Bible Text: St. Luke 2:21 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
It’s the shortest Gospel lesson in the church year but it contains everything the Christian Church teaches and preaches, everything we hold dear as Christians, and that we stake our life on in the new year. The little babe of Bethlehem was circumcised and given the name Jesus.
The name Jesus means “the Lord saves.” Jesus is the Lord who saves.
And his circumcision shows you how He does this. Two things. First, circumcision in the OT places you under the law. St. Paul says, in a very different context, “I say to you that if anyone is circumcised he is obligated to obey the whole law.” That was the obligation God placed on Jesus already when he was a baby; before, as Isaiah says, he knew how to do good or evil, His Father obligated Him to obey the entire law. We call this the active obedience of Christ. Our problem is that we have not obeyed God’s law. God tells us to love, it’s what He created us to do, and just look at the last year of your life, go through the ten commandments, how many times (and it’s too many to remember, so that God has us pray, “Who can discern his errors! Cleanse me from secret faults!”), how many times, just in the last year, have you doubted your God, been discontent with what He gives you, been selfish or rude or disobedient or slothful or said what you shouldn’t have or not said what you should have?
The Reformed talk about a “covenant of works” that God gave to Adam in paradise, that the deal, the agreement, was that Adam would obey God perfectly and he would live forever; and he failed obviously. I’m not sure how helpful the term “covenant of works” is, especially applied to Adam, since Adam lived still by God’s grace; but St. Paul says clearly, “If there had been a law given which could give life, then surely righteousness would have been by the law.” But no such law was ever given. We cannot do it. If God gave us a covenant of works, we would fail before we started. We are born sinners and our love fails daily and without that love we cannot have life.
Jesus’ circumcision placed Him under that same law. Born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons. And He obeyed it. This was actually was a covenant of works, not between us and God, but between the Father and His Son. “You do their works. They cannot love. Love. Every failure and error they make, fill up the hole with your works, your love, your righteousness, even if that hole goes all the way down to hell, fill it with your works and your love and your righteousness.” And Jesus filled it. Every regret you have from this last year, every time you have done or said or thought what you wish you could take back, every time you have failed, the Son of God has already filled your lack.
That’s one way the Bible puts it. It’s Jesus’ active obedience. But the shedding of Jesus’ blood shows the other side. We call this the passive obedience of Christ. He suffered, He shed his blood for the first time on his circumcision day. And that was the downpayment for the blood that would flow from the cross. Sin is not just a lack in our lives. It is also a debt we owe to God. And it is a debt we cannot pay. Jesus talks about it as a debt of 10,000 talents. It’s unpayable. But Jesus did pay it. He is the Lord who saves. That’s His name and that’s what He did. He is God of God, and this is our absolute joy and wonder, that God, the eternal, the almighty, paid the debt we owed Him. It cost Him dearly. He pitied us and loved us so much that He poured out His Justice on Himself, required it of Himself, and the sinless Son of God, bled and died to satisfy what we owed. And He did it for the joy set before Him, and that joy is you, to have you with Him in the joy He has had with His Father from eternity.
So there is a double payment from the Son of God for us – as He says in Isaiah, “Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, That her warfare is ended, That her iniquity is pardoned; For she has received from the Lord’s hand Double for all her sins.”
And God gives it to us. Jesus got His name at His circumcision, because that is who He is, the Lord saves. And you received the name of God at your Baptism, because that is who God made you, His child, joined to Jesus, His eternal Son, and therefore worthy of the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As you start the new year, realize what it means that you live as God’s child.
First, you are a child of God means you have His honor and everything He has, everything in all creation that He made, belongs also to you, just as my backyard is for my children’s enjoyment, and my money I spend for them, and the antelope I shoot I feed to them. What I have is theirs, to give to them in due time, and so for you to be a child of God means everything, heaven and earth, are also yours, to be shared with you in due time. Because you are Christ’s and Christ possesses all things. And not just bodily things, spiritual things. Forgiveness, righteousness, innocence, purity, all yours, because you are a child of God.
You are God’s child and that means you obey Him. Remember that this new year. I tell my kids not to run in the street, never to talk back to me or to their mother, to never fight with one another – these aren’t rules to hurt them or simply to assert my power over them, they’re commands that will make them happy, protect them from pain and danger. God’s commands are good for his children – honor your father and mother, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t gossip, be content with what God gives, pray, go to church, why? Because God wants you checking the appropriate religious boxes? No! Because He’s your Father and He wants your good, and His commands are for your good, and you’ll see it in your life in this new year, you will.
And finally, the child is always his father’s child, always his mother’s child. I’m a father with children of my own. But when my dad and mom come to visit, I am as surely their child as the day I was born; and I know it, I know they love me and I talk to them with the familiarity and love that only a child can give to his father and mother. And so it is with you. You are a child of God, a Christian. That doesn’t end. It doesn’t stop. You don’t grow out of it. He doesn’t stop loving you. He doesn’t stop forgiving, doesn’t stop having mercy, doesn’t stop caring for you and thinking of you. He has done it since He put His name on you in your Baptism and He will continue to do it in the new year and forever.
Jesus is the guarantee of all this. That’s his name, the Lord saves. The double work He began when He was eight days old He finished completely on the cross, where He loved you perfectly and paid the perfect price of His own life for you; and He lives forever to give it to you, your Baptism is the guarantee of it, the Holy Spirit given you there, so that you can live now and in the new year as a child of God until you see fully in heaven all the joy the Father has prepared for those who love Him.
In the holy name of Jesus.