“The God of Peace will keep you Blameless in Christ”
I Thessalonians 5:16-24
12/17/08
For the first midweek Advent service this season the
text for the sermon was I Corinthians 1:3-9. There, the Apostle
Paul writes that God will confirm us blameless in Christ until the day
He comes for us. From this we learned that it is not we who make
or keep ourselves blameless before God, but God who does this.
Yet He does it through His Word and Sacraments, so that in last
week’s lesson from 2 Peter 3:8-14, we were told by Peter to be
diligent to be found by God in peace, spotless and blameless.
This is the diligence of persevering in the faith, clinging to
God’s Word, continuing to walk in our Baptism, being nourished
with the body and blood of Christ in His Supper, since it is through
these means that God continues to keep us blameless until the end.
Now in tonight’s text from I Thessalonians
Paul assures us again that it is God Himself who will sanctify us
completely in spirit, soul, and body, and keep us blameless at the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The emphasis here is once more
on God, who is the one who calls, sanctifies, and preserves us in
Christ until the end, eliminating the worry that somehow our salvation
depends upon us.
From beginning to end, salvation is all God’s
work and none of ours. God is the one who called us to repentance
and faith in the first place, and He will keep us in this repentance
and faith in second place. We confess in the Catechism that we
cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ our Lord
or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit calls us by the Gospel and
enlightens us with His gifts. The Scripture states that before
the Holy Spirit called us by the Gospel we were dead in our trespasses
and sins, unable to save ourselves or even prepare ourselves to receive
our Savior. From the time of conception, we have been sinners,
helpless before God to save ourselves. With His Law God made this
known to us. But just as Jesus took Jairus’ dead daughter
by the hand and told her to arise, so He took us by the hand and raised
us from the dead with His Gospel. He still preserves this life in
us today as with His Word He daily works repentance and faith in the
Gospel in our hearts. Some think that you only need to hear the
Gospel once in your life; the rest of your Christian life is to be
lived under the Law. But we remain sinners in this life and will
always need to hear not only the Law which accuses us and condemns our
sin, but also and especially the Gospel which proclaims forgiveness of
our sins for Christ’s sake and declares us righteous.
The call to repentance and faith, however, has led
some to think that since God is calling for some kind of action or
response from us, that we must contribute in some way to our salvation,
if not to the beginning of our salvation, then at least to the
maintaining of our salvation. They say that if God demands
something of us, we must be able to obey Him. But how does this
work with the 10 commandments? Does it follow that what God
demands, we are able to deliver? What God demands is perfect
righteousness and holiness, perfect obedience to His commands. If
this were possible for us, we wouldn’t need Christ. Far
from showing us that we can keep His demands, the commandments actually
show us that we cannot do what God commands. They do not give us
the power to obey God; they show us our sin and drive us to despair, so
that then we might look to our Savior who has kept those commandments
for us and died for our sins, that we might receive His righteousness
as a gift.
What God demands, He gives. The righteousness
He demands in the Law, He gives to us in Christ. The repentance
and faith to which He calls us through His Word, He gives to us by that
Word. The sanctification to which He calls us, He also gives us
by His Word. Just as our initial coming to faith in Christ was
not our work but the Lord’s as He called and enlightened us
through His Word and Baptism, so the sanctification, the holy life that
follows, is also His work in us. Our Catechism states that the
Holy Spirit sanctifies us in the true faith. He does this as He
daily and richly forgives sins to us and all believers in Christ.
Holy living can only come from those who are holy. Christ has
made you holy, having sprinkled you with His blood in Baptism.
You have been clothed with His holiness. You have been declared
holy; therefore, you are holy. You are saints before God.
None of this was your own doing; it was the work of the Holy Spirit,
whose work is to make you holy. Having made you holy before God
by applying Christ’s holiness to you, He now works to conform
your thoughts, words, and deeds to this holiness that you have in
Jesus. From now until your death or until the Lord comes, the
Holy Spirit is daily active through His Word, through Baptism, and
through the Lord’s Supper not only continually giving you
Christ’s holiness, but also working to cause you to live holy and
godly lives before your neighbor. When Paul writes here that God
sanctifies us completely, he means that the work of the Holy Spirit
will go on until the day Jesus returns for us. God will keep us
holy and blameless in Christ, working through His Word and Sacraments
to cause us to persevere in the faith and live holy and godly lives
until the end.
This does not mean that in this life we will reach a
state of perfection, where we will no longer sin (as some think).
That will never happen while we still have the sinful nature. But
it means that the whole you (spirit, soul, and body) will be kept holy
in Christ until the end, in spite of the fact that you still sin,
because the holiness that has been given you is not your own, but
Christ’s. When God looks at you, baptized into Christ, He
no longer sees your sin, but Christ’s holiness covering you.
Now, not only has God called you by the Gospel, not
only has He sanctified you in Christ and continues to sanctify you by
His Word and Sacraments, but He will also preserve you steadfast in His
Word and faithful to the end. The Catechism states further that
the Holy Spirit keeps the whole Christian Church with Jesus Christ in
the one true faith, and He will on the Last Day raise up us and all the
dead, and give to us and all believers in Christ eternal life.
The N.T. writers often encourage believers to persevere in the faith in
spite of persecution and troubles. But once more, what God
commands He gives, and it is through His Word and His Sacraments that
what He has begun in you He will bring about to completion.
Again, your salvation from beginning to end depends upon God
alone. As the author of Hebrews writes, “Look to Jesus, the
Author and Perfecter of the faith...” He is placed before
you in His Word, in Baptism, and in His Supper. There He and His
blamelessness, holiness, and righteousness are given to you. And
God, who brought you to faith in the first place, will through these
means faithfully keep you in this faith until the coming of Christ.
Knowing this, we can rejoice always, continue
steadfastly in prayer, and give thanks to God in and for everything,
with the promise that nothing can separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. But Paul also writes that we
are not to quench the Spirit as He works through His Word and
Sacraments or to despise prophecies, which is the preaching and
teaching of God’s Word, but we are to test everything, hold fast
what is good, and abstain from every form of evil. The latter
have the potential to lead us away from Christ into disbelief, despair,
and other great shame and vice. God will keep us blameless until
the coming of Christ, but we must not cut ourselves off from His Word
and Sacraments, the means by which He keeps us steadfast in the faith,
and everything that goes contrary to the Word we must avoid, confessing
our sin and hearing His forgiveness when we do fall.
Consider this Advent season again, then, how the
perfect, holy, and righteous God declares you blameless in Jesus, how
He continues daily to give you the blamelessness of Christ, and how He
will keep you blameless until Christ returns, all because He, the
blameless One, took your blame upon Himself, becoming guilty of all
sins in your place, so that you might become the righteousness of God
through faith in Him. He who calls you is faithful, and He will
surely do it. Amen.