As a child of Adam you spend your life attempting to exonerate and justify yourself, to rationalize and excuse your behavior — to yourself and to your neighbors, and in comparison with others — and even before the Lord your God, when you’re not trying to run away and hide from Him.
And yet, for all of that, there is still death waiting for you at the end; sooner or later, it shuts down all of your attempts to make a name and a life for yourself. You can’t argue with death. Not really. Not your own, nor anyone else’s. It doesn’t matter how hard you work to ward it off, to put it off and delay the inevitable. It doesn’t matter how careful you are in caring for your body and tending to your health. It doesn’t matter how much you strive to protect your children and keep them safe.
If you take the opposite approach and live a crazy and reckless life, that doesn’t give you any more power or control, it only hastens your demise. You sure don’t win that way. You don’t beat death.
Your mortality looms so large, it casts a long dark shadow over your entire life. Making it out of the womb is only the first of many hurdles. Especially as you get older, it is sometimes the case that death and the grave and bones as dry as dust are all that you can see. But Jesus you do not see.
As a Christian, you persist and persevere in hope, in the promise and assurance of things not seen. But as a child of Adam in this fallen and failing world, you flirt with despair and court disaster. You succumb to the dread of death and plunge yourself into faithless unbelief, whether through apathy or apostasy, bitterness or cynicism, or the stubborn denial of God’s Words and promises. Since you cannot see what He has spoken, you feel as though it were false, and so you tell yourself to give up on God, to go it alone, or to give up altogether. In this way your hope has perished ahead of your body and life, and you don’t even bother to pray or ask for help.
Sorrow seeps into your heart and fills it up, driving out faith and the Holy Spirit. Not right away, but little by little, the more you dwell on your own thoughts and feelings, which seem so real and so true, instead of dwelling on the Word of Christ, which sounds so fanciful, and He so far away.
It’s not only that life is hard and you get discouraged, but in the midst of your pain your mortal flesh gets increasingly restless and afraid; and the world, full of its own sin and death, threatens and tricks you with its traps and temptations; Satan likewise attacks and accuses you, fiercely but cunningly. Consequently, you are bounced back and forth between feeling sorry for yourself and feeling ashamed of your sins. You know that you are guilty, and that you rightly deserve nothing but punishment and death; but that is a frightening prospect, which seems so final and inevitable.
In all of this the devil has you looking at yourself, in which there is no hope nor help to be found.
Without the Word and Spirit of the Lord, you are dust, and to dust you shall return. You feel it in your bones, and the Law of God declares it to be so. You are dust — which is where that old serpent, the devil, would drive you or entice you, to make you eat the dust that he is forced to eat.
But, now, consider that. The devil does eat dirt. The would-be ruler of this fallen world has been judged, and he is cast out. And the Spirit has come — who is the Lord, the Author and Giver of Life — because the Lord Jesus, the only-begotten Son, has returned to the Father who sent Him.
Jesus is the One who pours out the Holy Spirit on His Church — and upon you within His Church — because He is the Christ, the Lord’s Anointed. He has been anointed by the Spirit in His own Body of flesh and blood. Conceived and born of St. Mary, He too is a Son of Adam, and so His Body also is from the dust. Yet, that same Body of Christ Jesus has also been anointed by the Holy Spirit, and filled with the Holy Spirit, for the rescue and salvation of all the children of Adam.
It’s not as though the Son of God were ever without the Holy Spirit, but in His flesh as true Man the Spirit descended upon Him and remained upon Him, so that in this Lord Jesus Christ the Spirit of God abides with Man forever. You know that to be true from the witness of His Baptism in the Jordan River, as both St. John the Baptist and all four of the Holy Evangelists testify; for as Jesus came up out of the water the heavens were opened and the Spirit descended upon Him as a Dove.
What began in the waters of His Baptism culminated in His Cross and Resurrection from the dead. For both the dying and the rising belong to the Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins — which the Lord Jesus underwent on behalf of all sinners and accomplished in Himself.
Thus was He driven by the Spirit from His Baptism directly into the wilderness, in order to be tempted by the devil, as Adam and Eve were tempted in the Garden, as Israel was tempted in the wilderness, and in every way that you are tempted. For Jesus is your Comrade and your Champion.
In this way, having come down from the Father in heaven, and having taken human flesh and blood like yours to be His own, He also then journeyed back to the Father with you and all mankind in Himself. He has gathered you up in Himself, in His own Body, in order to return you to faith and life with God, and not only that, but to make you a child of His own God and Father in heaven.
It is for this reason that He has taken, not only your temptation, but all of your sins, and the sins of the whole world, upon Himself. He has come, not only as the true Man, with His own Body of flesh and blood, but in the likeness of our fallen flesh. He has borne and suffered the full curse and consequence of Adam’s sin, the full weight and burden of your mortality, as though every sin were actually His own, committed by Him, and as though every death were His own rightful wages.
So it is that He is convicted concerning the sins of the world. For He is condemned and crucified under Pontius Pilate. But it is His God and Father who hands Him over to the Cross, and it is the Spirit who fulfills the judgment of the Law in His punishment, in His bloody Passion unto death. Thus, when it is finished, He hands over the same Spirit that He received at His Baptism; for with His death all the requirements and condemnation of the Law have been fully satisfied, in order that Adam & Eve and all the children of men might receive the Holy Spirit, not for death, but for Life.
The surety of that accomplished fact is in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead. For His death has accomplished the destruction of death and the silencing of Satan’s accusations. Whereas the Lord Jesus did not defend Himself or answer His accusers, but in faith and love He quietly and willingly submitted to the sacrifice of His Cross, His Father has fully vindicated Him by raising Him up from the dust of the earth. He is not guilty. He is blameless and free. And so are you.
The whole world is “convicted concerning righteousness” in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus. Death and the devil no longer have any rightful claim against you, nor against anyone else — not in Christ Jesus, the Savior of all mankind. There is no condemnation for those who are in Him.
God’s judgment has been given by the Cross and Resurrection of His incarnate Son. In Him sin is forgiven. It is no longer counted or considered, nor is it held against you, because Christ Jesus has made Atonement with His Blood. So, too, the whole world is justified and reconciled to God in His rising from the dead, in His returning to the Father in His own Body of human flesh.
The Holy Spirit therefore preaches these mighty deeds of God to all the nations of the world, in every language on earth, in order to make disciples of Christ Jesus from every tribe and tongue and people, and to gather men and women, boys and girls, the young and old alike, from the four winds into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. For the dried up old bones that are resurrected, re-enfleshed, resuscitated, and restored to new life are not isolated individuals but the whole house of Israel, that is, the Church, the Body of Christ. It is precisely in His Body that all are made alive.
It is by the proclamation of the Word of Christ Jesus, crucified and risen, that the Spirit calls you daily to repentance, that is, from unbelief to faith in Christ. By the judgment of the Law and the Gospel, He convicts you of sin and of righteousness. He exposes your sin for the unbelief it is, and thereby removes every pretense of self-righteousness within you. That is the truth of the Law, which condemns you. But the same Spirit also speaks the truth of the Gospel, and by that Word He justifies you through faith in Christ Jesus and raises you from death to newness of life in Him.
Such is the Spirit’s testimony in response to all of your adversaries and accusers: Christ Jesus is your Savior from sin and death, in whom you are fully forgiven and justified. On the one hand, the punishment of all your sin has already been carried out — in the Body of Christ Jesus on the Cross — and on the other hand, the innocence and righteousness of Christ are counted as yours.
That is the truth of the Gospel. It is not an empty or powerless word, but the very Word of God, which is not only true, but is the Truth Itself, which establishes the truth concerning you, both now and forever. It is a living and active Word, by which the Holy Spirit comforts you in sorrow and grants you peace in place of fear, rest from your weariness, and perfect health and strength and life.
By and with this Gospel the Spirit bestows on you everything that belongs to Christ Jesus — His righteousness and holiness, His Resurrection from the dead, and His eternal Life with the Father — all of this is given to you and worked in you, body and soul, from the waters of your Baptism.
The Spirit brings you through those waters into the wilderness, where you bear the Cross of Christ Jesus as a disciple and you live by faith in the Word and promise of your God and Father. Here you find yourself in the midst of a desert of dry bones, and by daily repentance you are crucified, put to death, and buried. For now you are still mortal; you get sick, you suffer, and you die.
But so are you also raised up, in and with Christ Jesus, and brought into the Land that God has promised you. Already He has brought you into His Church, which is the Body of Christ, and here you live, just as He lives. Not only that, but even now under the Cross you are glorified with the Glory of Christ Jesus, which shall be openly revealed in the resurrection of your body at the last. For as Jesus returns to His Father by way of His Cross — in His Resurrection and Ascension — so are you brought to the Father as His very own dearly-beloved and well-pleasing child.
That shall be so in the final Judgment Day, in the Resurrection of all flesh at the last. But so is it already true — even here and now — in the midst of the wilderness. It is true for you as you hear and receive the Word of Christ, as your sins are all forgiven, as you are cleansed and refreshed by the waters that flow from His riven side, and as you are fed with His Body and His Blood.
In giving you Christ Jesus by this Ministry of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit gives you everything that Jesus has from God the Father. And it is all by His Word. For the Spirit guides you into all Truth by speaking what He hears from the Father in the Son, that is, your justification and forgiveness.
This Gospel of Christ Jesus, the Word-made-Flesh, is the new language of the Holy Spirit. It is neither gibberish nor fantasy; it is the accomplished fact of the Body of Christ, crucified and risen — in which Body you also are redeemed, raised up, reconciled to God, and righteous in His sight. That is what the Spirit says to you — and this Word does for you and gives to you what He says.
Though it seems so simple and so powerless, this Word of the Gospel fills your heart, mind, body, and soul with the Spirit of Christ Jesus, who drives out sorrow and replaces it with joy and peace. For with this Word the Spirit refutes the rhetoric of the devil; He defends and protects you from the devil’s accusations; He comforts you with forgiveness and delivers you from hopeless despair.
And with this Word the Spirit opens your lips to show forth the praises of God, to speak the mighty deeds of God in Christ Jesus. So that you and your children all speak and sing this powerful Word to the glory of God and to edify you and your neighbors in love. For this Word of the Gospel of Christ is the Truth in your ears and on your lips, by which He breathes His Life-giving Spirit into your body and soul, that you and yours should not perish but live forever with Him in Paradise.
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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