“OUR BROTHER”
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22)
October 4, 2015
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Source.
That is why He is not ashamed to call them brothers.
Hebrews 2:11 (ESV)
It can get quite lonely being a Christian in today’s world. Very
often it seems as if you’re standing all alone, with everyone else
lined up against you. We get it from both sides, really. On the one
hand we have our conscience. Because we are familiar with God’s Law,
we know just how sinful we are and what kind of punishment we deserve.
Every day as we meditate on the Word of God and seek His will, we
discover over and over how miserably short we fall when it comes to
doing that will of God and living as the people that He desires us to
be. And as if that feeling of guilt isn’t enough for us to endure, we
also have the whole world on the other side telling us each and every
day how wrong we are in the beliefs that we hold and how foolish we
are in our commitment to Jesus Christ. There was a time when even
unbelievers respected Christians for their faith and loyalty, but
those days are long gone. Now it’s not unusual for you to hear even
fellow Christians telling you that you are taking your religion far
too seriously.
The idea of Christians being lonely and scorned in the world is not
by any means a recent development. The original hearers and readers
of the Letter to the Hebrews were believers who were being persecuted
by both the civil government and the religious establishment. They
desperately needed some word of encouragement--some ray of hope--as
they sought to confess Christ and proclaim the message of His
redeeming love in a world that wanted no part of any of it. While we
don’t know who it was that actually wrote this epistle, it is obvious
that it was written to build up these persecuted believers--to
reassure them that they were not alone--that their confidence in and
commitment to Christ were well-placed. We need the same encouragement
and hope today. This morning’s text teaches us two very important
things about Jesus Christ that bring this encouragement and hope to
Christians who are lonely and downcast because of the opposition that
they face in the world. These two things are: (1) the ways in which
our Savior is identified with us and (2) what He thinks about this
identity.
Jesus Christ is identified with us, first of all, in that He shares
our human nature. In the Te Deum, an ancient liturgical hymn of the
Church (one that we use each month at our Matins service), we pray to
Christ: “When You took upon Yourself to deliver man, You humbled
Yourself to be born of a virgin” (Lutheran Service Book, page 224)).
The Son of God is not just God somehow disguised as a man, nor is He
an angel or a prophet or some other representative of God; He is a
real Man and truly God at the same time. This is the mystery of the
incarnation and the magnificence of God’s great love for us: that He
was willing to lay aside His divine prerogative for a time and
actually become human in order to redeem us humans from our sin.
Because He is truly human, He faced the same lot in life that you and
I face every day: the same needs, the same hurts and sorrows, the same
difficulties and frustrations, the same temptations. All of this He
was willing to endure for you and for me.
But there is a far more significant way in which Jesus is identified
with us. Because He came to save us from our sin, He also shared with
us the consequences of sin--consequences that you and I have to endure
because our sin has created them, but consequences that are foreign to
the perfect Son of God, who had no sin. What I mean by that is that
He willingly placed Himself where you and I deserve to be: under the
righteous Law and judgment of God. He endured all of the punishment
that our sin has merited in order that He might endure that punishment
Himself and thereby spare us from it. In other words, He actually
traded places with us. He stood before God as the condemned sinner so
that we might stand before God as His beloved children or, as Paul put
it in such profound and yet simple terms in his Second Letter to the
Corinthians: “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that
in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21
NIV).
How does Jesus feel about this relationship between Himself (the
perfect and divine One) and us (helpless and hopeless sinners)? The
text before us states it very clearly: “He is not ashamed to call
them brothers.” No matter what we have been, no matter what we are,
no matter what we are likely to become, Jesus Christ is not ashamed of
us, even though He has every reason to be. He is not ashamed of us
even though we very often speak and behave as if we were ashamed of
Him. He is not ashamed of us even though we often make His work on
our behalf futile and frustrating by continuing to live in the same
sin from which He has delivered us. In spite of all this, He still
considers it to be worth His while to do everything that He has done
for us and continues to do for us. Even before He began His mission
of redemption, He knew that the great majority of the people for whom
He would suffer and die would have nothing whatsoever to do with it
and therefore would benefit nothing from it. And yet He still did it.
He considers sinners like us to be that valuable and that precious.
All of this says something to us. It first of all says that our
salvation is worth something. It cost Jesus His own lifeblood.
Because we have been saved from sin and death at such a great cost by
the free grace of God, we have a responsibility to demonstrate to the
whole world (and especially the unbelieving world) that this grace of
God in Jesus Christ has not been wasted on us--that it has the power
not only to save the souls of sinners but also to change their lives.
The apostle Paul put it in very personal terms when he wrote to the
Corinthians: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace
toward me was not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:10). This is what each
of us should be able to demonstrate to all the world. And Jesus’
attitude toward sinners is also the greatest statement ever made
against human arrogance. If the perfect Son of God is not ashamed to
call the likes of you and me His brothers, who are we to look down our
noses at anyone else?
But most important of all, Jesus’ identity with and attitude toward
lost sinners assures you and me that we are not alone as we struggle
with sin (especially our own) in this wicked world and that we will
not have to stand alone before the judgment throne of God. “We have
an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Righteous” (1 John
2:1), who forever speaks on our behalf. He is our Brother, who pleads
our case with the Father, holding before the Supreme Judge of the
world the wounds of His love--wounds through which He made full and
complete atonement for our sin and for the sin of the whole world.
That knowledge gives to us the confidence that we need as we live each
day, with all its trials and tribulations, in His grace and in the
power of His Gospel.
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in
you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and
strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our
world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able
ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is
faithful, and He will do it. Amen.