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Maundy Thursday Correction

• That’s Passover and that’s Communion, for the Passover, like the Lord’s Supper, is a meal of forgiveness and life as we’re living in a land of sin and death. (Unclear and incorrect)
• For the Passover, like the Lord’s Supper, is a meal for the Lord’s People who are living in a land of slavery and death—Israel enslaved to Pharaoh and dying in Egypt; we enslaved by sin and dying. Israel’s meal sealed to them the Lord’s passing over by the flesh of the lamb. The Lord’s Supper seals forgiveness and life to you by the Lord’s flesh and blood. The Passover was not for the forgiveness of sins, but the Lord’s Supper is. (Clear and Correct)

The love of Christ controls us who have judged this way: “Because one died for all, then all died!”

᛭ INI ᛭

That really is the great love of God. A love that is only ever known in Christ. A love that is only fully known in the cross and death of Christ. There’s nothing in the birds or the trees, in the mountains or seas that would actually tell you this great love of God. The God of mountains and seas, birds and trees, the unseen God, whom no one has ever seen or can see, is just a nameless, faceless, deity, who often seems arbitrary and capricious. He’s fickle, helping one and not another, blessing some and not others. Evil people seem to be more on the receiving end of His blessing than good people.

Christ hanging derelict, despised, dead on the cross reveals that this idea of God is false! Him dead is the very heart and tenderness of God on display. There is no other God besides this God, the God who suffers for sinners, who pays the penalty for all people, who dies for those deserving of the same, who rescues those who rebel against Him. “For a good person” or a good cause, “someone might be willing to die, but God demonstrates His love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.”

The love of Christ crucified controls us, possesses us, takes hold of us. He takes possession of us, our hearts, our lives. He claims you, not you Him. He loves you first, not you Him. He cleanses your heart not you. He makes you alive, not you. All this at Calvary, and whenever Calvary is applied to you, but more on that in a bit. This love takes hold of us because of Christ and His cross, and what He accomplished on it by dying—reconciliation. “God in Christ was reconciling the world to Himself.” ““Because one died for all, then all died!”

“Oh, the depths” not only “of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God,” (Rom 11:33) but “the breadth and width and height and depth, to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, that you’d be filled up to all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:18–19) This great love is revealed at Calvary, for

CHRIST’S DEATH IS YOUR RECONCILIATION.

(I. Christ’s death is your reconciliation with God.)

First, Christ’s death is your reconciliation with God. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself.” This not only happens because Christ is second Adam, doing what Adam and none of have ever done, or could ever do: live a sinless life. We’re sinners from our conception onward. But we are reconciled because Christ died for us!

“God made Him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that we’d become God’s righteousness in Him.” So, in Christ, and Christ alone we have “redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” For “we have redemption through His blood,” for “for Himself is our peace,” (Eph 2:14) “making peace by the blood of His cross.” (Col 2:14) That’s how “God [the Father] in Christ [His Son] was reconciling the world to Himself!”

This really means there is peace with God for us who are in Christ Jesus! And you are “in Christ.” How? You are “in Christ” by Baptism through faith. “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal 3) Baptized into Christ you are a “new creation.” Jesus’ reconciling and redeeming death has been applied right to you: “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom 6)

This means that what we experience in the world where God hides His fatherly care behind human institutions or situations is not the full revelation of God. It means that no matter how much it looks like we aren’t reconciled, that there isn’t peace, that God isn’t good with us, that God wants to give out curses instead of blessings, that that isn’t true! You are reconciled. You have to be! Christ died and you’re baptized! Only in Christ’s death at Calvary and in His death applied to you is the reconciliation of God, for there is the forgiveness of your sins, there is the love of God!

(Transition.)

Christ’s death is your reconciliation. First, it’s reconciled, redeemed, restored you to God. As much as you can undo Good Friday and your Baptismal Day you can overrule God’s reconciliation, redemption, forgiveness, and love. And so it’s “Christ’s love that takes hold of us,” but it’s also “Christ’s love and reconciliation and forgiveness that take hold of us.” And so, CHRIST’S DEATH IS YOUR RECONCILIATION—with God and with your neighbor, too!

(II. Christ’s death is your reconciliation with your neighbor.)

Christ’s death is your reconciliation with your neighbor, too. “Because one died for all, then all died.” You are reconciled with your neighbor, not because you’ve decided to let their sins go, not because they deserve it, but precisely because they don’t deserved it and it has nothing to do with your decision! It has everything to do with what God decides, “for God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and placing among us the message of reconciliation.”

“So from now one we don’t think about anyone according to the flesh,” that is, according to what they’ve done or haven’t done, by what sin they’ve committed against us or not. We think of them as someone for whom Jesus died. His death reconciled them to the Father, and this same God has given us the ministry of reconciliation and placed among us the message of reconciliation.

So, there is reconciliation, peace, forgiveness, and love among us here. First, because the ministry of reconciliation, that God’s reconciliation, is delivered among us through things like Baptism and Absolution and the Supper of Jesus’ body and blood. “We who are many are one body for we’ve all taken of the one bread,” (1 Cor 10) which is the body of Christ given for each of you. No division between us when we’re united in Christ’s body. But He’s also placed among us, and given to you, His “message of reconciliation,” the word of forgiveness that you speak to your fellow congregation members, family, friends, and neighbors, especially those who sinned against you.

This is what it means to be a “new creation.” To deliver the fruit of Christ’s forgiveness, and to bring others that same forgiveness, and to bring and beg others to come receive it with you! It’s not your reconciliation, your love, your forgiveness that does any of this. It’s all Christ’s and His through you. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed,” (1 Pet 2:24) been forgiven and made forgiving. “Love to the loveless shown that they,” that you, “might lovely be!” (LSB 430) The cross is death for sin and life for righteousness. It is your daily life unto righteousness through Baptism, when you pick up Christ’s cross and follow Him to death, even the death of forgiving your neighbor with Jesus’ and then also your forgiveness.

(Conclusion.)

CHRIST’S DEATH IS YOUR RECONCILIATION, for His death puts the great love of God on display.

CHRIST’S DEATH IS YOUR RECONCILIATION with your neighbor, bringing those around into the reconciliation of Christ’s death through Baptism, the Supper, and the reconciling word of not only absolution but of you saying, “I forgive you,” that is the height of Christian charity! “Let us bear one another sins and so fulfill the Torah of Christ.” “Doing good to all, especially those of the household of faith. (Gal 6)

This is only so because CHRIST’S DEATH IS YOUR RECONCILIATION with God. And you really are, no matter the sin, trouble, or death. God is good, and His grace and goodness is only known in our great Redeemer’s blood. The stormy trial, all the waves, big or small, bring you to the shore, the rock of Christ. For He is your reconciliation, your only reconciliation—His becoming sin and His death for sin is!—between you and God. He’s died. You’re baptized. You’re reconciled only and fully and eternally in Christ’s death.

᛭ INI ᛭