Two Ways, and a Great Difference Between Them

There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two.  The way of life is that of faith in Christ Jesus, which proceeds in love for God and man; and the way of death is that of unbelief and self-idolatry, whereby you strive to serve yourself above all others, only to find that you are consumed by the desires and demands of your own fallen flesh.

So you stand at the crossroads, and these two roads diverge before you, the blessing and the curse, the way of life and the way of death.  You cannot travel both, but it seems as though the choice  ought to be easy enough, since faith and life and sin and death are as different as heaven and hell.

The trouble is that, in the blindness of your sinful heart and mind, you cannot perceive or interpret the difference clearly.  The way of life looks like death to you.  The life-giving Word of the Lord sounds onerous and burdensome, as though it were asking too much of you, whereas the gifts and promises of God in Christ appear foolish and pointless.  Life itself looks like the opposite to you.

By contrast, the way of death appears to you as though it were pious and righteous, as though it were a sure and certain path to life and happiness, to safety, security, and peace, and as though it were actually the way of God.  In your sinfulness, in your native unbelief, life looks like death, and death looks like life.  Faith seems foolish, a bad investment.  Sin seems wise and profitable.

The way of death, in short, is the way of legalistic self-righteousness, which is already the heart of the problem.  It comprises all the many and various ways by which you strive to get life for yourself, whether by attempting to bargain and barter with God, seeking to buy Him off with your works and sacrifices, or by ignoring Him altogether on the false assumption that you know better.

This way of death is common to all the sons and daughters of Adam & Eve, apart from conversion.  Until the Holy Spirit shines the Light of Christ into your heart through the Gospel, you dwell in thick darkness, though you cannot even tell that you’re in the dark.  You strive and strain with all your might to set things right, to get life for yourself, to gain control, to get whatever you want.  But what you get is death; and many others suffer, too, as you pursue that path of self-destruction

The way of life is the very opposite.  It is followed by no trust or confidence in yourself at all.  It is pursued solely by faith in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, by His Word and Spirit.

You cannot find or follow that way of life by any wisdom, reason, or strength of your own.  For you cannot recognize or know the Lord Jesus apart from His Word and Holy Spirit, far less can you believe in Him or follow Him by any intelligence or effort of your fallen flesh.  But the Lord in His mercy does not leave you to your own devices or allow you to proceed unhindered on the way of death.  He rather confronts you with the preaching of His Cross and Resurrection.

By the preaching of His Word He knocks you off your high horse, He shatters your hard heart, He pierces your beclouded mind, and He breathes His life-giving Spirit into your body and soul, so that you become a living being.  He shines the Light of the Gospel into the midst of your darkness, so that you begin to see Him as He is.  It is as though something like scales falls from your eyes.

He does it by the preaching of His Cross and Resurrection, which is the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His Name.  That same preaching is what is necessary for the salvation of all the nations.  So that is what St. Paul is called to do, like the other Apostles before him; and that is what pastors to this day are called to do in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

By that preaching of repentance you are crucified and put to death — to yourself, to your sins, and to the wicked world all around you.  You are crucified, put to death, and buried with Christ Jesus, in order to be raised to newness of life by His forgiveness of your sins and the gift of His Spirit.

Whoever tries to save his own life will lose it, but whoever loses his life in this world for the sake of the Lord Jesus and His Gospel will have Life everlasting with Him in body and soul.  That is the paradox between these two ways, the way of life and the way of death.

The preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of your sins marks your body and soul, heart, mind, and spirit, with the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the sign of His Cross, as also in your Holy Baptism.  So it is for you as it was for St. Paul.  As the Lord sent Pastor Ananias to lay his hands on Saul of Tarsus, to bestow the Spirit upon him, to open his eyes, and to baptize him in the Name of the Lord Jesus, so has the same Lord sent His pastors to baptize and catechize you, to anoint you with His Spirit, and to sign you with His Cross upon your forehead and your heart.

As the Cross has been signed upon your heart, mind, and body, as it is preached into your ears and confessed with your mouth, so does the Cross mark all that you think, all that you say, and all that you do.  It crucifies and puts to death whatever is self-righteous in your body and soul, whatever is sinful, whatever is unfaithful and unloving.  But it also resurrects and sanctifies your body and soul, and it strengthens the New Man in you — which is your life in Christ and His Life in you.

Because the Cross does all of this, because it marks you, and because it crucifies you, and because it raises you up with the Lord Jesus Christ, it also means that you are hated and persecuted for His Name’s sake, and that you bear and suffer His Cross in your body and life on this earth.

Consider what God said concerning St. Paul: “I will show him how much he must suffer for My Name’s sake.”  Not that God would punish him for being so wicked up until that point, but that his suffering for the Name of Jesus Christ would manifest the Gospel in his body and life.  Thus were the power and wisdom of God manifest in St. Paul; and so are they manifest in you, as well.

What you suffer is not pointless, it is profound and fruitful, both as a discipline by which you are strengthened in your repentance and your faith in Christ Jesus, and as a bodily confession and proclamation of the Cross and Resurrection of the same Lord Jesus Christ.

So was St. Paul called to bear the Cross and to suffer for the Name and sake of the Lord Jesus.  And though you do not have the same office and vocation as St. Paul the Apostle, you do have the same Lord, you are called by the same Jesus, and you are given the same life in His crucified and risen Body.  You bear His Name and His Cross in your body and life, wherever He stations you.

As you are thus called to live and die with Christ Jesus on the way of life — and so to rise and live with Him forever in both body and soul — He does not leave you to fend for yourself on your own.  Like St. Paul, having received the true sight of faith through the preaching of the Holy Gospel, and having received the gift and cleansing of the Holy Spirit in the waters of your Holy Baptism, so are you also now fed and strengthened in body and soul by the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.  You are invigorated as a member of His Body, the Church, to live in faith and love by His grace.

And it is not only that you bear and suffer His Cross as a disciple, but Christ Jesus Himself is with you to share your sufferings and to bear you up in the midst of sin and death, each step of the way.  Indeed, so closely does He identify Himself with His Christians, that whatever you suffer in His Name, He suffers in you and with you and thereby sanctifies your sufferings with His own and saves you from sin and death in His Resurrection and Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father.

Whatever it is that is put to death in you by the Cross of Christ Jesus, much more do you receive in the Fruits of His Cross, in His crucified and risen Body given for you, and in His holy, precious Blood poured out for you.  Baptized in His Name, anointed by His Spirit, fed and strengthened by His Food and Drink, you live and walk with Him on the way of life.  Which is to say that, even though you die to yourself, to your sins, and to the world, yet shall you live unto God in Christ.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

From the Way of Death to the Way of Life

There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two.  The way of life is that of faith in Christ Jesus, which proceeds in love for God and man; and the way of death is that of unbelief and self-idolatry, whereby you strive to serve yourself above all others, only to find that you are consumed by the desires and demands of your own fallen flesh.

So you stand at the crossroads, and these two roads diverge before you, the blessing and the curse, the way of life and the way of death.  You cannot travel both, but it seems as though the choice  were obvious and easy, since faith and life and sin and death are as different as heaven and hell.

The trouble is that, in the blindness of your sinful heart and mind, you cannot perceive or interpret the difference clearly.  The way of life looks like death to you.  The life-giving Word of the Lord sounds onerous and burdensome, as though it were asking too much of you, whereas the gifts and promises of God in Christ appear foolish and pointless.  Life itself looks like the opposite to you.

By contrast, the way of death appears to you as though it were pious and righteous, as though it were a sure and certain path to life and happiness, to safety, security, and peace, and as though it were actually the way of God.  The Lord Jesus warned His disciples, prior to His Passion, that a day was coming when men would presume to serve and worship God by persecuting Christians and putting them to death.  Nowhere was that more the case than it was with Saul of Tarsus before the Lord converted him.  In his sincere zeal for the Law and for his ancestral traditions, and in his conviction that he was serving the Lord God of Israel, Saul was in fact sincerely and dead wrong.

So also in your unconverted heart.  In your sinfulness, in your native unbelief, life looks like death, and death looks like life.  Faith seems foolish, a bad investment.  Sin seems wise and profitable.

The way of death, in short, is the way of legalistic self-righteousness, which is already the heart of the problem.  It comprises all the many and various ways whereby you strive to get life for yourself, whether by attempting to bargain and barter with God, seeking to buy Him off with your works and sacrifices, or by ignoring Him altogether on the false assumption that you know better.

This way of death is common to all the sons and daughters of Adam & Eve, apart from conversion.  Until the Holy Spirit shines the Light of Christ into your heart through the Gospel, you dwell in thick darkness, though you cannot even tell that you’re in the dark.  You strive and strain with all your might to set things right, to get life for yourself, to gain control, to get whatever you want.  But what you get is death; and many others suffer, too, as you pursue that path of self-destruction

The way of life is the very opposite.  It is followed by no trust or confidence in yourself at all.  It is pursued solely by faith in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, by His Word and Spirit.

You cannot find or follow that way of life by any wisdom, reason, or strength of your own.  For you cannot recognize or know the Lord Jesus apart from His Word and Holy Spirit, far less can you believe in Him or follow Him by any intelligence or effort of your fallen flesh.  But the Lord in His mercy has not left you to your own devices or allowed you to proceed unhindered on the way of death.  He has rather confronted you with the preaching of His Cross and Resurrection, by which He calls you and brings you to repentance and faith in His forgiveness of all your sins.

By the preaching of His Word He knocks you off your high horse, He shatters your hard heart, He pierces your beclouded mind, and He breathes His life-giving Spirit into your body and soul, so that you become a living being.  He shines the Light of the Gospel in the midst of your darkness, so that you begin to see Him as He is.  It is as though something like scales falls from your eyes.

He does it by the preaching of His Cross and Resurrection, which is the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His Name.  That is what is necessary for the salvation of the nations.  So that is what St. Paul is called to do, like the other Apostles before him; and that is what pastors to this day are called to do in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

By that preaching of repentance you are crucified and put to death — to yourself, to your sins, and to the wicked world all around you.  You are crucified, put to death, and buried with Christ Jesus, in order to be raised to newness of life by His forgiveness of your sins and the gift of His Spirit.

Whoever tries to save his own life will lose it, but whoever loses his life in this world for the sake of the Lord Jesus and His Gospel will have Life everlasting with Him in body and soul.  That is the paradox between these two ways, the way of life and the way of death.  In attempting to make a life for yourself, you end up dying, and you take your neighbors down with you.  But when you live and die by faith in the Cross of Christ, then you are raised up and live forever in His Body.

The preaching of repentance and forgiveness thus corresponds to and coincides with your Baptism into Christ.  Indeed, such preaching is always to and from the font, to and from the waters of Holy Baptism.  That is to say, not only does it call you to be baptized, but then it daily returns you to the dying and rising of Baptism.  Day after day it drowns you and puts to death the old Adam in you, in order to raise you up, day after day, to live before God in the righteousness and purity of Christ, now and forever.  It brings your sins to light and calls you to account for them, to acknowledge and confess them, that you might be turned away from sin and death and brought to life in Christ Jesus.

This preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of your sins — the preaching of the Law and the Gospel, the preaching of the Cross and Resurrection — marks your body and soul, your heart, mind, and spirit, with the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the sign of His Cross, just as you also received in your Holy Baptism.  So it is for you as it was for St. Paul.  As the Lord sent Ananias to lay his hands on Saul of Tarsus, to bestow the Spirit upon him, to open his eyes, and to baptize him in the Name of the Lord Jesus, so has the same Lord sent His pastors to baptize and catechize you, to anoint you with His Spirit, and to sign you with His Cross upon your forehead and heart.

That is why, as a Christian, there is hardly anything more appropriate than making the sign of the Cross in whatever circumstances you may find yourself at any given time.  Not only to remember the death of Jesus once for all upon the Cross, but also to remember and confess that you have died with Him in your Baptism, and that you therefore also rise with Him and live with Him forever.

As the Cross has been signed upon your heart, mind, and body, as it is preached into your ears and confessed with your mouth, so does the Cross mark all that you think, all that you say, and all that you do.  It crucifies and puts to death whatever is self-righteous in your body and soul, whatever is sinful, whatever is unfaithful and unloving.  But it also resurrects and sanctifies your body and soul, and it strengthens the New Man in you — which is your life in Christ and His Life in you.

Because the Cross does all of this, because it marks you, and because it crucifies you, and because it raises you up with the Lord Jesus Christ, it also means that you are hated and persecuted for His Name’s sake, and that you bear and suffer His Cross in your body and life on this earth.

Consider what God said concerning St. Paul: “I will show him how much he must suffer for My Name’s sake.”  Not that God would punish him for being so wicked up until that point, but that his suffering for the Name of Jesus Christ, his suffering for the sake of the Gospel, his suffering under the Cross, would be a manifestation of the Gospel in his body and life.  Thus were the power and wisdom of God manifest in St. Paul, and so also in your body and life as a Christian, as well.

You also bear and suffer the Cross of Christ.  In some respects it is the discipline of the Lord who loves you, as a father disciplines his children in love.  The Cross does perform the work of the Law in exposing your sin and putting it to death.  But it is more than that.  For the sufferings of the Cross that you bear also include the hatred and hurt of the world on account of what you do right.

In truth, you do not suffer even a fraction of what you deserve because of your sins, for you surely deserve nothing but punishment, yet God in His mercy spares you so many of the consequences of your sin, even in this life on earth, just as He has removed all of the consequences of sin from the life everlasting.  But for doing what is good and right, for loving and forgiving your neighbor, for speaking the truth in love, for serving those around you in need, and for doing good to those who sin against you — for these things you are crucified, for these things you suffer and die, as Christ was crucified and put to death, the Righteous for the unrighteous, for the sins of the world.

What you suffer is not pointless, it is profound and fruitful, both as a discipline by which you are strengthened in your repentance and faith, and as a bodily confession and proclamation of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, your Savior and Redeemer.  Praise God, therefore, when you are counted worthy to bear and to suffer the Cross of Christ to the glory of His Holy Name.

It is by His Cross that your thoughts and feelings are conformed to the mind and Spirit of Christ.  And by His Holy Cross your entire body and life are recreated in the Image and Likeness of God.  For in this poor life of labor, this is what God looks like: the Body of Christ Jesus on the Cross.

It is in that Image of God — in Christ the Crucified — that you are shaped by the preaching of the Cross.  Not as though God were some kind of sadist who rejoices in your suffering, but because He has called you in love to be conformed to the Image of His Son, and because in Christ, through the Cross, you have such a life and such good things as you could never imagine or dare to ask for.

That is what St. Paul was called to bear in his body and life; that is what he was called to suffer for the Name and sake of Jesus.  Both in his preaching and in his body he bore the Cross of Christ.  He preached and he suffered in Jesus’ Name.  And as I have already said, so also do you bear the Name and Cross of the same Lord Jesus Christ.  You do not have the same office and vocation as St. Paul the Apostle, but you do have the same Lord, you are called by the same Jesus, and you are given the same life in Him.  So, then, as a disciple of Jesus Christ the Crucified, you bear His Name and His Cross in your body and life, in whatever office and station you are called to serve.

But as you are thus called to live and die with Christ on the way of life — and so to rise and live with Him forever after in body and soul — He does not leave you to fend for yourself on your own.  Like St. Paul, having received the true sight of faith through the preaching of the Holy Gospel, and having received the gift and cleansing of the Holy Spirit in the waters of your Holy Baptism, so are you also now fed and strengthened in body and soul by the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.  You are invigorated as a member of His Body, the Church, to live in faith and love by His grace.

And it is not only that you bear and suffer His Cross as a disciple, but Christ Jesus Himself is with you to share your sufferings and bear you up in the midst of sin and death, each step of the way.

Do you want to know how close Jesus is to you in the sufferings that you endure as a Christian?  Consider what He has spoken to St. Paul there on the Road to Damascus.  “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”  “Who are You, Lord?”  “I Am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”  So closely does He identify Himself with His Christians, that whatever they suffer in His Name, He suffers in them and with them, that He should sanctify their sufferings with His own and save them from sin and death in His Resurrection from the dead and in His Ascension to the Right Hand of God.

So, too, when you are persecuted for the sake of Christ Jesus, the same Lord Jesus Christ suffers with you.  As He bore your sins and death upon the Cross, so does He bear your suffering with you now, that you should not be crushed or destroyed by it, but sustained and sanctified in faith. And He will bring you through it, through your death into His Resurrection and His Life everlasting.

Whatever it is that is put to death in you by the Cross of Christ Jesus, much more do you receive in the fruits of His Cross, in His crucified and risen Body, given for you, and in His holy, precious Blood, poured out for you.  Baptized in His Name, anointed by His Spirit, fed and strengthened by His Food and Drink, you live and walk with Him on the way of life.  Which is to say that, even though you die to yourself, to your sins, and to the world, yet shall you live unto God in Christ.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Called Out of Darkness into the Light of Christ

One could hardly over-emphasize the significance of St. Paul’s conversion for the history of the Church on earth, and really for the history of the world.  Indeed, U. S. News and World Report once identified the conversion of St. Paul as the single most significant event in western history — and that was not even considering his theological contributions, but simply his impact on the life and culture of western society.  More important, by the grace and mercies of God, by His Word and Holy Spirit, St. Paul built upon the rock foundation that his Savior, Christ Jesus, established.

Incredibly, there are no less than four complementary accounts of Paul’s conversion in the Holy Scriptures: three within the Acts of the Apostles (a surprising repetition in a carefully selective record of Church history), and the fourth from St. Paul’s own hand in his Epistle to the Galatians.

The significance of St. Paul’s conversion and call to Apostleship goes far beyond the fact that he preached to the Gentiles in his day.  As a thirteenth Apostle, he was in his office an indication of God’s good and gracious will to extend the Kingdom of His people and His Church beyond the twelve tribes of Israel.  As St. Peter and the others Apostles were the new Patriarchs of a new Israel, so was St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, the divinely-ordained link between the new Jerusalem and the rest of the world within the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ.

So also, as the other Apostles were called to give up everything, to the point of losing their lives for the sake of Christ and His Gospel, so was St. Paul called to give up everything he knew, to suffer many things in the Name of Jesus, and finally to be martyred under Nero in Rome.

More to the point at hand, the same Lord Jesus calls you to forsake all that you have known and trusted — yourself and your life, your family, your home, and all of your possessions in this world.  That is to say, He calls you to repentance.  He calls you to be converted every day, as it were, from the darkness and death of your sin to forgiveness and life in the Light of His Gospel.

Now, you know what it’s like to come out of a dark room into the light — maybe first thing in the morning, or after a movie matinee.  The light hurts your eyes at first, and it takes a while to adjust.  That’s how it was for Saul of Tarsus, when he was suddenly surrounded by the blazing Light of God from heaven.  Except that Saul had thought he was already walking in the light of the Lord.

As the Lord Jesus had forewarned His Disciples, the day had come when men like Saul believed they were serving the Lord their God by persecuting the Church and Ministers of Christ.  So what a shock it was for Saul to be confronted by the true Light of God in Christ Jesus — far brighter than any he had known — and to learn that he was living and walking in the darkness as a chief of sinners.  The devastating impact of that realization brought Saul to his knees and brought him to nothing.  For he, Saul, a pharisee of pharisees, was the blind and ignorant one.  All of his efforts on behalf of the Law and the Temple were wrong and counterproductive.  He was running in vain.

To make note of all of this is fine and good.  And it might be easy enough to sit back and point fingers at poor Saul.  We don’t even have to feel too badly for him, since we already know how his story will continue, and how he will become a great Apostle and a Champion of Christ.  What is not so comfortable and easy, however, is that you, like Saul, are also kicking against the goads and persecuting Jesus by your sins.  Which means that you must also be confronted by the Lord and painfully converted, and not only once upon a time, but day after day throughout your life.

Apart from the Epiphany and Self-revelation of Christ, you are the one who is walking in darkness — no matter how zealous and pious you might be, and no matter if you serve as an officer of the congregation, or even as a pastor!  Your credentials and your zeal will surely never be greater than Saul’s.  If the Lord Jesus Christ does not surround you with His Light and speak His Voice to you, then you remain nothing but a poor, miserable sinner, breathing threats and murder against your neighbor, and running in vain on the road that is wide and smooth on its way to destruction.

And if Jesus does not send His Ananias to you — to lay his hand on you in Holy Absolution, to open your eyes and ears to the preaching of the Gospel, to return you to the life-giving waters of Holy Baptism, and to nourish you with the Food of Christ in the Holy Communion — then you remain in your blind ignorance, and you will starve to death in utter despair.

Thus, you cannot (you dare not) hear the story of St. Paul’s conversion as a casual listener with detached objectivity; because it must become your story, your conversion from darkness to Light.

In the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace is turned into a dragon on account of his greed and selfishness.  He is converted back into a boy by the great lion, Aslan, only by the painful stripping away of layer-upon-layer of scales — right down to the core of his being — and by a “baptismal” cleansing in the waters of repentance.  C. S. Lewis thus provides a powerful, dramatic picture of Christian conversion, including your own.  For it is a painful removal of all that you have been, the drowning and death of your old Adam, before you are raised up to newness of life in Christ.

Yet, as brilliant as C. S. Lewis was, his poetic description of conversion does not surpass the poignancy of St. Paul’s conversion as described by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles.

In the story of St. Paul you are presented with the paradigm and pattern of Christian conversion.  And though, of course, the details and specifics of the experience and its outcome are different in each particular case, by the eyes and ears of faith you are able to recognize your own story, as well, in the calling and conversion of St. Paul.  For you have also been on your own road to Damascus, self-confident and self-righteous in your own ambitious choices, decisions, ideas, and ideals.

So it goes, until the Lord stops you dead in your tracks.  Maybe not with a brilliant light flashing all around you from heaven, but perhaps with the exposure of some secret sin, or with evidence that you actually don’t know it all, and you don’t understand even what you do know.  Perhaps it is not a voice from the heavens, but the voice of a parent laying down the law, or a doctor saying “cancer,” or a phone call in the middle of the night that someone you love has been killed.

Whatever it may be, whatever it takes, you find yourself blind and groping in the darkness of your sinful ignorance and unbelief.  You cannot help yourself; you have to be taken by hand and led around by others.  All your proud plans and grand ambitions have to be given up and set aside.  It is a time of repentance, of fasting and prayer, and of watching and waiting on the Lord.

Three days in the tomb, in the dust of the ground — in the dark with Saul of Tarsus, in the belly of the great fish with Jonah — before you are resurrected from the dead by the Word of the Gospel.  The Lord has not forgotten you.  But He must kill the sinner before He raises the saint.

And then the Lord who loves you sends His Ananias, a servant of His Word, to lay a tender hand upon your head; to speak the grace, mercy, and peace of His forgiveness; to baptize you in the Name of Jesus, or to return you to His Baptism; and to feed you with His Body and His Blood.

Thus, by the Ministry of His Gospel, the Lord opens up your eyes, in such a way that His Light is no longer blinding but a Lamp unto your feet and a Light upon your path.  No longer are you on the road to Damascus, but on the Road to Emmaus with the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.  And as you have died with Him by your Baptism into His death, so do you now live with Him, as well.

And just as St. Paul’s conversion from the darkness to the Light included God’s call to a particular office and station in life, so are you called to a particular place and purpose as a child of God and a Christian disciple of Christ Jesus.  But your place and purpose, your office and station in life are different than St. Paul’s, and different than your neighbor’s.  Your vocation, your relationships, and your responsibilities are uniquely yours.  But you need not go hunting and searching to find them or figure them out, because they are set before you plainly in your neighbors, beginning with your own parents, siblings, spouse, and children, if you have them; so, too, in your classmates, your colleagues, and coworkers; in your teachers or students; in your boss or your employees; in the orphans and widows the Lord has placed beside you; and in your brothers and sisters in Christ.

As a child, you are called to love, honor, serve, and obey your parents and other authorities.  As a parent, you are called to rear your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord; to bring them to the washing of the water with His Word in Holy Baptism, and then to continue bringing them to His Church; to care for them in body and soul; to catechize them in God’s Word and prayer; and to teach them by your words and by your example to live and walk in the Light of Christ.

As husband or wife, you are called to love and serve your spouse in the faith and love of Christ and His Bride, the Church.  As a Christian, you are called to drown and destroy the old Adam in you through daily contrition and repentance, to confess your sins and to receive the forgiveness and eternal life of Christ Himself in His Gospel and Sacrament.  That is your most important calling.

As a member of the congregation, you are called to serve and support the Church and Ministry of the Gospel in this place, for your own sake and for your neighbors, to the Glory of God in Christ.  Pray for me as your pastor, as I pray for you.  And within your community and neighborhood, and in your job if you have one, serve and support those around you in the confession of Christ Jesus.

Though none of us will be another St. Paul, and perhaps only a few of you might ever be called to the pastoral office, each and every one of you has been called out of the darkness of your sins into the marvelous Light of Christ.  You are called to be a child of the Father in heaven; called to live and walk in the Way of Christ and, whatever your particular place and station are, to be His Light in the midst of the deep darkness all around you.  You are called to receive the gracious gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation in Christ, and to learn from Him what it is to be truly alive.

At the heart of the story at hand — what St. Paul was called to do, according to the Word of Jesus — what was necessary, according to the Word and Will of God, in much the same way that the Cross and Resurrection of Christ were necessary — was that St. Paul would suffer many things for the Name of Christ Jesus.  He was called to bear the Cross in this life on earth, even unto death.  Not as those who suffer and die without hope, but in the hope and promise of the Resurrection.

And to this same life, death, and resurrection, you also are called.  For you received the Cross of Christ upon your forehead and your heart in Holy Baptism.  You are marked as one redeemed by this crucified God, who calls you to bear His Cross and follow Him, to confess His Name and suffer for it, to die and rise with Him to the praise and glory of His God and Father.  For as you are crucified, dead, and buried with the Lord Jesus Christ, so also do you live with Him, as well, in body and soul, both here in time and hereafter in eternity forever.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.