PREPARING FOR THE DAY
Romans 13:11-14
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 13:11 “And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Once again, our good and gracious God has brought us to the beginning of Advent, the beginning of a new Church Year. The Season of Advent is the season in which the Church prepares herself, liturgically speaking, for the coming of Christ. Of course, we are living in the end time – that time between Christ’s ascension and His second coming – and hence we should always prepare ourselves for His arrival.
Advent, like the liturgy and themes of the end of the Church Year, is meant to bring this need for preparation to the forefront of our minds again. Advent is a time during which we are encouraged not to be lulled to sleep while waiting, not to have our faith dulled by the world around us, and not to be tempted to be carried away and distracted by the cares of our day-to-day lives. Advent again sounds the message in our ears, as St. Paul does in today’s Epistle reading: “it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.”
Nowadays people generally treat Advent as an extended pre-Christmas time, sort of a month-long celebration that culminates on the big day, December 25th. I would be lying if I said we don’t do the same general thing in my own house. In ancient times, however, the season of Advent was commemorated in much the same way that Lent is kept. The main focus was on repentance. And as a sign of repentance, the people did not feast, they fasted. In fact, Advent was, in certain places, just as long as Lent – 7 weeks of preparation – which is why we still have to this day three weeks at the end of the Church year that focus on Christ’s return to judge, in addition of the four weeks we keep as Advent.
I bring all of this up not just because it is interesting history, but to show that the Church throughout her long existence has thought that preparing for Christ’s arrival is pretty darn important and needs to be impressed upon the hearts and minds of her children. Advent, therefore, is primarily NOT a preparation for the celebration of Christ’s birth. It is intended to prepare us for Christ’s presence among us now in the Sacrament, and especially for His return at the last day.
Preparing for Christ’s advent does not involve many of the things people busy themselves with at this time of year. It has nothing to do with Black Friday or any of the post-Thanksgiving Day sales; it has nothing to do with buying presents; it has nothing to do with office parties; it has nothing to do with decorating the house; it has nothing to do with bells or even with snow! While Christians can and certainly do find meaning and importance in all those things, they have little if anything to do with preparing for Christ to come to us. Rather than decorating our houses, our Lord would have us prepare our hearts for Him. Rather than going into debt buying presents, our Lord would have us remember in thankfulness the debt He paid for us, and to remember that we are debtors to Him.
In our Epistle reading, St. Paul speaks about the whole Christian life as being one that is lived in freedom from the Law, but in debt to Christ. He says that we are to “owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Christ has paid the debt that our sins had brought upon us. He has reconciled us to God and given us perfect freedom from the Law.
So why does Paul speak about owing our neighbor love? Well, Martin Luther answers this question in His work “On The Freedom of the Christian”. He writes this of the Christian faith:
“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. These two theses seem to contradict each other. If, however, they should be found to fit together they would serve our purpose beautifully. Both are Paul’s own statements, who says in I Cor. 9:19, “For though I am free item all men, I have made myself a slave to all,” and in Rom. 13:8, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Love, by its very nature, is ready to serve and be subject to him who is loved. So Christ, although he was Lord of all, was “born of woman, born under the law” Gal. 4:4, and therefore was at the same time a free man and a servant, “in the form of God” and “of a servant” Phil. 2:6-7” (Luther’s Works Vol. 31, p. 344).
Luther goes on then to explain that the seeming contradiction between freedom and servanthood is not really a contradiction at all; rather, it refers to the spiritual state of the Christian as opposed to the physical state of the Christian. According to the new, or spiritual man, every Christian is perfectly free and has no need to do any good works at all, but not according to the flesh.
It is levitra in india price imperative to not take it with nitrates, the drugs for chest pain and heart ailments. It will then be easy for you to follow through with a large amount of water to take the medcine without breaking or mashing. viagra cost in india Both categories rely on one thing, and that is backlinks – its just how those links are buy viagra line aquired and how they are used that is the big difference. generic cialis pills In fact you are bound to be tired.Again Luther writes: “In this life [the Christian] must control his own body and have dealings with men. Here the works begin; here a man cannot enjoy leisure; here he must indeed take care to discipline his body by fastings, watchings, labors, and other reasonable disciplines and to subject it to the Spirit so that it will obey and conform to the inner man and faith and not revolt against faith and hinder the inner man, as it is the nature of the body to do if it is not held in check. The inner man, who by faith is created in the image of God, is both joyful and happy because of Christ in whom so many benefits are conferred upon him; and therefore it is his one occupation to serve God joyfully and without thought of gain, in love that is not constrained. While he is doing this, behold, he meets a contrary will in his own flesh which strives to serve the world and seeks its own advantage. This the spirit of faith cannot tolerate, but with joyful zeal it attempts to put the body under control and hold it in check…” (p. 359).
St. Paul agrees with Luther on this point; rather, Luther agrees with St. Paul. It is important to understand that the Apostle is not speaking about fulfilling the Law through love in order to be saved. He is speaking about how the faithful who have been saved live, and how the faithful must fight their own flesh in order to bring it in line with the new spirit they have been given. Here the Law is an instrument that reminds us of how we ought to live; and that is, quite simply, in love toward our neighbors.
Of course, that instrument seems to us to be rather blunt. It is like a great sledge hammer that pounds to dust everything it strikes. For we are told that we should love our neighbors, yet we see very quickly how we have not loved them. St. Paul says we should not sin like the unbelievers do, and yet we see how we have at times sinned just like they do, maybe even worse! So, what is the answer? Just how is it that this Law can help us?
Well, I am glad you asked. The Law helps us by doing what it has been given to do; it drives us to repentance by showing us our sin and our need for a Savior from sin. In the words of our Lutheran Confessions, the Law “kills, condemns, and destroys” the sinful nature by showing us our utter helplessness and inability to save ourselves. The Law, therefore, is the “set-up man” to the preaching of the Gospel and how Christ Himself has fulfilled the Law for us and in our place.
Listen again to what Paul says. He does not say that loving your neighbor as yourself will be easy or even attainable in this life. Rather He speaks of repentance: “let us cast off the works of darkness.” And then He speaks of the grace of Christ: “and let us put on the armor of light.”
What armor is this, you ask? It is the armor of the Word and grace of Jesus. It is the armor of Baptism, which enables you to say to yourself, to the devil and to the world: “I am God’s Child. I am a Christian. God has called Me to Himself and washed away My sins. I will not be condemned, but will live with Christ.” It is the armor of the Word of the Gospel, whereby you hear repeatedly that God loves you, that Christ has died for you, and that your sins are removed and have been cast away by God Himself. Just a few phrases later, Paul says that it is quite simply putting on Jesus: “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ”; and having put Him on, and living in His grace, fight against the sin that is within you, “and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”
You see, then, that it is Christ Who is our strength at all times. He has to be, and He is, because we have no strength of ourselves. Jesus is not just the entry point into the Christian life; He IS the Christian life; He lives in and through you. Sure, you may try to fulfill the law of love on your own even after coming to faith, but those efforts are bound to fail. Though you are saved, your righteousness is still not your own; it is Christ’s. The Spirit of God has given new life to your spirit; but detached from the source of its life, it eventually fades and dies. So, in order to live a Christian life, in order to prepare for the return of Christ, we must continue abiding in Him. As Jeremiah reminds us this morning, “Yahweh is our Righteousness.”
It is in Christ alone that we find the strength to love our neighbor, for from Him we have received real, powerful, and lasting love. All the things that Paul commands us to do as Christians are just reflections of the love Jesus has already given to us. He fulfilled the whole law of God by loving all men more than Himself. And so we see Him again today in the Gospel reading, entering into Jerusalem as a humble King in order to die a traitor’s death. He loved so greatly that He subdued within Himself His divine power in order to suffer divine wrath. He became lower than the lowest criminal in order that all those who have broken His Father’s Law – that’s us – would be saved. In Jesus, whether it be in His coming to Bethlehem’s manger, or in His riding into Jerusalem to be raised up on the cross, we see what it means to love.
And when we abide in His love, His love begins to have its way in us. His love received gives birth to our love for Him, as I John 4:19 says, “We love Him because He first loved us.” And that love is expressed not just upward, but outward.
St. John Chrysostom, a late 4th century Church Father, explained that this is the response that God desires – that we love our neighbors out of love for Him. He wrote, “God’s love is free from all passion, for which reason He also seeks for those to share His love. For He says, love with Me, and then I will also love you the more. You see the words of a vehement lover! If you love My beloved, then I will also reckon Myself to be greatly loved by you.” In other words, in loving our neighbor we are really loving Christ, for He has made that neighbor, and our Creator loves him or her just as He loves you. And if that neighbor is also a Christian, then the bond is even greater and Christ is in that neighbor as He is also in you.
The whole point, then, for this Advent season – and in fact every day of our lives – is that we are to put off the selfish ways of the flesh, and seek constantly to live in and by Christ. “And do this”, Paul says, “knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.”
And indeed, the day of Christ is at hand. He comes to us now in Holy Communion, and we are day by day drawing nearer to the day when either we will go to Him through death or when He will come again to us. And then, having our flesh raised up anew in the likeness of our spirit, without sin and completely holy, we will at last love purely as we have been loved. May our Lord keep us in His grace until that day, and may He bring that day quickly. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
