Gird Up Your Mind: An Easter Season Meditation on 1st Peter 1

Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind,

be sober, and hope to the end for the grace

that is to be brought unto you

at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

As obedient children,

not fashioning yourselves according

 to the former lusts in your ignorance:

But as he which hath called you is holy,

so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;

Because it is written,

Be ye holy; for I am holy.

The first chapter of St. Peter’s first letter is a rousing call to the scattered brethren, beginning with a remembrance of the salvation given by grace through faith to all who believe in Jesus.  He describes the fallen world from which Christians are redeemed, together with its corruption and lust, and the eternal life into which we have been raised through the sacrifice of Jesus upon His Cross.  The world is passing away under the curse and condemnation of the wickedness which permeates to its core, and only through the Vicarious Atonement of Jesus, the very Son of God incarnate, can anyone hope to escape this fate.  Such salvation is worth celebrating, as we do in the Easter season, but it also calls us to consider what kind of life this salvation leads us to live.

Peter did not leave his readers wanting for guidance in this consideration.  He knew that Christians would be tempted to return to the same rudimentary evils from which they were rescued, and even compared such temptation of one’s faith to the refinement of gold in fire—that both are tested and purged by their respective trials.  Peter certainly doesn’t offer his readers a false solace that in this world they will avoid trouble, but rather (as he heard Jesus tell His disciples in the garden before His crucifixion,) that our Savior, Jesus Christ, has overcome the world.  In this, Peter rightly calls his readers to gird up their minds and prepare for the battle which will rage all around them until the Lord calls them home.  Jesus did not destroy the fallen world after He rose again from the dead; rather, Jesus sent His disciples with His Word into the world, that all who might hear, believe, and turn to Him would live forever.  Such was not a call to a soft and vapid existence, playing about in one’s passions and lusts until the fire sweeps everyone away.  This call of Jesus which St. Peter proclaims, is one of a life lived soberly, aware of one’s real enemies (sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil) and the victory which resides in Jesus alone.  This makes the Christian a military emissary of the Kingdom of God, sent into the world to speak God’s truth to evil powers, and by the Word and Spirit of God leading others out of their captivity to the devil and to life and freedom in Jesus.

Such a life and mission is not to be taken lightly.  To gird one’s mind is to place securely upon it the armor of God’s Eternal Word, with a heart steadfastly clinging to that Word which both calls us to repentance for our sin and to life in His grace.  This Word of Life which calls us, calls through us to the whole world, that everyone might repent and believe unto eternal life.  And of course, the evil one does not lay down quietly, even in his defeat at the Cross.  Rather, he pursues the faithful with ardent fury, seeking to tempt Christians into the same evils from which they were saved, that he might invalidate their witness to the world, and drag as many souls as he can into the fires of hell prepared for him and his wicked host.  The devil is girded up for war, a suicidal plunge into perdition where he seeks to take everyone he can with him.  He is cunning, ancient, and powerful, bent on the destruction of the world and the whole human race.  Yet his power over fallen men is broken by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, for all who repent and believe in the Gospel.

This is our battle, and today the world lies before us in full cacophonic array.  Our enemy is not flesh and blood, but the evil powers which seek to kill and destroy and enslave.  Our victory is not one of swords and spears, but of the finished work of Jesus, in whose resurrection is the promise of eternal life to us all.  Our calling is to life, united to the Lord of Life by His Eternal Word, and armed with that Word as we press headlong into the ranks of our foes, seeking the salvation of souls.  We are the military emissaries of the Kingdom of God, sent and sealed by the Lord of Hosts, to destroy the works of darkness and shine the saving light of His Word into every dying soul.  We are set aside unto this work, made holy by the shed blood of Jesus, that we might be holy as our Savior is holy.

Gird up your minds in the Word of God, and prepare to surge once more into the battlefield.  The enemy will rage even as he flees before you, and the hearts of men will beat once more with the hope of everlasting life.  Amen.

A Palm Sunday Meditation on John 12: Prepared and Unafraid

And Jesus answered them, saying,

The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

Verily, verily, I say unto you,

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,

it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

 He that loveth his life shall lose it;

 and he that hateth his life in this world

 shall keep it unto life eternal.

If any man serve me, let him follow me;

and where I am, there shall also my servant be:

 if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?

Father, save me from this hour:

but for this cause came I unto this hour.

Father, glorify thy name.

Then came there a voice from heaven, saying,

I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

 The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered:

others said, An angel spake to him.

Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes.

Now is the judgment of this world:

 now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

This he said, signifying what death he should die.

In John 12, we first find Jesus and His disciples at the home of Lazarus whom He raised from the dead, together with Lazarus’ sisters and family.  He was anointed with a costly perfume in preparation for His burial, something His disciples did not yet understand.  Then He proceeded toward Jerusalem with the crowd hailing Him as the Messiah, casting palm branches in the road before Him, striking such fear into the hearts of the Jewish leadership that they sought to kill both Jesus and Lazarus.  This triumphal entry, less than a week before Jesus’ betrayal and murder, is how we mark the beginning of Holy Week as Palm Sunday.

Among the many lessons we learn from Jesus upon His arrival into Jerusalem, is that He knew what He was doing, where He was going, and what it was going to cost Him.  He knew His own disciples would abandon and betray Him; that His own countrymen would seize Him by night and hand Him over to a foreign power for public torture and execution; that He would be unjustly condemned, mocked, slandered, and ridiculed; that He would die in unparalleled agony, bearing the weight of every sin of every soul of every person that would ever be born from the beginning to the end of time; He knew that He was the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world, and that by His Vicarious Atonement upon that Roman cross, He would become the salvation of every person drawn to Him by grace through faith; He knew that by dying He would defeat death for all mankind, casting out the devilish tyrant of the world’s wicked system, and giving all people a path back to reconciliation with God.

Jesus was prepared for this.  He spoke about it often with His disciples, though they couldn’t fully understand it until after it happened.  Jesus’ soul was troubled by what He was about to do, the tremendous gravity of His path to save the world, but He was not afraid of it.  As the Author of Life who condescended to dwell among us, full of grace and truth, He knew all too well the wonderful blessing of life, and the terrible curse of death.  Jesus knew that death was not a blessing to be embraced, but a curse to be overcome—the curse we brought down upon ourselves by cutting ourselves off from God by our own sinful rebellion against His Eternal Word.  Jesus knew that without His saving work of redemption upon the Cross, mankind had no hope in this world or the world to come, that the curse of death in this world would be ratified by an eternal death of separation from God for all eternity.  Jesus knew what His path through the valley of the shadow of death would entail, and that He would take that journey willingly for our sake.

And He accomplished what He set out to do.  He submitted to His Father’s will, became the sacrifice for the sins of the world, descended to the dead, and rose again triumphant over sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  He took this path through betrayal, suffering, pain, and death, that He might secure for us a way through death unto everlasting life; that where He is, there His servants may be also.  He prepared a place for us with the Father, and left to us His Holy Spirit, that we might journey faithfully through this fallen world to be with Him where He is.  He has accomplished all things necessary for our salvation, doing what we could not do, and giving to us freely the fruits of His labors by His unbounded grace.

Thus it is that Jesus has prepared us for our journey through the valley of the shadow of death, that we might walk it unafraid.  We follow Him who has gone through death for us, conquered death for us, and risen again that we might know for certain that we are the inheritors of life through Him.  Death is still a curse which plagues mankind as a result of our fall into sin, but for those who abide in Jesus by grace through faith, it is a conquered curse, a defeated enemy.  Death has been trampled down under the sacrifice of Jesus, and just as hell could not hold the Lord of Life, neither can it hold the sons and daughters of the Living God who put their trust in Him.  We are an Easter People, joined to the victory of Jesus through faith in His Word.

And so it may be that we will be troubled by death as we journey through this world, for we know how terrible a curse death is.  But we are also prepared to walk through life and death unafraid, following in the footsteps of Jesus who has walked this path before us, and shown us by His resurrection the eternal life He has secured for us.  This path through Holy Week is a hard one, where death surrounds the world like a gathering darkness.  Yet it is a path illuminated for all by Jesus, who calls all people to gather in His light, that they might pass from death to life in Him.  Amen.