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Grace, Mercy and Peace to you …
This is a very unusual Sunday in the Church Year. You notice that our Christ Candle is back next to the Baptism font … unlit. Why? Well, last Thursday marked Jesus Ascension into heaven …. That comes 40 days after His resurrection on Easter morning.
And so … as Jesus’ physical presence was taken away from His disciples at His Ascension, so the symbol of His presence, the lit Christ candle, is no longer at the altar.
Now, Pentecost … God’s sending of His Holy Spirit … is what we will celebrate next Sunday. So now, we are in a time, historically, between Jesus’ Ascension … and God’s sending of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus had ascended, no longer visibly on earth … and God had not yet sent the Holy Spirit. … Do you think the disciples felt like orphans, abandoned by God? Or more to the point, this morning, do you?
Well, Heaven forbid! In fact, our prayer for each and every one of us today … is that when we walk out of church this morning … there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind … about his or her faith, or his or her eternal destiny …
…That everyone would be able to say, “If Jesus were to come right now, I am absolutely certain my home for eternity would be in heaven!”
So, we’ll be making some statements about that this morning … statements about our faith and about our salvation. Some you may have heard before … and maybe … some you haven’t.
What brought all this on? Our Epistle. That letter of 1 John that was written to you, to each one of us, to all who have faith. Hear these words of John again, written by the Spirit’s inspiration:
“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God … that you may know that you have eternal life.”
Or, paraphrasing: “That you may know (for certain) that you have eternal life, all you who believe in Jesus, the Son of God.”
Now … the first thing we need to do is to recall that belief … that faith we have in Jesus as the Son of God … is not our work. It’s God’s gift. Faith is a gift of God by the Power of His Holy Spirit.
“No one can say in his heart, Jesus is Lord, apart from the Holy Spirit.” It’s all God’s work … It’s just not left up to us to cooperate with God. The truth is, if we have faith … God gets all the credit.
And then, also remember this verse: “There is one Lord … one Faith … one Baptism.”
And so, our Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is a gift of God … a gift of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit instills only one kind of faith, no matter what church you might be sitting in … we call it “saving faith.” And so: Here’s the first statement you may wish to take note of today: The Holy Spirit works only one kind of faith in your heart … perfect faith … saving faith … there is no other kind. You either have perfect faith in your heart … or you don’t.
You see, in faith, God adopts you into His family … He makes you His child … He has either adopted you or He hasn’t. It’s either a one or a zero … it’s not a quarter, not a half … you either have perfect faith, or you have no faith at all… You’re adopted as his child… or you’re not.
So. What about our doubts? What about what we might call our lack of faith … or like those times Jesus told His disciples “Oh, you of little faith.”
Jesus wasn’t referring to the faith that was in their hearts. He was referring to the fact that their heads didn’t embrace the fact that their hearts were saved … that they had perfect faith.
“Oh, you of little faith” … is an encouragement to ACT like who you are … people with perfect faith.
You see … faith is not an intellectual assent to the historical facts about Jesus. Faith, in essence, is a trust in God’s promises in Jesus.
That trust in God’s promises is a heart thing … not a head thing. The problem we have in this world is that … our hearts can be saved, but our heads can be all messed up.
You see again, the best way to understand saving faith is adoption. Can a child make himself adopted? No. The Child has no ability to choose, or to make adoption happen. The adoptive parent takes the whole initiative … just as God does when it comes to our faith.
He adopts us. By His act, we become His children … and thereby heirs, as the Bible describes us … of eternal life. We inherit eternal life … we do not deserve it or earn it.
Can we un-adopt ourselves? Yes. We can go and legally get our name changed … and when we do … we forfeit the inheritance that was ours under adoption. Just so, we can renounce our faith, our Heavenly Father, and live outside of His grace and promise.
But we did nothing, we can do nothing, to make ourselves adopted. And so, if we are adopted, if we do have faith, we give God all the credit for His act of grace on our behalf.
And the end result is this: … we do have perfect faith in our hearts … even … even … if we’re only two weeks old … and we won’t be able to talk about our faith for many years yet in the future.
Faith is a state of being … a state of being adopted. It’s not the result of doing … not a result of deciding … not a result of thinking the right thoughts. Your adoption means … there is perfect, saving faith … in your heart. No matter what doubts your head may have to the contrary.
That’s what John’s words for this morning are trying to convince our heads of … that you may KNOW (in your head) that eternal life is in your heart … right now … even as we speak.
You mean that’s all there is to it? I don’t have to work my tail off to get into heaven? Right! You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to …
You might WANT to do things that are God pleasing out of the love that’s in your heart … but you don’t have to DO anything!
Why? Because God did it all. In Jesus’, life, death and resurrection, He made our salvation possible. And then … by the power of His Holy Spirit, by water and the Word … He adopted you. He put perfect faith in your heart.
Eternal life … which started the day you came to faith… is yours!
Oh, Pastor … that’s just too easy. Easy? Go watch the “Passion of Christ” … and then tell Jesus that your salvation was too easy.
We created human beings don’t add a smidgeon to God’s glory … nor can we take one glimmer of it away.
So, what’s wrong with my head? Why do I have doubts about my faith, about God’s love for me, and my salvation?
Try this. Think of three sins you are guilty of …say … since yesterday morning. Are you thinking of them? Now, honestly … how many of those three sins are things that you did, sins of commission? And how many of those were sins of neglect or omission?
You see, the problem is … your Old Adam thinks that by trying hard enough … it can stop doing sins of commission…
That if you put together enough New Year’s resolutions and keep them all, you can make yourself pretty acceptable in God’s sight … maybe even do enough good works to get him to overlook the minor stuff …
But the devil just laughs, because we daily omit doing more things that we are ever even aware of that are also sins in God’s eyes.
And that’s why the way of the Cross was God’s solution to a problem we can’t ever even get close to solving in this world. That’s why He has to make us clean … not ourselves. That why His gift of faith comes in only one color … perfect … complete … secure.
You see, the truth remains … we are sinners … in spite of the fact that we have perfect faith in our hearts … and we will remain that way. But the truth of the Cross is this:
When we sin … we are still guilty … and in many cases, in this world, we must still suffer the consequences … like hurt feelings … broken relationships … physical injuries … and even death.
But … we are forgiven of those sins in God’s eyes … which really means … He no longer holds us accountable for our transgressions, either committed or omitted.
Jesus was held accountable on the Cross in our place for all of our sins. He suffered the just punishment of God for all they deserved. By Jesus’ blood we are now free of God’s anger and punishment …
Free, no longer accountable, for all the sins we have committed and ever will commit … as well as all those we things we should have done in the past and in the future … but we didn’t do.
Why does God treat us this way? Out of Love. Love shown by what Jesus did in our place … and love shown by His putting that trust in His promises of our forgiveness and His salvation in our hearts; Perfect Faith.
So. Why do we come to church, if God’s already given us perfect faith?
First, we come out of love and thanks to God for all that He has done for us ….
Another reason we come is so that God can help us get our heads in line with our hearts… so that faith in our hearts might also be the faith in our heads … the faith people see when they see us … that we might more and more resemble Christ … the perfect model of … perfect faith.
And also, as we noted a few weeks ago … God’s given us His church to patch up the wounds we’ve suffered over the past week at the hands of the devil, the world and our own flesh … those things that would lead us to doubt God’s promises … and maybe ultimately even to deny our adoption.
So. If someone were to ask you this morning, “If Jesus were to come back today, are you certain you’d spend eternity in heaven?”
Our prayer is … your head would answer … “Yes, I am saved!” I know for certain that perfect faith does indeed dwell in my heart!
“Praise the Lord.”
In Him, Amen.
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