Author: Nina Schmidt

This acknowledgement of the reality in which we live (vs. 14) follows on the heels of the acknowledgment that the world hates us. The reason for the world’s hatred? The world lives out of death’s reality while we, the brothers and sisters, live out of life’s reality. These two realities, the one of death and the other of life, correspond to our existence in this mortal world broken by sin and passing away, which we have because we are fleshly creatures; and to our existence in the new creation coming into being through Jesus Christ, which we have by faith. The world knows that only death awaits it and its fleshly inhabitants. The world covers that knowledge… hides that knowledge… beneath an insistence upon works, even so-called works of love, done according to the commandments of the law. For the world, obedience is everything because it cannot abide by a Christ who gives life freely apart from and outside of the law. So, the world hates those who abide by such a Christ because death no longer has hold of them; they have passed out of death into life.

The brothers and sisters of Christ then live under these two realities simultaneously and totally: the reality of the flesh and the reality of faith. This paradoxical existence Luther called the “simul iustis et peccator” (simultaneously justified yet sinful). While in the flesh, love is commanded of us. It is the law (Mt. 22:37-40). Love, then, is obedience to the law that is demanded of us. On the other hand, when we are in faith, we know the truth: that love can never be commanded of us. Love on demand is never love but only obedience. Love as obedience eventually comes to hate those it is commanded to love and closes its heart against them (vs. 17). There is good news, however. While in faith, we Christians no longer hear the command to love; love is no longer demanded of us or coerced from us. Love simply is. Love defines the Christian as surely as does faith. Living out of the reality of faith is living out of the abiding presence of God’s love, where love is not empty talk or resentful words, but love is both truth and deed (vs. 18).

Table Talk: Discuss whether love can be coerced or commanded.

Pray: Heavenly Father, keep me in faith that I may love spontaneously in truth and in deed. Amen

I John 3:13-18 (ESV)

13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

John, the disciple whom Jesus loved (cf. Jn. 20:2 & Jn. 21:24), delivers to us a tool of discernment. This tool of discernment—that is, perfect love—works in two directions. The first direction discerns our knowledge and belief (cf. v. 16). The second direction discerns our love toward our brothers and sisters (cf. v. 21). By faith, we abide in God, and when abiding in God, we abide also in love because God is love. When the reality of God’s love for them takes hold of sinners, God is exercising his ”coup de gras”—his stroke of grace—that puts suffering sinners out of their misery and raises up saints to walk in newness of life. This reality is the new creature in Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). This new creature in Christ loves perfectly. The new creature cannot help but love… love without command… love without thought of reward… love spontaneously. Using John’s tool of discernment encourages us to examine ourselves to discover whether we live in the reality of God’s love for us. If so, then faith possesses us… Judgment holds no fear for us… and love is perfected in us, not commanded of us.

The second direction exposed by John’s tool of discernment is that toward our neighbors… toward those who would be our brothers and sisters in Christ. In the reality of being possessed by faith in God’s love for us… God’s love for sinners, we confess with John: “We love because he first loved us” (v. 19). This is a remarkable and wondrous confession! There is no command in it! Those new creatures in Christ, loved by God and possessed by that love… simply love; they do not have to be told to obey. Love is simply what they do. John’s tool of discernment diagnoses the presence of the new creature in Christ by determining whether our love for the brothers and sisters in Christ is spontaneous or considered—that is, is love perfected in the new creature, or is love merely obedience to a command.

John’s tool of discernment provokes us to harsh judgment: We are not the lovers we thought ourselves to be. Rather than loving freely, spontaneously, and without thought of reward, this tool discerns in us an unperfected love, the love possessed by sinners. No amount of obedience will perfect that love. Only the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God will perfect that love in the new creature in Christ.

Table Talk: Discuss the distinction between perfect love and commanded love.

Pray: Heavenly Father, take hold of me in faith that I may love.

I John 4:15-21 (ESV)

16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

The Apostle Paul speaks the Word of the Lord and puts an end to humanity’s arrogant assumption. What is that arrogant assumption? Humanity arrogantly assumes that it can reason its way to God… that it can understand and explain the works of God as logical propositions… that it can know the mind of God through an analogy with created things. Listen to what the Word of the Lord asserts: 1) God’s riches, wisdom, and knowledge run deeper than human understanding; 2) God’s unsearchable judgments do not submit to human critique; 3) God’s ways are unfathomable—that is, created things cannot plumb them; 4) No one knows the mind of God; 5) No one counsels God; 6) God owes no one anything; 7) All things come from God, all things result from God’s agency, and all things belong to God; and 8) All this is to God’s glory (as opposed to human glory).

The magnitude and magnificence of “all things” remain absolute. Nothing lies outside the purview of this Absolute God, for he encompasses everything… especially those things beyond our comprehension, emotion, thought, and language. This Absolute God is terrifying and deadly, “…man shall not see me and live” (Ex. 33:20). For us, creaturely humans, God must hide so that we can live, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself” (Is. 45:15). Following the prophet, Martin Luther called this Absolute God the God hidden such that for us there is God hidden and God revealed. God hides himself behind all those absolute attributes and comes to us wearing masks… masks such as nature, neighbors, and other created agents. We are not to peer behind these masks. Behind them, we find only that absolute divine inscrutability which is the death of us. However, God revealed comes to us in the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of the Word of God, preserved for us in the written scriptures and preached to us as the living voice of the Gospel. Luther cautioned us to flee from God hidden and cling to God revealed. Your God is not “out there” waiting to be found by you as you engage in mystical quests. Your God is not “in there” waiting to be discovered by your searches for authenticity. No, your God is “right here” coming for you at the pulpit, the font, and the altar.

Table Talk: Discuss ways you have searched out God hidden and how God revealed has come to you at the pulpit, the font, and the altar.

Pray: Heavenly Father, come to me in the living voice of the gospel delivered from the pulpit, the font, and the altar. Amen

Romans 11:33-36 (ESV)

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how unfathomable his ways!

34 For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?
35 Or who has first given to God
that God needs to repay him?

36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever! Amen.

What a mighty event! Peter preaches the fulfillment of a pronouncement made by the prophet Joel about 870 B.C. Now, nine hundred years later, God’s people experience the reality of what Joel had declared. Peter announces that the “last days” have come upon us… God’s Spirit has been poured out. These last days began with the Incarnation, that coming of Christ in all humility. These last days will end with the coming again of Christ in all his glory. These are the days of God pouring out his Spirit… pouring it out upon “all flesh.” All flesh is a universal statement in that God’s Spirit may come to all, but it is also not absolute, for repentance and faith are both delivered by the Spirit and are the means of receiving the Spirit. Note that the use of “flesh” here does not oppose the word “Spirit” but is meant to denote human, i.e., those with flesh as distinct from angels; it means human in all humanity’s sinfulness and failings. God’s outpouring of his Spirit in its complete fullness extends as far as humanity extends… as far as all flesh exists.

Listen to the inclusivity of those upon whom the Spirit is poured out: sons and daughters, old men and young men, male servants and female servants (vs. 17-18). In these days, the last days, God’s Spirit will be poured out upon them “and they shall prophesy” (vs. 18). Prophesying in its broadest sense is always the chief work of the Holy Spirit. This broad sense encompasses much more than the narrow work of foretelling the future. It gives voice to God’s saving and blessed work willed upon all humanity. The Apostle Paul describes this as the highest and best gift of the Holy Spirit, saying, “Now I wish… …even more that you would prophesy…” (1 Cor. 14:5). Luther writes, “What are all other gifts together compared to this gift, that the Spirit of God himself, the eternal God, comes down into our hearts, yea, into our bodies and dwells in us, rules, guides, leads us!”

This prophesying… this preaching… came upon the apostles, and they told the “mighty works of God,” the highest and mightiest of those works reside in Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. To preach Christ is to stand in Joel’s prophecy fulfilled. It is to stand in these last days announcing salvation to all who call upon the name of the Lord (vs. 21).

Table Talk: Discuss this idea that the Holy Spirit makes us all preachers, some publicly and some in private.

Pray: Heavenly Father, so pour out your Holy Spirit that I cannot help but tell of Jesus Christ. Amen

Acts 2:1-21 (ESV)

2 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7 And they were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. 12 And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? 13 But others mocking said, They are filled with new wine.

14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. 15 For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. 16 But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:

17 And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
18 even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
19 And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
20 the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
21 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.