Flee Fornication: A Meditation on 1st Corinthians 6

In this season of Epiphany, we continue to reflect on how God makes Himself known to His people through His Word.  His Word, both written in the Holy Scriptures and enfleshed in His Only Begotten Son, can never be divided from each other—for the Word Made Flesh who dwelt among us full of grace and truth, is the font from which the Word Written sprang forth by the Prophets and Apostles.  God has always sought to make Himself known to His People and His whole creation, and His means have always been rooted in His Eternal Word.

Amongst our readings for this week, is the sixth chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth.  Many scandalous errors and evils were occurring in Corinth’s church, and it was Paul’s duty as an Apostle, a Servant of the Word, to warn the people of the dangers of these sins.  The chapter begins by ridiculing the church for being unable or unwilling to judge even the least of matters among themselves, preferring to seek litigation in the pagan courts for perceived slights.  But then Paul transitions to the weightier matters they should have been able to judge more soberly—sins against God and His Holy Law.  He begins by reminding the people:

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not

inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither

fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor

abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves,

nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners,

shall inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were

some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye

are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the

Spirit of our God.

Paul shines the brutal light of God’s Law upon the Corinthian Christians, so that they might understand just how dangerous a game they were playing.  They must know, that those who surrender themselves to such sins, shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.  God is not mocked, and the Christian who thinks he can play safely in sin because of his baptism into Christ, will awaken to a horrible reality.  For grace can only come by faith, and faith cannot coexist with mortal, unrepentant sin.  There is no such thing as a saving faith which willfully lives in sin, refuses to repent, and prefers the sordid company of devils to the Light of Christ.  Be not deceived, for regardless of one’s denomination or affiliation, of his respective office inside or outside the Church of Christ, no one who lives in mortal, unrepentant sin, shall be saved.

And if there were any particular sin that is brashly abused in our day and age, it is fornication.  St. Paul spends the rest of this chapter warning the Corinthian Christians about this heinous corruption, which unlike so many other sins, is actually perpetrated against our own body.  Sexual sin, regardless of its form (fornication, adultery, sodomy, etc.,) dishonors and commits sacrilege against a body which is supposed to be a temple for the Holy Spirit—a body that is united to Christ our Bridegroom by grace through faith in Him.  Disordered sexuality corrupts not only the body of the Christian, but the soul as well, adulterating the relationship of that soul with her Savior, Jesus Christ.  In St. Paul’s words:

Now the body [is] not for fornication, but for the

Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both

raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.

Know ye not that your bodies are the

members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ,

and make [them] the members of an harlot? God forbid.

What? know ye not that he which is joined to an

harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is

without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth

against his own body. What? know ye not that your

body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you,

which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For

ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your

body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

To anyone who thinks that the Word of God is somehow out of place in our age, let them ponder the prescient words of St. Paul, written to a city of Christians nearly 2000 years ago, and to the cities of our world today.  Dalliance in prostitution, cohabitation, homosexuality, and adultery were just as well known in the ancient world, as they are today.  Perhaps our tools for exercising them have developed, but the sins remain—whether you find your prostitute on the street or through Craig’s List, or satisfy your lust through bar flies or internet pornography—the sexual sins remain exactly what they are in light of God’s Law.  They are evil and wicked, separating us from God and the salvation earned for us through Christ’s Vicarious Atonement.  They are damnable, no matter what window dressing we put on them, or how pervasive they seem in our culture.  We do our children and our friends no favors by leaving them to feel comfortable in such sins, as they approach the hideous reality of an eternity separated from the love of God.

But thanks be to God, the hope of the Corinthians is the same hope of New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Seattle—the hope of all mankind, who would be saved from the depravity of sin, and the endless torments of an eternity in hell.  That hope which springs eternal with hope and forgiveness, is the blessed Gospel of Jesus of Christ.  For it was for our transgressions that He was sacrificed upon that Cross so many centuries ago, and it was for our wickedness that He died.  For all our sins, including those of distorted sexuality, He has poured out His Blood, that sinners such as us might be washed clean.  In His death is our life and salvation, and in His resurrection is our hope secure.  For Christ has come to seek and to save the prostitute, the fornicator, the adulterer, and the homosexual, and He has accomplished that salvation through the forgiveness won on Calvary.

And how does so great a salvation from so terrible a fate, come to sinners like you and I?  By that same Word who has made satisfaction for us upon the Cross.  That Word comes to each of us, declaring the reality of our sins and the hell we are due because of them.  And that Word comes to each of us with the free gift of absolution and forgiveness, which is the only Good News that can salve a sinner’s conscience.  That Word, coming to us as both Law and Gospel, works faith and repentance in all who will hear, by the power of His Holy Spirit.  That Word takes dead sinners like you and I, gives us a new birth from above by Water and the Spirit, and sends us forth into a fallen world to strive for holiness, having a new love for God and neighbor motivated by the Love of God which first came to us in Jesus.  That Word continues to seek and to call us, even when we fall, so that we might return again and again to faith and repentance, and thereby to live in His grace, mercy, and forgiveness.  That Word, the very Son of God calling to us by His Spirit through His Holy Scriptures, calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, binding us together into the blessed communion of the saints, both here and in the world to come.

That Word—His Word—is our salvation, now and forevermore.  Hear Him.  Repent, believe, and live.  Amen.

Dead to Sin: A Meditation on Romans 6

St. Paul continues his discussion of life in Christ, with an examination of sin.  He identifies some fundamental truths that people have been trying to avoid for centuries, and no less in our own time.  At root, there are only two paths in all the world:  one of life, and one of death.  While it may look like there are a multitude of philosophies, theories, and religions out there, all that confusion can be broken down into these two fundamental realities.  There is God and His way, known to us by His Word, and there is every other way, known to us by their respective conflict with God and His Word.  Only in God, the author and sustainer of life, can there be the way of life.  This is why Jesus can say that He is truly the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one can come to the Father apart from Him.  The difference between Jesus and His Way, and all the other ways of the world, is as great and as stark as the difference between eternal life and eternal death.

Sin and evil, properly understood, are deviations from God and His holy will, made known to us by His Word.  Always and everywhere, evil is a corruption of the good will and creation of God.  As some have reflected throughout the centuries, evil cannot exist by itself, but only as a cancer or corruption of something already good.  Even so, where sin exists in the world, it corrodes and defiles things and people originally made good, twisting them into something contrary to God’s holiness and righteousness.  Sin and evil twist what was originally good into that which is not, drawing everything it touches away from life into the way of death.

The first to experience this wicked twisting, were the devil and his evil angels.  Corrupted by their own pride and rebellion, they sought to be what they were not created to be, and thereby fell into the twisted wickedness of their own evil.  Originally created good and pure, with a free will and power beyond human reasoning, the devil and his evil angels are now completely contorted in their wickedness, wielding their still frightening power in the aim to corrupt and enslave all of God’s good creation.  They are ancient, evil, intelligent, and powerful… and they are the beginning of all that is wicked and corrupted in the universe.  It was they who tempted our first parents to follow them into their Fall, and they who exercised dominion over the whole human race once we left our Creator to follow His horrific enemies.

But our God was not content to leave mankind in the way of death they had chosen, deceived by the wicked lies of the devil.  Into our way of death God sent His Only Begotten Son, so that He might suffer and die for us all.  Our Lord Jesus Christ, the very Word of God Made Flesh, steps into our death, and trades His life for ours, so that we might be brought back into His life.  Because Jesus is the only Way of everlasting Life, reconciling all who will repent and believe in Him by the power of His Word, there now exist in this world two paths for all mankind.  There is the way of death in which we find ourselves from birth as slaves to sin and the devil, and there is the way of life in Christ found by grace through faith in His saving Gospel.

It’s important for us to get this sequencing of events right, according to God’s Word.  God did not invent or push upon us the way of death.  Rather, He created us good, fully made in His wonderful image.  It was we who invited in the devil, and with him, our own slavery to sin and death.  This cursed earth upon which we live out our short and painful lives is a result of the death we brought upon in, and our suffering and death is justified.  But it is God who comes to our rescue, that we might know the way of life again.  It is God in the Person of His Son, who steps into our death, so that we might have His everlasting life.  God is not the author of sin, slavery, or death, but rather of redemption, righteousness, love, and life.

For this reason, the Christian will always find himself at war in this world.  By our fallen nature, we see around us the Law of sin and death, and the old marks of our slavery as sinners.  Our bodies break down, we grow old, sick, and frail.  We bury our fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and sometimes even our own children.  But the blessedness of the saints in Christ Jesus, is that though we justly endure this world and all its corruption as sinners, we are alive forever by the grace and forgiveness of our Savior.  Thus even though we die, our lives are hidden in Christ, so that we live forever in Him.  We are alive: though we suffer, though we break, though we fall into the earth or the fire or the water.  We are alive, because the life of Christ Jesus lives in us by the power of His grace.

This is the work St. Paul tells us is accomplished through Holy Baptism.  By the infinite power of the Word of Christ, it is Jesus who baptizes you into His death, and Jesus who raises you up to newness of life.  It is Jesus who makes you a servant of righteousness by the power of His Word, speaking to you His Holy Law and His Everlasting Gospel.  It is Jesus who renews the grace given to you in your baptism when, after having fallen to sin and temptation, you hear His voice anew, and repent and believe.  Just as we do not credit the worthiness of the preacher in his preaching when the Word of Christ brings faith and life into the hearts of its hearers, so we do not credit the pastor or the believer when the Word of Christ baptizes a person in His death and life.  It is not in the person of the pastor or of the believer, nor in any human work that the Christian trusts, but alone in the Word and Work of Christ our Savior.  This is saving faith—a faith which trusts Christ and His Word, and lives in Him by His grace.

To Him alone be all glory and majesty, now and forever!  For He has brought to us the Way of Life, piercing the darkness of our sin and death with the forgiveness won for us through His Holy Cross.  He has broken the shackles of our slavery to the devil, and breathed His Holy Spirit into us, that we may rise up, forgiven and free, alive forever by His Word of grace.  He has reconciled us with the Father, bound us all together by His Holy Spirit, and washed us in His Holy Blood.  Thanks be to Christ our Savior, now and forever more!  Amen.

Wisdom in the Word: A Meditation on Psalm 119:97-104

The psalms are a wealth of reflection, being the ancient hymnbook of God’s people.  Psalm 119 is a psalm of psalms, which are sequentially arranged according to the Hebrew alphabet.  In the selection for this week, we read of the wisdom gained from meditation on the Word of God, especially His law and testimonies.  Hear the song of the psalmist:

O how love I thy law!

 it is my meditation all the day.

Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies:

 for they are ever with me.

I have more understanding than all my teachers:

for thy testimonies are my meditation.

I understand more than the ancients,

because I keep thy precepts.

I have refrained my feet from every evil way,

that I might keep thy word.

 I have not departed from thy judgments:

for thou hast taught me.

How sweet are thy words unto my taste!

yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

 Through thy precepts I get understanding:

 therefore I hate every false way.

In our time and place, it is a sad reality that little is scorned more than the Word of God.  While history has certainly known many times where the Word has been rebelled against (the Scriptures themselves recount many such rebellions, together with their consequences,) our time seems peculiar in the way we have both ignored and attacked them.  Scholars inside and outside the Church have, for the last century or more, applied a theory arrogantly self styled as “Higher Criticism” to deconstruct the Scriptures like any other piece of western literature.  This methodology shows up in even our most commonly used modern translations of Scripture, where suppositions about relative antiquity and priority of ancient manuscripts flatters particular scholars, but does violence and undermines the text itself.  Higher Criticism as a theory presupposes the role of man over the Scriptures themselves, so that man becomes the judge of what is written—starting with the flawed assertion that Scripture is just another man made literary work.  Few people with their Bibles today, realize that the New Testament English translation they hold in their hands is based on an academically cobbled together “critical text,” giving priority to certain minority texts that were rightly neglected by the early church for their general lack of reliability (such as, manipulation by Alexandrian heretics, who clipped certain words and phrases out, to avoid conflicts with their heresies.)  While on the whole, the differences between the New Testament “critical text” (which Nestle-Aland now has in its 28^th edition) and the traditionally received New Testament text don’t create much doctrinal conflict, they do present to the reader an undermining of the authority and reliability of the Word of God.  If these “Higher Critics” have not succeeded in overthrowing the Scriptures themselves, they have succeeded in overthrowing the faith of several generations of biblical scholars relative to those Scriptures, so that broad swaths of the Church today do not think them reliable.

The world, already in conflict with the Word of God, takes the Church’s lack of confidence, and runs with it.  Why would a world that rejects the Law and Gospel of God on their own sinful pride, have any respect for a text that the Church doesn’t really believe anymore, anyway?  The world is happy to consign Scripture to the dustbin of history, so that they can recreate the world in their own sinful image, completely free of the shackles of the God they despise.  They desire to reformulate the definitions of marriage and family to suit their constantly evolving lust; they deploy a system of economics so that the wealthy prosper on the backs of the poor, suiting their own greed; they redefine the very nature of man into an evolutionary paradigm, where man sits at the top of a pyramid by the strength of intellect, tooth and claw rather than the Creator’s grace, suiting their own pride; they seek the abandonment of just law in society, bringing about a plague of anarchist “victims” who themselves victimize whole communities through insurrection and vandalism, suiting their own rebellion; they reduce the dignity of man to the utility he can provide, murdering children, the disabled, and the elderly, suiting their lazy convenience.  The world has always been striving to throw off the shackles of God and His Word, in their hearts always working out their true slavery to the devil and his evil angels, who have been murderers, liars, and rebels from the beginning.  As the Church loses her faith in the Word of God, we should not be surprised at the rapidly increasing degeneration of the world around us, anymore than we should be surprised that without preservative salt, how much faster meat rots in the hot noonday sun.

But what are we to do, against so great an onslaught of rebels, heretics, and degenerates?  As the psalmist reflects, the enemies of the people of God are ever present, urged on in maniacal fanaticism against God and His Word.  Where does the Christian take refuge, and find strength to resist so great a demonic hoard?  Our strength and our shield, our tower and our fortress, remain where it has always been since the foundation of the world:  the very Word of God.

Hearing His Word, and given faith by His Holy Spirit to believe and repent of our evils, we must turn from our corrupted and vain pursuits.  We must repent of letting God’s Word become the play thing of “Higher Critics,” who flatter themselves but destroy confidence in the Divine Word.  We must return to the Lord our God, whose Word alone breathes life and light, forgiveness and wisdom into hearts of all who will believe.  We must surrender to the Law of God, which points out our failures to be holy as He is holy, setting our eyes on the goal of loving God with our whole heart and soul and strength and mind, and our neighbors as ourselves.  We must surrender to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, receiving first the love of God which suffers and dies for our salvation, and which inspires us through His grace to live for Him and our neighbors.  We must be born again—born from above by Water and Spirit, fed by His very Body and Blood, Absolved by His very command, alive by faith and repentance in Him and His Word.

It sounds to be a daunting task, and indeed, it is.  No one alive on this globe has the power in himself to do all that is required, or even to believe and live.  But where our failure abounds, His Grace abounds all the more.  Where does the power come from, to submit to God and His Word, to turn from our darkness and come into His marvelous light?  Where does the strength come from, which brings us to faith and repentance, so that we might yield ourselves as living sacrifices to our saving God?  It comes by the very Word itself, as the Holy Spirit works faith in all who will hear and believe the Gospel.

Would you become wiser than your enemies that compass you all about?  Hear the Word of the Lord.  Would you be wiser than all your teachers?  Meditate on the Word of the Lord.  Would you understand more than the ancients?  Hold fast the Word of the Lord. Would you refrain your steps from every evil path?  Keep the Word of the Lord.  Would you not be severed from the righteous judgments of God?  Be taught by the Word of the Lord.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Word of the Lord will become to your taste sweeter than honey, and a meditation of love every day of your life.  By His Spirit, the love of Christ will save and transform you, so that your heart will delight in his righteousness, and despise every evil path.

If such conversion was your work or your decision, you would have every reason to despair.  But your salvation is accomplished by Christ and His Word, through which the world was made, and to whom the world and all its inhabitants shall return.  For the Word of the Lord endures forever, more sure than the earth and sun, stars and galaxies, physics and mathematics, which the Word itself brought forth.  The Word of God is itself your salvation, for the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.  The Word of the Lord is the never ending life of His people.  Hear Him.  Believe.  Live.  Amen.   

What shall separate us from the love of Christ? A Meditation on Romans 8, for New Year's Eve

The eighth chapter of Romans is a wonderful consolation to troubled minds, and especially appropriate for Christian meditation at the beginning of a new year.  While the Christian calendar rolled into the new year at the beginning of Advent (right after Thanksgiving, if you missed it,) the rest of the world is late to the game in welcoming 2015, so we will gather together and celebrate with them.  Regardless of when we mark the turning of the year, it is a time of reflection, contemplation, planning, and celebration.

Why celebrate?  We give thanks to God for carrying us through another year, with all its dangers, toils, and snares.  In 2014 we survived a convulsing economy, rising terrorism, a degenerating social fabric, and riots in the streets.  To be sure, many did not survive the dangers of the previous year, and are no longer with us.  But we are here, by the grace of God, and mark another year behind us, with another opening up before us.  Even as we celebrate with those who have made it to this precipice, we remember those who have not… and we must make our plans for the coming year without them.  It is a time marked with sadness and hope, joy and fear.

If we are honest with ourselves, every time of meditation and reflection for the Christian brings forth these emotions.  Regardless of where we mark the turning of the year, time moves on from moment to moment, always flowing inexorably toward its divinely appointed end.  Wherever we stop to consider where we have been, where we are, and where we are going, we must confront the consequences of sin and evil in a broken world.  Our friends and family die, just as we must someday die.  Our friends and family lose employment, as we may lose it someday.  Countries rise and fall, as ours may do someday.  Communities wax kinder and colder, as our own may often do.  We ourselves have had times of triumph and tragedy, marked by providence and judgment.  We see ourselves enmeshed in a world convulsing, created good but tormented by evil.  As Christians we see ourselves in pitched battle, baptized into Christ as a new creation, yet constantly at war against our own flesh with its twisted and corrupted passions.  When we are honest in our contemplation of the year past, we know that we did not deserve to see this day, nor to be among those who look out into the promise of another year.  And likewise, we know that we will not deserve to survive the coming year, any more than those who will not survive it by this time next January.

But the Christian does not linger too long in such melancholy truth.  By the eternal Word written in God’s Holy Law, we remember that no one is righteous, especially not us.  We remember that we are sinners in need of grace—in need of forgiveness, life, and salvation from all the terrors of a world under the sway of the evil one.  We remember that we are not God, but rather we are His good creation, fallen from what He made us to be, and in constant need of His providence and care.  We remember that we have never been able to save ourselves from sin, death, and the power of the devil, nor shall we ever have that power of our own making.  We remember that we are sinners in need of a Savior.

Into this stark reality of the Law that weighs upon our minds at this turning of the year, God sends a light so bright that it cannot be quenched.  Knowing us for who we are, and loving us beyond human comprehension, God sends into our very flesh the Person of His Only Begotten Son, to seek and to save us all.  It is Christ who has come to satisfy the horrors of the Law, suffering and dying in our place, upon that Cross so many years ago.  It is Christ who has paid your debt to divine justice, and broken the chains shackling you to hell’s gaping maw.  It is Christ who has overthrown the devil, lifting his tyrannical boot from off your neck.  It is Christ who has shown you the full measure of God’s love for you, as He sacrificed Himself to save you, taking your death and giving you His life.  It is Christ who has taught you the ways of righteousness for His Name’s sake, and guided you in the paths of divine Wisdom by His Holy Word.  It is Christ who has picked you up when you have fallen down, and carried you to this precipice of the new year.  It is Christ who has defended you, guarded you, preserved you, and given you faith to believe in Him.

And if Christ is for you, what does it matter who is against you?  If Christ has pierced the veil of sin and death, snatched you from the fires of hell, and conquered the devil by His omnipotent power, who in all creation shall separate you from His love?  Shall war or plague, riots or lawlessness, earthquake or flood, storm or fire, or even your own weak and beggarly frame divide you from the Creator who has crossed all eternity to save you?  Certainly not!  Jesus who has sought you, bought you, preserved you, and saved you, will never leave you.  His love for you knows no limits, and His compassion knows no boundaries.  He has written the divine decree of your salvation in His Most Precious Blood, and there is nothing in all creation that can wipe out that script.

So let the devil rage.  Let Islamic terrorists do their worst.  Let anarchists set fire to the cities.  Let nations rise and fall.  Let economies tank and tumble.  Let heaven and earth pass away.  But you, O Christian, are held in the loving embrace of your Savior, who carries you through every tumult and every distress.  You are kept safe and secure in the ark of His Holy Church which is His very Body, fed upon His Word and enlivened by His Spirit.  And whether your last struggle against sin and death is tomorrow or a hundred years from now, He shall keep you even in that last storm, for His love for you cannot be severed by anything in all creation.

May your new year, and your every moment, be blessed by the love of Christ Jesus your Savior, kept by His Word unto life everlasting—until we all stand together upon that last precipice, where all sin, evil, and destruction is left behind, and the blessed eternity of God’s love alone opens before us.  Amen.