Romans 1:16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”

The word “power” conjures up distinctive pictures and feelings. Friends once took me to an Indy Car race at Texas Motor Speedway. The scream of the engines was so loud that I could feel the sound pushing on me. Together with the speed of the cars, the power in those machines was tangible.

When I was 10 years old I attended a Lutheran camp along the Whitewater River in southeastern Minnesota. The last night of the camp it rained so hard, so fast, and so much that the river went from a bubbling and gurgling stream about 4 feet deep to a roaring monster many feet over its banks. The roar of the water rushing past the cabin on highest ground to which we retreated, the sight of the river tossing around the picnic tables and propane tank, left all of us campers feeling rather small and weak next to the power of the river that had invaded our camp.

The gospel is the power God uses for our salvation. Our Lord has other powers for other things he has done. There is the power by which he spoke and an entire universe suddenly burst into existence. There is that power by which he killed the first-born of the Egyptians and divided the waters of the Red Sea. There is the power by which he changed water into wine, calmed storms, and gave life back to dead people. There is that power by which someday he will destroy this present world with fire and bring an end to the universe as we know it.

In all these things the working of God’s power is dramatic and awe-inspiring. It works with an irresistible, nearly violent force that overwhelms and overruns any obstacle in its path. It is a power which leads people to tremble in fear.

But the Gospel is the power by which God carries Jesus’ saving work into our hearts and makes it our own by faith. There is something quiet and hidden about the way in which it works. Our Lord does not cut and slash, push and shove, thunder and threaten to plant this faith within us. It is rather the gentle, winsome movements of the Holy Spirit in his Word, at our baptisms, and in his supper. It woos and wins its way into our hearts and works the miracle of faith. There is a power at work here, to be sure. It is a miraculous power that accomplishes what no forces of nature, no weapons, no laws-of-physics-bending supernatural strength can: it turns doubt and denial to belief, changes fear into trust, and rebellion into faith. But it does so in ways so quiet, so subtle, so appealing, so filled with love that we are often unaware that it is happening, even when it is happening to us.

Maybe you know the words from the last verse of the Christmas hymn Where Shepherds Lately Knelt, words that describe the gentle, faith-building power of the gospel:

Can I, will I forget how Love was born, and burned

Its way into my heart, unasked, unforced, unearned.

Jesus’ love finds its way into our hearts unasked. We were not looking for him, but he came looking for us, uninvited, and found his way in. Yet that power works unforced. He did not violate us. He did not smash the door to our hearts down and take us hostage like a terrorist breaking into a room full of people. His miraculous love unlocked and opened the door, making our unwilling hearts willing. And he does all this for us unearned. He doesn’t wait for us to become worthy before he comes to us in his gospel. He comes to us just because he has chosen to love us, and he desires nothing more than our salvation.

Many have celebrated the “power of love.” I know of at least three pop songs by that title (Sung by Huey Lewis, Celine Dion, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood). In the Disney cartoon The Sword in the Stone, Merlin the magician tells a young King Arthur that love may be the most powerful thing in all the world. Of course, they are all talking about romantic love. The gospel brings us a love far more powerful:  God’s forgiving love, love the Holy Spirit brings to us wrapped in the words of Jesus’ story.

John 16:33 “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

“Take heart,” would be a useless command, or a cruel taunt, if Jesus had nothing more to say. Does it help to tell a weak person, “Be strong”? Does it help to tell a sick person, “Be well”? Does it help to tell a hungry person, “Be full”? Only if you have strength, and health, and food to give them. Jesus has “heart” to give us–the courage and faith that come from knowing that he has overcome the world.

Jesus has conquered sin and death. What more can the world do to me? Accuse me? Condemn me? By what standards? If it uses its own twisted standards, where goodness and purity become evil, and its filth and perversion become virtues, Jesus has already settled that. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We gladly plead guilty to breaking the sinful world’s code of belief and behavior. Even if we do, we are still innocent in the eyes of Christ.

But what if the world discovers our real sins, and its self-righteous charge is, “You’re no better than me. You’ve broken the same commandments of God. You are guilty”? Though we are not proud to say so, the answer is, “It’s true! It’s true!” But Jesus has overcome the world, and by the grace of God I can say with the Apostle Paul, “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus who died–more than that, was raised to life–is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”

No, really then, what can the world do to me? Kill me–and in doing so complete my escape from this prison in which we live and hurry me to the end of my journey home to heaven? Thank you! Thank you for this gift! You have given me the one thing I have longed for since the moment Jesus claimed me for his very own–to see him with my own eyes and live with him in his loving presence forever.

If the world can’t accuse me, and it can’t destroy me, then what is left? Torment me while I am here? Bestow on me the same honor it once bestowed on my Lord as it fills my life with misery? Then it will drive me deeper into his Word, and deeper into his love, to survive. It will drive me closer and closer to my Savior and make me more and more like him. It will strengthen my faith and hope, because “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” That’s not so bad, now, is it? In the end, it still ends in glory. Since Jesus has overcome, “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

By bringing us troubles, by making us suffer, the world has done all it can do. In spite of our troubles, Jesus has overcome, and so will we. Take heart!

“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”  (Romans 8:31-32)

Do you dote on your children? What won’t parents sacrifice to give their children the best? Look at the time parents give up to shuttle their children from soccer practice to dance rehearsals to piano lessons, and then to games and recitals. I know parents who have paid tens of thousands of dollars every year to send their children to the grade school of their choice. Then there are the toys and electronic gadgets and outings to amusement parks we lavish on them. There is little we spare to benefit our children.

Jesus once observed that we do this even though we are basically selfish and evil. “Who of you, if your son asks for bread will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children…” Generally speaking, we want to look out for number one. But when it comes to our children, we are willing to put ourselves second to give them what is best, even into adulthood. There is little we would spare to help our children.

How dearly God must love us, then, to spare his Son no evil, to spare not even his own Son’s life, to save us and make us his own! What heavenly advantage did the Father not strip away from Jesus when he sent him into this world? He replaced a glorious throne with a stinking stable and a prickly hay manger. He concealed unlimited power under a weak and vulnerable infant’s body. He replaced endless worship from the angels with death threats and ridicule and betrayal and denial and condemnation by creatures not worthy to grovel at his feet.

But all of that pales in comparison to making his holy Son dirty with our sins, and letting him agonize in our hell, and making him a corpse with our death. When we consider just how far the Father went in not sparing his own Son, it almost makes Cinderella’s wicked stepmother look kind by comparison. But God is no wicked stepfather. The difference lies in this perfect Son’s willingness, even eagerness, to go along with his Father’s plan.

Why? Why would the Father do that to his only Son? “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all…” He gave him up for us all. He did not spare his own Son because in the infinite depth of his love he was not willing to lose us. He so valued us, so desired to have us back, that there was no limit to the price he would pay. And there was no greater price he could have paid than the one he did pay. He did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all.

This isn’t mere abstract theology to be pondered theoretically, a hobby for those who find that kind of thing interesting, a theology that has little impact on our hearts or lives. Christmas changes everything. Good Friday changes everything. Easter changes everything. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all– how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” God gives us all things. In poverty we are still rich. Terminal diseases are no longer terminal. Even when they bring us to death, that is no longer our termination. God denies us nothing that will truly serve us. He gives us all things.

We may think our expectations of God are too high. Actually, they are too low. We are ready to settle for a few cheap trinkets when God wants to give us real treasures. The gift of God’s Son brings true treasure into focus. In Jesus our Lord has given us all things.

“But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.” (Luke 21:14-15)

I’m not a particularly quick wit. Sometimes I think of a great snappy comeback to something someone has said to me. Unfortunately I think of it hours or even days later. All I can do then is hope I get a chance to use it in the future, and that I still remember it when the chance comes.

Jesus words here are for those times when the faith of the disciple is put on trial, when we are called upon to defend his message and our convictions in front of those who just want to shut us up. The immediate context suggests a court of law or a religious tribunal of some sort. Maybe we can stretch the intent of Jesus’ promise to other times the gospel is being challenged and we are called upon to defend it, even in more intimate settings.

Jesus’ words don’t rule out preparation when our turn comes to defend the gospel. But they do point out a temptation that is all too easy for us to fall into. We put too much of the burden for the message we speak upon ourselves. We fall into the mindset that what is really important when it is our turn to speak is how clever we are, how carefully we have crafted our words, how engaging our delivery, how powerful our illustrations.

That’s not to say that the gospel doesn’t deserve our best efforts make it clear and to hold the attention of the people who might be listening. There is nothing wrong with engaging delivery or powerful illustrations. But Jesus hasn’t called us to invent a message. He has given us a message to proclaim. He has called us to tell the truth. It is also possible for too many of our words to obscure the message rather than making it more clear.

Worship guru Robert Webber tells this story of a seminary student doing some fill in preaching: “ I once heard a young guest preacher preach an exegetical sermon on the holiness of God (Isaiah 6:1-6). No illustrations, no gimmicks. Not even polished. The people rushed him. The thirst for God’s Word watered a barren land.”

The temptation to confuse our own words for the gospel is a serious one. It jeopardizes souls. But Jesus has also given us words and wisdom. We have the word which is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. We have the word that does not return to God empty, but accomplishes what he desires and achieves the purpose for which he sent it. We have Jesus, the Mediator of a new covenant, whose blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. That blood speaks the forgiveness of our sins. We have the word of the prophets made more certain, and like those to whom Peter once wrote, we do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place. Jesus has given us the words of salvation by grace through faith.

August Pieper once encouraged: “Not as a salesman buys his wares in order to sell them again, but as a bee sucks honey from blossoms so as to nourish itself at the same time, so we by our studying ought to draw the gospel out of the Scriptures in order to save ourselves and those who hear us.”

Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits– (Psalm 103:2 NIV)

Both the hottest and the coldest nights I have ever experienced have come from time spent in a tent. On a campout near Lake Texoma in late October, temperatures one night dropped into the upper thirties. I had a light sleeping bag rated for fifty degrees. You can’t literally freeze to death when the temperature stays above freezing, but I thought I was freezing that night.

Ten years later my family took a camping trip across the southwest United States in late July. Our first night we camped near Carlsbad Caverns in the Chihuahua Desert. I don’t believe the temperature that night ever dropped below 90 degrees. There was no hint of a breeze. My sleeping bag was soaked with sweat when I peeled my body away from it in the morning.

Fortunately, I don’t live in a tent. I live in a climate controlled house that rarely gets hotter than 78 degrees or cooler than 68 degrees. This is one of the benefits provided to me by my ministry. At one time I lived in a house owned by the church. Now they pay me enough to afford a house of my own.

Serving in the ministry hasn’t always been so nice. Moses played a much bigger part in God’s plan to save the world than I have. He lived in a tent in the Sinai desert. It had no thermostat. Nighttime temperatures in January can fall below 40 degrees. Daytime temperatures in the summer regularly top 100. Moses’ “parsonage” was a tent for the better part of 40 years. Granted, he spent his first 40 years in a palace (it had no thermostats, either), but once Moses entered the ministry it was tenting all the way. It wasn’t so comfortable to serve in the ministry in Moses’ day.

I have knocked on thousands of doors and canvassed thousands of homes. Occasionally someone is cross with me for ringing the bell. Often no one answers the door. Certainly no one has made any threats. Sometimes I have been offered something to drink or thanked for my work. “I’m glad someone is trying to reach this neighborhood with the gospel,” they say.

The Apostle Paul, by contrast, generally had to leave town after a few weeks due to threats against his life. You know the catalog of hardships he recounts in 2 Corinthians 11: “Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from the Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers” (24-26). I share the observation of one Christian writer: “Where the Apostle Paul went, they usually started a riot. Where I go they usually serve tea.”

I’m not saying that my ministry has been easy. But I have never hidden in a cave and waited for ravens to bring me food. I have never been declared an outlaw by the emperor and had a price put on my head. Compared to much of the world’s population, and to many gospel servants of the past, serving in the public ministry has provided me a decent standard of living and a relatively comfortable life.

Still, I catch myself thinking about my ministry in terms of the sacrifice I have made to do this work. I catch myself envying old friends and classmates who can live in nicer homes, drive newer cars, and spend their evenings at home with their families. I catch myself overlooking the many blessings, even earthly blessings, God has given to me in connection with the work I do as a pastor.

“Forget not all his benefits.” Like the people before me whose ministries weren’t so soft and easy, I share in the very first benefit that fills the psalmists mouth with praise: “…who forgives all your sins.” As a minister, the forgiveness of sins is woven into all my work all day long. As I prepare to preach a sermon,or work to reconcile a marriage, or lead a member of the neighborhood to the foot of the cross for the very first time, or give communion to a shut-in, the forgiveness of sins is constantly in front of me. It is there to feed my own soul, too. I am like the cook in the kitchen sampling the stew before it is served. I get a little taste of God’s grace every time I serve it to others.My envy, my failure to notice the countless ways in which the Lord has made my life comfortable and pleasant, my complaining–these and every other sin find forgiveness every day from the God who actually did sacrifice benefits and comforts and even his life on a cross to make forgiveness possible for me.

Do you ever envy others and feel as though you have been given less? Do you notice the sacrifices you make in your life more than the benefits the Lord has given you to enjoy? Look again. The Lord has dished up a large helping of pardon and peace for all of us to enjoy. It is never farther away than the Bible waiting on the shelf to be opened. It is available every Sunday in the words of the man talking behind the pulpit, and from the hands of the man serving Christ’s body and blood at the altar.

Forget not all his benefits. He is taking better care of our daily needs than we regularly stop to notice. There is no greater benefit than the grace that forgives our sins each day.

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”

Have you ever watched little children indulge in shameless self-promotion with each other? They are adept at the game of “one-upmanship” from an early age. As they boast back and forth about their abilities and accomplishments, their boasts quickly progress from stretching the truth, to pure fiction, to ridiculous exaggerations: “I can eat 10 cookies. I can eat a whole box of cookies. I can eat a whole case of cookies.” You’ve seen it before. You probably indulged in it when you were little.

The insecurity that leads us to want to impress others this way doesn’t leave us when we grow up. Adults may be more careful not to stretch the truth about themselves to the point that it becomes unbelievable, but our thirst for attention, recognition, and superiority can foster some nasty rivalries and lead to divisive behavior. When we are insecure about our own value and identity, we are tempted to find those things at the expense of others. Our Lord does not tolerate it when his own people trash his house–not the buildings where we gather to worship him, but the gathered people in whose hearts he has chosen to live by faith.

“…for God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” This is an impressive statement. And this is not boasting or exaggeration. This truly makes us important. We sinful human beings can receive no higher honor than to have the almighty God cleanse us of our sins to make us holy, and then live in our hearts himself. There is no more prestigious position to hold than that your own body is God’s home. There is no promotion, no “up” from there. The Christians in Corinth to whom Paul was writing all had this in common. As a group, God had made them his home.

So he lives in and among us today. It puts how we treat each other in a whole new light when we remember that the people sitting around me, the people taking the opposite side of an issue at a church meeting, the people who always seem to rub me the wrong way, are together the holy of  holies  where God himself is living by his Spirit. It puts how we value ourselves in a whole new light when we realize that God’s house is not just a place I go on Sundays. It’s who I am. It’s who we are. God lives in us, and that makes everything else we are tempted to use to feel good about ourselves seem insignificant.

“So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future– all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23)

It’s no secret that our world tends to associate a person’s value and importance with their wealth. Who gets their names in the magazines and the newspapers? Unless you do something criminal, it’s the wealthy. Who gets elected to positions of power? Did you know that almost every member of the United States Senate is a millionaire? Who gets asked to endorse products before a television audience, or who gets invited to spend a night at the White House? Not many poor people that I can think of.

If wealth and importance go together, then you and I must be some of the most important people on earth! We own everything! Paul said it twice, “All things are yours.” That doesn’t mean that everything is our personal property. Rather, we are the children of the one to whom everything really does belong, and he has promised that he makes everything in this world serve you and me. There is no object, no person, no event that isn’t in our service as Christians in some way or another. In all things, God is working for you.

To help us understand, Paul gives us a representative list. Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (that’s the Apostle Peter) were three great leaders of the church. They were the common property of them all. The members of the church in Corinth had been dividing themselves into cliques that claimed to follow one of these men or another. But that wasn’t right. Each of these men belonged to everyone. And though they were leaders in the Church, God used them to serve the Church. He is still using them to serve the Church today through their words preserved for us on Scripture’s pages.

Life, no matter how bad, how painful, or how hard it gets, is here to serve us. Even at its worst it teaches us not to cling too tightly to this world. It forces us to throw ourselves on God’s grace in faith. Death, in spite of how much we fear it, in spite of how much we pay to avoid it, is here to serve us. Jesus’ resurrection makes it the door to heaven, and what could be a greater blessing than that?

Maybe time seems like it’s outside of our control. It is slipping away from us, running faster and faster. But in God’s loving providence even the uncertain future, which so often fills us with worry, is under our domain. It has to serve us, because we ourselves are the personal property of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And so, like the rich and important people of this world, we have all these servants running around taking care of us. We can know that we are valuable, not because of some trumped up little boasts or wobbly supports for our pride we made up ourselves. No, our value comes from the God who gave his Son for us, made his home in us, revealed his wisdom to us, and uses all the wealth of his world to take care of us. We Christians hold all these treasures in common, gifts we have because God has treasured us all of us in common.

“Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; it’s truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” (1 John 2:7-8)

We bought my wife  a cell phone on eBay a few months ago. It’s an Iphone 5, which was the model before the 5c and the 5s, which was the model before the 6, which was the model before the 6s. The 5 came out in late 2012 and was replaced by the 5c and 5s in late 2013. That is over two years ago now, which is something like a billion in technology years. Despite being an ancient artifact from Silicon Valley, one you half expect an archeologist had to dig out of the California desert, the phone was listed on eBay as “new.” And sure enough, it arrived in the original box, still shrink-wrapped, with no evidence any human had ever touched it since the day it first went into that box in China.

New doesn’t always mean “new in time.” New can also mean “new in quality.” That’s what John is trying to say here when he says about the old command, “Yet I am writing a new command.” Love has not lost any of its luster. It hasn’t lost any of its power either. Each time we put it into practice, it is as powerful and lovely to look at as if we just pulled it out of a shrink-wrapped box.

“Its truth is seen in him,” John writes–that is, in Jesus. If we want to understand Christian love, there is no better place to look than Jesus. Later in this book John will write, “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” What do you call it when the people God created, the most gifted and privileged of all his creatures, completely turn against him and abandon him; and though he has the power to do so, God doesn’t wipe them out and start over? No, he promises to rescue them. For millennium after millennium he holds out his hands to them and invites them to come home. One day he comes and he takes their shape. He actually adopts the same sickened and weakened material they had made of the bodies he once gave them. He lives in the garbage dump they had made of the perfect planet he once fashioned as their home. For thirty years he served them. When they were sick he healed them. When they were hungry he fed them. When they criticized him and attacked him, he sat down to teach them. Finally, he shouldered the guilt for all their violence, and all their selfishness, and all their lack of self-control, and he suffered hell on a cross to make it all go away, like none of it had ever happened. He forgave them. What do you call that? That’s love. It’s not the attraction of a man for a woman. It’s not the camaraderie between close friends. It’s love freely given, just because Jesus chooses to love us.

That all happened two thousand years ago, but it is still as perfect and as shiny as that iPhone 5 in the shrink-wrapped box. It’s lovely to look at. It’s powerful to take in and consider. It’s new. And here’s how its useful: John says love’s truth is seen in him. There is something here that is hard to deny, isn’t there? There is something here that is just right, and winsome, and convincing, and magnetic, pulling us in. You know, you can debate with people about all sorts of spiritual trivia. You can try to answer all their objections to what the Bible says on a thousand different topics. But in the end, this is what is going to win them: the triumph of love, the truth we see as love emerges from the life and death of Jesus.

(Photo By Aitor Perez Serena – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24501797)

(God) has saved us and called us to a holy life–not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, (2 Timothy 1:9 NIV)

You may remember a grassroots campaign urging “Random Acts of Kindness.” One of the things that made that campaign so striking, so fresh and exciting, is that a random act of kindness, giving things to people who have had no chance to do anything for us, is so rare. It still is.

On the backside of our giving, our gifts so often come with strings attached. They expect or demand some kind of response. Haven’t you felt awkward receiving a gift from someone because you wondered what he wanted from you? Or maybe you have received a gift and felt guilty, because you hadn’t gotten anything for the gift’s giver, and now you felt like you should go out and get him something. We live in this world of “what’s in it for me” or “what’s it going to cost me” because our sinful, selfish nature can’t see the sense, or even the possibility, of anything being truly “free.” And that’s a serious problem, because in eternity there are only two places that we can go, and only one of them has an admission price we pay ourselves, and it isn’t heaven.

But the undeserved love of God is truly a gift. He laid down no conditions before he gave us this grace. Indeed, we gave him no reason to want to make this gift to us. We weren’t able. His gift of grace is truly free. And once we have received it, he does not demand a response, as though grace were charged to our Visa, and we were going to pay it off over time. Grace does not demand a response, but it does invite one. We can even say that it inspires a response, that it compels a response, because the free gift of grace changes all who receive it. It fills them with love that freely gives, just as we have received.

Perhaps the gift nature of God’s grace is clearer to see when Paul says, “This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” Don’t misunderstand Paul’s words. He is not saying that God’s grace was given to us at some point before creation. There were not millions or billions of years before creation, and then one day God woke up and decided, “I’m going to create me a world, and when it goes wrong, I’m going to redeem it. And when I do, I’m going to save Joe.”

No, in eternity there is no time, no progressing from one moment to the next in the same way we think of it. God always was. And as long as there has been God, his grace has been given to you. There was no “day before” grace. God’s grace–to you personally– is eternal, just like God himself is eternal. It is unchangeable as God himself. You can’t get anything less demanding of something in you, anything more “free,” than that.

Can you put a value on a gift like that? The old Motown song sings, “Money can’t buy you love.” And when it comes to God’s love, neither can good works, personal sacrifice, or anything else we can think to give. God has always loved you just because he chooses to love you. You can not turn this love off, you cannot make it stop, any more than you can change God himself.

(Picture by By LetsgomusicStyle – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27330732)