound up with the coming of Christ Jesus and proclaims that. That’s especially true of his preaching and his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; but it’s all about Jesus, it all point to Him.
Indeed, it is only by such preaching of the Word that you are prepared for Christ Jesus. It is only by such preaching that you or anyone else can receive Him and respond to Him in faith and love.
Praise God for His preachers, for His messengers who go before the face of the Lord to prepare His way — who are sent to prepare you for His coming. You would be lost without them.
But there is still a problem. You can no more receive or respond to the preaching of the Word than you could receive the Word-made-Flesh Himself. Your sin still gets in the way and prevents you. The Law of God — by whomever it is preached — still condemns you and puts you to death.
You cannot live without Him. But left in your sin, you could not live with Him, either. Damned if you, and damned if you don’t, so long as you remain in yourself, in your own heart and mind.
The solution and salvation are not from within you, but from without. The preaching of the Word of Christ accomplishes His purposes and saves you from sin, death, and hell; not by any power, response, understanding, or effort of yours, but only because Christ Jesus submits Himself to that preaching and fulfills that Word of God in His own Body and Life in your stead, on your behalf.
So it is that the Lord Jesus will hear and heed and respond to the preaching of St. John the Baptist, in order to accomplish and establish the righteousness of God for you and for all people.
It is especially in this way that St. John prepares the Way of the Lord. He preaches the Law to which Jesus submits Himself in order to redeem you and all those who were conceived and born under the Law. St. John preaches the repentance which Jesus undergoes by His voluntary death upon the Cross and in His Resurrection from the dead — whereby He opens the way of repentance to you. St. John preaches and administers the Baptism of repentance, to which the Lord Jesus submits Himself in faith and love, so that, by the Lord’s own death on your behalf, your Baptism is for you the forgiveness of all your sins and a participation in His Resurrection from the dead.
The Word of Christ Jesus that is preached and given to you is a living and active and powerful Word, because it is a Word that has already been fulfilled and established forever in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, the preaching of repentance not only puts you to death, but it also raises you to life in body and soul, in heart, mind, and spirit. It causes the Light to shine upon you, where previously you walked in darkness. It grants you the new birth of the Holy Spirit, and it bestows upon you the Name of God by His grace. It gives you that perfect peace which far surpasses all human understanding and achievement, because it is the Word of Christ who has reconciled you to God.
That is how and why the preaching of repentance is the preaching of forgiveness in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And such preaching does and gives exactly what it proclaims! Which is to say that it calls you and brings you to faith and to life through the forgiveness of all your sins.
It is by this preaching of the Word of Christ Jesus that you are prepared for His coming and made ready to receive Him in faith and love. But what is more, it is precisely by the preaching of His Word that Christ Jesus comes to you in love and visits you with tender mercy and compassion.
He remembers you with this preaching — not just with thoughts in His head and feelings in His heart, but with His whole Body and Life, His Flesh and Blood, His Words and His Actions. So it is that He raises you up from death to life, and He brings you into His House, in order to feed you at His Table and to unite you with Himself in the New Covenant of His Body given and His Blood poured out for you and for the many, for the free and full forgiveness of sins.
This is a most precious Feast — though it may sometimes taste like locusts and wild honey in your mouth. It sustains you in the wilderness of this world unto life in the Promised Land forever. So do you continue to live and grow and become strong, by grace through faith in this Word of Christ.
It is this peaching of the Word of Christ which has opened your ears and your heart to receive Him, and has released you from all your sins, which also now opens your lips to show forth His praise, and looses your tongue to confess His holy Name, that His great mercy may be displayed in you.
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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