1 Peter 3:13-15 “Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. ‘Do not fear what they fear: do not be frightened.’ But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

You might think that when we talk about the gospel, and respond to insults with kind words and blessings, people would like us and treat us well. Usually that is the case. When Peter asks the question, “Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?” he is implying that the answer is “no one.”

Most of the time. Of course, there are exceptions for every rule. Sometimes people see our kind response as weakness to take advantage of. Sometimes they just don’t like the gospel we believe. Peter quotes words the Lord said to Isaiah 700 years earlier. “Do not fear what they fear.” The prophet had been telling Israel’s leaders not to worry about their political enemies in other countries. The Lord was going to take care of them. They didn’t need to sell their freedom and independence to some more powerful nation for protection. They needed God.

Most of the leaders thought Isaiah was nuts at best, treasonous at worst. They pressured the prophet to shut up. They threatened him and tried to intimidate him. They wanted to silence him. According to Jewish legend, eventually they sawed him in two.

“Do not fear what they fear.” Many others don’t believe in an all-loving, all-powerful God who promises to take care of us. They are afraid of the bully who is bigger and stronger. So they become the bully when they are bigger and stronger. Isaiah had God, so he didn’t have to be afraid of them.

Neither do we. Many people believe we are nuts at best, dangerous at worst for the gospel we believe. “Religion stands in the way of progress,” they say. “It limits personal freedom. It encourages judgmentalism and prejudice. It prevents people from being more urgent about solving the world’s problems. They turn to prayer, or hope for heaven, when they should be rushing to action.” The atheists, the humanists, the secularists, and the proponents of strange new moral standards would like to silence our talk about sin, and grace, and God.

Peter has the solution. “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…” Even when they attack our faith, our response does not need to become mean and personal.

But it does need to be a defense. That is the idea behind the word “answer” in the Greek. The Christian gospel is fact and truth, no matter what the other side says. Jesus our Lord is real. So is his love, his forgiveness, and all his saving work. As God’s people we defend his honor when we defend our faith. In the process, we just might win some converts from the other side.

So be prepared. Study your Scriptures. Know how they fit together. Commit them to memory. Don’t be content with a vague and hazy grasp of your faith. Don’t be satisfied that the pastor has the answers. Know them for yourself.

Then you will be prepared to defend your faith, and when you open your mouth, you will be talking as the very mouth of God.

1 Peter 3:9-11 “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, ‘Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil”

We live in a world that suffers from an insult epidemic. Like six-year-olds, people defend it by saying, “But he was mean to me.” To find people who follow Peter’s instructions here, don’t look to the politicians, the press, or the people who post on social media. They all live by trading insult for insult. More and more it seems that Christians are getting sucked into the same way of interacting with the people with whom they disagree.

Do you know who has a little clue about how to respond? Customer service. It turns out that when there is money to be made, even the world can trade blessing for insult, respond to attacks by making peace. At the company where my wife works, they teach managers to deal with customer complaints using the acronym BLAST. It stands for believe, listen, apologize, satisfy, and thank you. It settles the customer down, sends them away happy, and brings them back to spend more money in the future.

For God’s people, answering insults with blessing is not about making money. It is about our call. “To this you were called,” Peter says. We have been specially chosen and selected by God for a special purpose. We were no different than the billions of other people on the planet, and yet in his grace God called us. He did not repay evil for the evil we have done. Our whole lives may have been a slap in his face, but he did not trade insult for insult. He is the ultimate peace-seeker.

Earlier in his book Peter reminds us, “When they hurled their insults at him, he (Jesus) did not retaliate; when he suffered he made no threats. Instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on tree.” Jesus kept his own mouth shut so that he could carry our sins at the cross. And since that time, God’s every word to us has been peace. His answer for our every sin is, “Your sins are forgiven. It’s like they never happened. I don’t see them anymore.” He sent parents and pastors and personal friends to preach it to us. Through them he promises, “ I have reconciled you to myself. I have called you and made you my very own.” By cleansing us of our sins and claiming us for himself he has made us different people, new people, God’s people.

Doesn’t that suggest a new way of responding to the people who may not have very nice things to say to you and me? “Do not repay…insult with insult, but with blessing…keep (your) tongue from evil and (your) lips from deceitful speech…seek peace and pursue it.” When we talk like God’s people, good things happen. Anger turns to peace. Enemies become friends. We are a blessing to others.

And even though we may be passing up the opportunity to vent some anger or get even, blessings will come to us as well, “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” God is looking out for you, dear friends. He is listening to your prayers, the things you have to say to him. You have nothing to lose by talking like his own people.

1 Peter 3:3 “Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.”

First the attitudes. Before we can talk about actions, we need to get the attitudes right. If you have ever had to deal with ornery kids, students, employees, or anyone else you were trying to lead or guide, you know that nothing changes until you get the attitude right. Trying to change the behavior first is an exercise in futility. You might as well be talking to the wall.

So Peter starts with “live in harmony with each other,” which is literally “be like-minded.” “Get on the same page with each other with your thinking.” Thinking like Christians goes a long way towards talking like them, and living like them.

That kind of harmonious, united thinking looks like this: sympathetic, loving, compassionate, and humble. The first three all talk about how we regard others. The world in which we live may talk a good game about sympathy, love, and compassion. The truth is, they live in more or less a constant state of irritation with the other residents with whom they must share the planet. Left hates right and right hates left. Just see how they behave at each other’s rallies. Does the person driving the car with the “coexist” bumper sticker realize the irony of his behavior as he flips off the elderly person who drifted into his lane? Does the Christian with the little fish symbol on his trunk realize the irony when he does exactly the same thing?

Sympathy–genuinely trying to understand and feel what the other person feels; brotherly love–caring about people who aren’t family as though they were (and not the messed up, dysfunctional kind); compassion–letting yourself be moved and changed by the pain someone else is experiencing; this is how we have to think about other people, including the ones we don’t like, especially the ones we don’t like, if we are going to treat them like God’s people and bless others.

Then there is one-word Peter mentions for how we regard ourselves: humility. We are generally inclined to think of ourselves as smarter, better, cleverer, more moral, than just about everyone else. Somewhere C.S. Lewis describes the man headed for hell this way: “unshakably confident to the very end that he alone has found the answer to the riddle of life, that God and man are fools whom he has got the better of, that his way of life is utterly successful, satisfactory, unassailable.”

Don’t misunderstand. Humility will always be confident about what God says and does. “May I never boast except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul says. The cross that saved me, that cross that provides forgiveness for my pride and false confidence in self, will always be a big deal, worthy of our unceasing praise.

But humility means we are not so sure about ourselves. It certainly doesn’t assume our own superiority. Humble hearts not only put ourselves in the right place. They prepare us to offer everyone else the dignity and respect appropriate for people God himself loved and redeemed.

A coach of mine used to say, “Where the head goes, the body has to follow.” Peter recognizes something similar here: “Where the heart goes, the body will follow.” Get the attitudes right first. How we think and how we feel will soon be followed by what we do.

Isaiah 58:8-9 “Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.”

The nation Isaiah served 2700 years ago was not suffering an unusual health crisis when the Lord offered them healing. They were not the victims of some grand epidemic. Their problems were bigger than that. The Lord promises healing to a faithful people whose religion is more than externals, and lip service, and self-chosen ways of worship. “Love me first, and love your neighbor like he is your own flesh and blood. Really invest yourself in loving him, and see if your problems don’t start to get better.”

This is the way the Lord made the world to work. Living a loving, selfless life in close communion with the Lord has a way of healing families, reducing stress, removing harmful habits, sometimes even bringing physical healing to our bodies. Convince enough people to live this way, and see if some of the great problems that plague society–crime, poverty, prejudice, substance abuse, injustice–don’t start to get better, even without passing new laws.

Even if you and I are the only ones who hear Isaiah’s call to adopt such a life of love, and the problems around us remain the same, we may enjoy the Lord’s healing blessing in our lives anyway. Almost 80 years ago Viktor Frankl was living in a German concentration camp in the middle of the Holocaust. All of the prisoners were living under the same conditions. But Frankl noticed that those who stopped feeling sorry for themselves and spent their time befriending and helping others somehow managed to thrive even while those around them were dying. Maybe living a life of serving others isn’t going to change the conditions around us. But it changes us. It helps us to cope. It offers a kind of healing as it invites the Lord’s blessing into our lives.

More than that, for the believer it brings a promise of the Lord’s own presence. “Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.” Those who humble themselves under God’s commands, and show mercy to their neighbor in a way consistent with the mercy God has shown to them, have a promise of his answer to their prayers.

Don’t misunderstand the prophet’s point. He is not saying that God’s love for us is conditioned on our behavior. In his freedom God continues to love the whole world just because he chooses to love the whole world, including you and me. Our love is ever only a response to the love he has already shown by forgiving our sins and making us his own. What Isaiah describes always begins with God’s grace. For the New Testament Christian, all of this must flow from Jesus’ cross.

But like a good parent, who truly loves his children, he doesn’t want to reward bad behavior. He may delay his response to our calls for help because the crisis of the moment is useful for getting our attention. C.S. Lewis was fond of saying, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” It gets us to turn to him, to consider his ways, and to reconsider our own. When putting God first and serving others have become priorities in our lives again, he is ready to answer our cries for help and make his presence known in our lives.

Our Lord has not made a secret of what he wants of us. He hasn’t made it complicated either. We don’t need to go and invent ways of making him happy. We don’t have to sacrifice things he never asked us to give up. “Love God and love others” still sums up his demands.

A popular belief claims, “God helps those who help themselves.” You won’t find those words or that thought in the Bible. But Isaiah’s words remind us, “God helps those who help others.” And that can be true because God himself first helped us.

Isaiah 58:6-7 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter–when you see the naked to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?”

It really isn’t such a great accomplishment to skip a meal, or even several. We haven’t made a huge sacrifice of time, or effort. We even come out ahead financially. We can afford to feast later on, or spend our savings on some other indulgence.

In the end, no one is really served but ourselves. The Lord gets nothing out of our hunger pains or the grumbling sound our stomachs make. Put yourself in his shoes for a moment. If I came to you and said, “Look, I did no grocery shopping today. I spent no time in the kitchen, prepared no food. I took no time for even a single meal, didn’t put a single bite in my mouth. I did it all for you. Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you impressed?” How might you respond? “Uh, thanks, I guess?” What good does it do you? That’s exactly what it does for the Lord, too: nothing. Why should the Lord care?

But what if there were a cause you deeply cared about? An old friend of mine lost his father to lymphoma when he was just a little boy. For him, supporting cancer research through the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society was a big deal. He was involved in fund raisers and cancer awareness. What if I made a large donation and sent him a card that said I had made my gift on his behalf? Now maybe I would have his attention, and his appreciation.

Through Isaiah the Lord makes known that there are some causes he cares about deeply. The world is his creation. The people he made to populate it are the crown jewel of that creation. They are especially dear to his heart. Caring for them is his cause.

But sometimes injustice gets in the way. Isaiah’s words about loosening the chains and taking off the yokes suggest he may be alluding to the abuse of Israel’s laws dealing with land and slaves. Every seventh year any land that had been sold was to be returned to its original owner, and all the slaves were to go free. Some people found ways to manipulate the laws so that they could keep their slaves from freedom and the land from its rightful owners.

But the prophet isn’t so specific. Applications in our day might include anything from human trafficking to frivolous lawsuits to certain issues of domestic abuse. Instead of caring for others, people take advantage of them.

God’s concern is not limited to what one person does to another. “Is it (God’s kind of fasting) not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter–when you see the naked to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” The Lord wants people to be fed, clothed and sheltered. “Do you want to make a sacrifice that makes a difference to me?” the Lord is saying. “Then don’t just sit by and watch all this happen. Don’t let people be mistreated and turn the other way. Don’t let people go without the necessities of life. Get involved. Do something. Give up your time. Give up your money for something that makes a difference.” Serving others who need help is the kind of “fasting” God seeks.

Serving others who need help is not a random idea the Lord thought of. It’s not a requirement he intends to force on others while living an entirely different way himself. The kind of fasting he chooses is the kind he chose for himself. Look at the life of Jesus. Did he not feed the masses? He distributed food to 5000. Though he himself had few possessions, he kept a fund from the donations he received for his ministry to help the poor. He is still giving us our daily bread today.

More than that, he made the greatest sacrifice ever “to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke.” No, he did not reform the government. He resisted becoming a political figure. He reformed individuals. And he set us all free from the injustices we have committed, from the oppression of our own sins, when he gave his life on the cross to pay our debt to God.

This is the kind of fasting our Lord chooses for himself. Today he invites us to make it our choice, and serve those who need help.

Isaiah 56:6-7 “And to foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant–these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.”

The kind of service that God’s people offer him is not dull, boring drudgery. It isn’t the go-through-the-motions kind of work of someone who is just trying to make a living or get the job done. This service is special, and we have a couple of reasons why this is true here.

First, the word translated “serve” doesn’t speak of ordinary service. The word refers to a type of service which is special because of whom you are serving. The task itself might not be any different than that of other people, but it takes on a unique honor and importance because of the one served.

For example, we don’t generally consider cooks to have a distinguished position. It’s not considered glamorous. I also have a relative who used to cook for a living, but he did his cooking at the White House in Washington D.C. His job was considered very prestigious, all because of the person he served.

Janitors may clean buildings all over the world. Salesmen may make thousands and millions of calls on people’s homes every day. Teachers may teach the 3 “r’s” to their students in many different languages in many different schools. But the work which you and I do to maintain our church buildings, call on our neighbor’s homes with the Gospel, and teach the faith to our children comes with a special honor and privilege. We have the honor of serving the one and only God, the maker of all things, and the Savior of all the world with our service.

The other special thing about this service is the force behind it. Isaiah speaks of “foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him.” Service to God is a labor of love. What else could it be when we know how he has first served and first loved us? Professor Siegbert Becker once wrote, “It is impossible to see ourselves as sinners deserving eternal damnation in hell and then to come to the conviction that the suffering and dying Christ has procured full and free forgiveness for us by taking our guilt upon himself and by giving his own righteousness to us as a free gift of his love, it is impossible to come to that conviction without coming to love him who gave himself into death that we might have everlasting life….To know him is to love him is more applicable to our Savior than to anyone else.” As the Lord gathers people, he turns them into people who serve him–a service of honor and a service of love.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this service for the people who lived in Isaiah’s day was the fact that it would come from foreigners. The prophet saw it coming from people like you and me, who are not Jews. No one at that time would have thought we could be God’s kind of people because we belong to the wrong race. We have the wrong family background. But the Lord has graciously made us his own and gathered us to serve him.

The privilege of being the people God has brought to himself and invited into his house of prayer gives dignity to all the ways in which we serve and worship him.

Ephesians 4:30-31, 5:1-2 “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.  Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice… Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” 

The problem with all these forms of malice–bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander–isn’t just what they do to our love for each other. They certainly do plenty of damage there. Lifelong friends can become enemies, churches split in two, the work of spreading the gospel comes to a grinding halt.

The more serious problem, however, is how these sinful attitudes and actions affect our God.  Paul tells us, “don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God…” Our Lord takes sin very seriously. He isn’t merely angered by it. It grieves him. Our sins give our Lord pain and heartache. They are still deserving of death and hell.

Though our sins grieve the Spirit of God, Paul tells us that he continues to regard us as his “dearly loved children.” Parents may not always be happy with how their children behave, but they would do almost anything to help them. With a similar and greater love, God has loved us as his dearly loved children. We don’t always please him with our lives, but he loves us just the same. Jesus proved this love by giving himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. He led a perfect life so that he could become an offering without any spot or stain. He was a perfect, sweet smelling sacrificial offering for our sins. He shielded us from the burning blast of God’s anger at sin by stepping into our place and sacrificing himself.

What Jesus did is more than popular legend, a mythological story of events and places long ago. God has also given us a guarantee that forgiveness and heaven are ours. “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” In Bible times, if someone’s personal seal, a design carved on a cylinder, had been rolled across a document or letter, that made the document legally binding. It guaranteed that this was the real thing, much like your signature on a contract today.

God has given us such a guarantee. He has put his signature on us by giving us the Holy Spirit and faith. The Holy Spirit is our guarantee that we will see the “day of redemption.”

That “day of redemption” exceeds our comprehension. The phrase “day of redemption,” tells us we will be finally, completely free of all the effects of sin. In other places Scripture promises no pain, hardship, tears, hunger, or violence. We may not understand all the positive things we will have. But the present gift of the Holy Spirit is our promise that the day will come, and its gifts are ours.

Until then, we live as the children God loves, and imitate the one who gave so much to have us.

Mark 14:32-38 “He (Jesus) took Peter, James, and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch.’” Going a little further, he (Jesus) fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. ‘Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’ Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Simon,’ he said to Peter, ‘are you sleeping? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.’”

Let’s say you are at the doctor because he wants to discuss the results of your latest blood test. It turns out you are pre-diabetic. If you are going to avoid going on insulin, you need to cut back on the sweets and the carbs. After the visit you return to work. Next to the office is a donut shop. Wafting through the air is that sweet smell of donuts in the fryer. Every day it confronts you when you arrive. Many days it has pulled you all the way in. It will still be calling each morning when you get out of your car. Is that disappointing? Or does it feel almost comforting?

Is temptation your friend or your enemy? You know the right answer. But that doesn’t make it easy to resist. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus warned his disciples about the lure of temptation. These three men were caught in an internal tug of war. Which was stronger: love for Jesus or desire for personal comfort?

They could see that Jesus is in obvious distress. When ever had they seen him ask for help like this? He had never hinted he might need assistance himself. No doubt these three were eager to do their part.

But their stomachs were full from the Passover Feast. Jesus’ words at the dinner had been emotionally draining. It was late. Now Thursday had almost turned into Friday. The night was chilly, and they were sitting there while a few yards away Jesus was pleading and sobbing. Their eyes were heavy. You know that feeling when you are driving late at night, and your head bobs, and you drive for stretches when perhaps you didn’t actually sleep, but you have no memory of the last mile you have traveled?

The three friends fall. Three times before this evening is over love loses to personal comfort. Temptation wins. They sleep.

We don’t find that hard to understand. We know how hard it is to tell the body “no.” My spouse, my children, my friends may need me to show a little self-control, to demonstrate some discipline. But the craving, the urge, won’t leave me alone. “Forget you,” we finally say. “I don’t care. I’m going to do what I want.”

That was one temptation. There was another like it, only immeasurably more intense. Would the choice be love, doing what my neighbor needs, or seeking personal comfort? “Going a little further, he (Jesus) fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him.” Jesus didn’t desire rest. He wanted to avoid the pain. And this was no ordinary pain. They would whip him until they tore the skin and flesh from his bones and the blood flowed. For six hours they suspended his body from a cross with spikes and watched him slowly suffocate. Even God in heaven turned away from him while his body endured eternal justice for the crimes of all humanity. No, it wasn’t a nap that tempted Jesus. It was some way, any way out from suffering unlike anyone else has ever endured.

And if he gave in to the temptation? Then love was lost. Hanging in the balance was not the need of an individual friend or family member. It was the eternal fate of all humanity. Would heaven be ever empty and hell forever full? It all depended on how Jesus responded to this temptation.

Jesus submitted his will to God’s. “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Doesn’t that attitude sum up the entire Christian life? Every day is a new opportunity to crucify our will, our desires, in favor of our Father’s. Every day is an opportunity to say, “Not my will, but your will be done.” Here Jesus’ prayer reveals that he knows what to do with temptation when it seems too much to bear.

There is something better here. Gethsemane is not just our example. It’s our victory. Our battle with temptation does not begin where Jesus’ battle ended. Ours ends here, too, in the garden, when our great saving Substitute overcomes. We still wrestle to resist the magnetic pull of one temptation after another. The force feels irresistible. You fall, often. So do I.

But our heavenly Father does not see a beaten sinner pulling himself up from the ground after another loss, ever. He sees a perfect son, a holy daughter, submitting to his will. He sees us in Jesus’ skin embracing the path he wants us to follow.

He sees our many surrenders to sin painted in deep red, washed in Jesus blood, until he can’t see them anymore. He sees them nailed to Jesus’ cross and buried in his tomb, disposed of forever. Today he doesn’t see them at all because Jesus embraced his cross, fulfilled his Father’s will, and saved the world.

Luke 15:3-7 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

The open sinners were gathering around Jesus to hear his word. The Pharisees and teachers of the law, who lived outwardly moral lives, had only criticism for him. Which group contained candidates to become part of Heaven’s Greatest Joy?

I like it when people do things right the first time. I am satisfied if the waiter brings me the wrong order but quickly corrects it after we discover the mistake. I probably give a bigger tip and may even put in a good review of the place if everything is right from the start. I am satisfied when my mechanic owns up to the mistake he made repairing my vehicle and fixes it at no extra charge. I compliment his work, recommend him to others, and keep bringing my car back if he is consistently getting the diagnosis and repair right on the first try. I was satisfied when my children apologized for their bad behavior. It gave me a sense of pride when they chose to do the right thing all along.

We may tend to focus on things like behavior, results, success. Our Lord likes good behavior, too. But he is focused more on the people themselves. It gives him joy simply to have them, to have them back with him safe and sound.

Maybe that’s not so hard to understand. I took great pride in my children when they made the honor roll, or walked the stage at their graduations, or were commended for their work as lifeguards in a special ceremony. But that was nothing like the joy I felt on the day we learned my wife was expecting, or the day they were born. Then, before this little person could do anything, when all he or she did was exist, there was joy just to have them, joy that they had made it into our world and into our family safe.

Our repentance is like our spiritual birthday, one that happens over and over again. It is the day that we die to sin and live to God. It is the day that doubt and fear, resistance and contradiction, give way to faith and trust and love. It is the day Jesus’ love wins us for his side, however shaky and weak that new allegiance may be at first. Then he can say, “This one belongs to me now, and if the devil wants him back he will have to fight me for him.”

Repentance is the change of mind and heart that make us belong to God, a new birth into a new life. With every sin confessed and promise of grace grasped, that new birth keeps producing new life. When he finds us, our Lord claims all of us for himself all at once. But at the same time his love and forgiveness keep winning more and more of ourselves for him. His ownership grows with each new conquest.

Having us, owning us, making us his very own–that’s what gives our Lord his greatest joy. That’s not something that happens with the spiritually self-satisfied who think that they have made it on their own. They still belong to themselves. They always will. That’s something God does only with sinners: not too proud to admit their sins, ready to let Jesus carry them home. That’s the circumstance no one would have expected if Jesus did not reveal it as heaven’s greatest joy.

May we never be too good, or too proud, to be the sinners Jesus seeks, Jesus finds, and Jesus rejoices to call his own.