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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
We began last week in part by contrasting our feelings of in-completion and emptiness with our God, Who deals in completeness and fullness, such as God’s sending His Son when the fullness of time had come and the fullness of God’s dwelling in Christ and God’s fullness’s filling us. God’s fullness is always timely, but perhaps especially now. As we with repentance and faith prepare to celebrate Jesus’s having come in His birth at Bethlehem, His coming now in Word and Sacrament, and His coming a final time with glory to judge the living and the dead, our Midweek Advent Evening Prayer special sermon series considers “Advent Fullness”, tonight with a focus on the “Fullness of God in Christ”.
Tonight’s Reading from Colossians is just one of a number of Scripture passages that essentially speak of the “Fullness of God in Christ”. In this case, the Divinely-inspired St. Paul is thought to quote from a likely pre-existing hymn about Jesus, the Son of God, as Creator and Redeemer. As we heard, in Jesus, notably, the fullness of God is said to have been pleased to dwell, and later in the letter to the Colossians, St. Paul would write that, in Jesus, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). St. Paul’s letter to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae (Colossians 1:2) is usually understood as his trying to guide them away from false teaching and into the truth about Jesus and His saving work. We can only try to deduce from what St. Paul wrote what exactly the then-current false teaching said about Who Jesus is, though we certainly know more about later false teaching about Who Jesus is, and we probably know the most about now-current false teaching about Who Jesus is.
We might imagine that if the fullness of God is going to dwell in someone, that person might have to be as big as the colossal statue of Christ the Redeemer above Rio de Janeiro, pictured on the front of tonight’s service outline, though, despite its being nearly 100 feet tall and almost as wide, that statue is not even in the top three of the world’s largest statues of Jesus (the statue I saw near Eureka Springs, Arkansas, called Christ of the Ozarks, is smaller yet at about two-thirds the size of the one near Rio). Looking at the matter a different way, the “reformer” John Calvin and those who followed after him theologically held to the “rational” principle that something finite, like a human body, was not capable of containing something infinite, like the Divine nature of God. So, as they put their fallen reason above Holy Scripture, Calvin and those who followed after him believed, taught, and confessed that part of the Godhead was outside of or apart from the human nature of Jesus, a false teaching that is referred to in Latin as the extra Calvinisticum, or, we might say “Calvin’s extra” (for example, see Calvin’s Institutes, Book II, Chapter XIII, paragraph 4).
In some ways, we too easily criticize Calvin’s explicit denial of Jesus’s full Divinity, maybe not even considering what might be our own implicit denials of Jesus’s full Divinity. Do we, as the Colossians might have, look to other thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities for help or even salvation, as if Jesus cannot help and save us? Do we, as Calvin and those who followed after him theologically, place our fallen reason over other passages of Holy Scripture and so believe, teach, and confess contrary to Scripture’s clear teaching? Or, do we sin in our own, other ways? Of course we do sin, for we are sinful by nature. As we heard in tonight’s Reading, by nature we are alienated from God and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. We deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, unless, enabled by God, we turn in sorrow from our sins, trust God to forgive our sins, and at least want to stop sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God the Father forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, through Whom all the fullness of God was pleased to reconcile us to Himself.
As we heard in tonight’s Reading, the Son of God is the image of the invisible God, derived from the Father, as it were, or begotten from Him, not a creature, but in a privileged position above all creation, all of which was created by Him and is held together in Him. That Son of God from eternity in time came to dwell in Mary’s Son, Jesus, so that the fullness of the Divine nature and Jesus’s human nature are personally united in the Son of God, but only the Son of God, not the Father or the Holy Spirit, took on human flesh. The three Blessed Persons of the Holy Trinity remain distinct, but They are not so distinct that They together do not remain one God (confer Delling, TDNT 6:304). The Trinity and the Incarnation ultimately are beyond even our sanctified reason’s ability to understand: they are mysteries revealed to us that we believe unto our salvation. Our salvation is possible only because the Divine fullness of love and power acts in all of its perfection and completeness through Jesus Christ (confer Delling, TDNT 6:303). As we heard in tonight’s Reading, God has reconciled us in His body of flesh by His death, making peace by the blood of Jesus’s cross, where He died in our place, for our sinful natures and all of our actual sin. Traditionally, on the basis of Holy Scripture, we believe, teach, and confess both that Jesus needed to be true man in order to act in our place under the law and to die for our guilt because we failed to keep the law, and that Jesus had to be true God in order that His fulfilling the law and dying might be sufficient to redeem all people, including each one of us (1991 LSCwE, Questions 122-123, ESV version pages 125-127).
In tonight’s Reading, St. Paul spoke of his ministry of Word and Sacrament as giving the hope of the Gospel, and we think likewise of both the Word read and preached in our midst and the Word Sacramentally administered to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine in the Holy Supper. Calvin and those who followed after him theologically not only failed to grasp Jesus’s Incarnation, but, as a result, they also failed to grasp Jesus’s real, physical presence with His Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. We know that the intimate relationship that God creates with us in Baptism is nourished and sustained in Absolution and in the Supper, and we know that through these same Means of Grace He transforms us.
In tonight’s Reading, St. Paul spoke of our being presented holy and blameless and above reproach, if indeed we continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that we have heard, whether or not that Gospel has been proclaimed literally in all creation under heaven. So, transformed by God, we try not to look to other powers for help or salvation. We try not to place our fallen reason over Holy Scripture. We try not to sin in other ways. And, when we fail to succeed in doing those things, as we will fail, with daily contrition and repentance, we drown our sinful nature, and our redeemed nature emerges and arises to live before God. As we heard, Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, and, as we are connected by baptism to His death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5), so we also shall be born anew from the dead. Then, to paraphrase tonight’s Office Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 527), we will praise, bless, and evermore confess the One in Whom all fullness dwells as our Savior and our King.
As part of our “Advent Fullness”, last week we had considered the “Fullness of Time”; tonight we have considered the “Fullness of God in Christ”; and next week we will consider the “Fullness of God in you”. May we live each day with both sorrow over our sin and trust in God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, so that we are prepared for His comings this Advent and always.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +