Saturday in Holy Trinity
“[Jesus Christ] has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.” (Explanation to the Second Article of the Aposle’s Creed)
In the Name of Christ. Amen. God always plays fair. He always follows the rules. That’s why we say He is a just God. If He changed the rules halfway through the game, we couldn’t trust Him. But that’s not what He did – He followed His own rules to the end, even though it meant His Son would die.
Payment for our sin had to be made. We could have all been required to make it ourselves, but that payment would have left us dead. Not just dead, but dead to God for all eternity. We would have been shut out of heaven because of the heavy price: keeping God’s law perfectly.
Instead of letting us find out the hard way that we couldn’t do it, He sent Jesus to do it for us. So Jesus paid the price. He covered the ransom that kept us separated from God, and it took His blood, suffering, and death to do it.
So how does that apply to you? What does Jesus dying so long ago have to do with you? The Small Catechism says, “Christ was my substitute…By paying the penalty of my guilt, Christ atoned…for my sins.”
Now God always looks at you through the cross of His Son. Every time God looks at you, He has to see you through His crucified and risen Son.
The rules say you must pay for your sins, and blood is required for that payment. But God sees Jesus, Who shed His blood for those sins, and God says, “Paid.”
You don’t need to worry that something else needs to be done, that what Jesus did wasn’t enough somehow, because God Himself said it was enough. Jesus said it, too. When the work of saving you from sin, death, and the devil was done, He said, “It is finished.” Amen.
“See, my soul, thy Savior chooses Weakness here and poverty; In such love He comes to thee Nor the hardest couch refuses; All He suffers for thy good, To redeem thee by His blood. Joy, O joy beyond all gladness, Christ hath done away with sadness! Hence, all sorrow and repining, For the Sun of Grace is shining!” (TLH #96, v.2)Daily Lectionary
Proverbs 8:22-36 3 John 1-15 Matthew 12:15-21