“Repenting and Believing”
Saint Matthew 11. 12-15
The Festival of the Reformation: 31 October Anno Domini 2007
Fr Watson
The Lord has worked repentance in you. The Lord has given you belief in Him.
You joyously celebrate His reformation. You repent and believe.
The article of doctrine upon which the Church either stands or falls is "how" one is saved. We believe, teach, and confess that man is "justified," that is, "made right with God," by Grace through faith alone in Christ. This teaching is both Scriptural and Confessional. This is Article Four of the Augsburg Confession. But even before the doctrine of Grace through faith comes the doctrine of God Himself. Before reformation comes formation. But one is only formed by a "former." A creature is only created by a creator.
And God saw all that He had made and it was good. God is good. The Lord Trinity is perfect. He made Adam and Eve good and perfect. Your parents were "in Him" and were righteously formed in His Image. His Image is His Son.
Your parents like the snake before them did not want to serve they wanted to be served. Your blood and bone tried to seize the kingdom by force. They rebelled with the violence of disobedience. All sin is force against God, whether in action or simply words and intents.
As God comes before Man, in God's saving activity of His creature His killing comes before His life-giving. His Divine Wrath and Punishment comes before His forgiveness and restoration. First God wounds then God binds up. Before The Lord would send His beloved Son He would first commission and send His Prophets.
While it is doctrinally and historically true that everyone of God's Old Testament Prophets spoke, wrote, and preached extensive "Good News," as well as convictions of the Commandments, they themselves served as the forerunner of Messiah. They served in the flesh as "Law" precursors to the "Good News" of God Incarnate. Even as every Prophet was a "type" of Christ, so too every one of them was a "type" of John the Baptist. John was the final word and body of Law before Jesus' precious Body and Blood would be Gospel staked up on high.
Even as every Prophet was despised and persecuted so too the Baptizer would be mocked and ill-treated by those who used force against the Kingdom of Righteousness. All of the Prophets were beaten and martyred. This violence culminated in their own kind when Herod had John beheaded in prison.
Since Eve rebelled in the Garden man has exercised similar force against the King. God used His Law and punished the Man and Woman. But then, the loving Father told His wayward and prodigal children of the "coming Seed" Who would re-form them and the fallen world. Even as He had first formed the earth from the void, The Messiah would reform man's corrupt flesh by letting His own sinless flesh be molded and sculpted by whip and nail.
From Genesis to Malachi, and beyond, the Creator who formed, constantly, indeed daily re-formed His tender "clay pots" by sending them His restorative word through the Prophets. Repent and Believe the fathers of faith proclaimed by the Spirit. Repent and Believe is to have God work His Law and Gospel in their perfect and salutary proper order. It is His activity and not mans that creates "rightness" once again.
Every chance sinful man gets, He perverts this Godly order and plan and again uses the force of his fallen nature to be in charge. The Hebrews didn't like the message of Jonah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Hosea and Elijah. The "old Adams" didn't want to be obedient children any more than the first Adam did. Sinful self does not like the reality that it can do nothing to make things better and that only God can fix the mess. The old nature is, by nature, a synergist, a works righteous "Pelagian" a hypocritical decision-making "enthusiast."
When the Papist insists that one must be saved through one's own good works which "cooperate" with the Lord's Love, terrible violence is again done to the Kingdom. When the "so-called" fundamentalist (a terribly incorrect misnomer) insists that one must decide to be a believer, wicked violence is done to the Kingdom. When every one of you white washes your own daily sin or despises Gods word with indifference and sloth, you add another backhanded slap across your Jesus' face; you hammer another nail into His bleeding wrist.
Repent and Believe. This can be the only message. It was Elijah's unpopular message.
It was the Baptizer's death-producing credo. The Lord will always have His Word preached His way by His men. Whenever the message becomes muddled, confused, and unclear, God will raise up another watchman, another clarion caller to preach "Repent and Believe." Whenever another Luther is needed, whether in the Church, a local parish, or at a family dinner table, the Lord will do it.
Repenting and Believing isn't what you do, it's what the Lord does to you, in you, and for you. His Law causes you to repent. His Gospel causes you to believe. His Son adopts you into His own precious Body.
Yes, you are to daily "drown the old Adam" by contrition and repentance. But when you don't, when you can't, He does by insuring His Law is applied to you through His Word.
Jesus did the drowning of Adam, sin, and Satan when He allowed Himself to sink below Hell's waves and below the dust and earth of death in your place.
The Creator Who made your ears and eyes, hands and body is the Savior Who took your diseased and dead flesh all the way to the Tree in order to purge all the blackness and foulness forever. Jesus had his eyes shut in death so that He might re-from your eyes into eyes of faith.
He is the Sanctifying One who this evening, every evening, calls you by that same Good News, by that same Body and Blood. You have new ears. You have a new name, family and nature.
You joyously celebrate His reformation. You repent and believe.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost