The Baptism of Our Lord, January 12, 2025
The Baptism of Our Lord, January 12, 2025
Paul announces God’s rejection of worldly “somethings” for the preference of the divinely chosen nothings. These rejections and preferences set out by Paul and drawn upon by Luther for his theology of the cross precipitate the division of the assembly of hearers brought about by the preaching of Christ, him crucified, and him alone. This division is worked by God himself. We suffer in this division because we are unsure where the line is drawn. The division is marked by the line between believers and unbelievers. That line of belief/unbelief is drawn around the assembly, between it and the unassembled. That line of belief/unbelief is drawn among those assembled, separating those with faith and the Holy Spirit in the heart from those who are merely assembled. And that line of unbelief is drawn within the believer who “stands under judgment for his lack of faith and lives alone by God’s continued work of salvation,” as said by Vilmos Vajta.
God chose the world’s foolish; God chose the world’s weak; and God chose the world’s low and despised. In those choosings, God would, respectively, shame the wise, shame the strong, and bring to nothing the things that are. In the Mediterranean world at Paul’s time, to shame was to destroy… to bring down to nothing. God chooses to bring all these things to nothing so that he can create ex nihilo—out of nothing. Notice that God’s gracious choosing did not make the world’s foolish wise; it did not make the world’s weak strong; it did not make the world’s low and despised into its high and admired. Lowliness, weakness, and foolishness would then be used by God in denial of his creation ex nihilo. God brings to nothing the things that are, so that Jesus Christ, him crucified, and him alone is everything to us. Jesus is the one something to all of our nothings. Paul reiterates this theme in Galatians, “For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal. 6:3). Out of nothing (that is you, the unbeliever), God creates a believer (that is, a new creature in Christ Jesus—2 Cor. 5:17).
Table Talk: Discuss why you think God must create believers out of nothing.
Pray: Heavenly Father, make me nothing so that Jesus Christ will be my one and only something. Amen
I Corinthians 1:26-31 (ESV)
26 Think about the circumstances of your call, brothers and sisters. Not many were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were born to a privileged position. 27 But God chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise, and God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong. 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, what is regarded as nothing, to set aside what is regarded as something, 29 so that no one can boast in his presence. 30 He is the reason you have a relationship with Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”