May | 2023 | Trinity Lutheran Church

by Pastor Frahm

The light of Christ shines upon this dark and rebellious world that lives in lies, death, depravity, and much danger. The resurrection of our crucified Lord Jesus Christ stands in testimony of God’s love toward sinners. We baptized believers in Christ are not left to our own resources but have the proclamation of the Gospel of salvation that means that our sins against the infinite holy God are forgiven because of the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God. But wait! There’s more. This pardon of grace in Christ means also that we are being restored to the immortal, holy, humanity God intended and then some as we shall dwell in tlhe new heavens and new earth.

The incarnation of the eternal Son of the Father, who is of one essence with the Father, his humble, holy life, and His passion, death and bodily resurrection are the assumption of genuine humanity into God to pay the wage of all human transgression that we might become again by baptismal adoption and eucharistic nourishment what we were divinely designed to be. Human beings are not merely souls with a body or bodies with a soul. Neither are we merely material bodies only, as if the mind or soul were only the brain with electro-chemical reactions amounting merely to deterministic neurological programming. However we are both body and soul. A human being, as God made Adam and Eve, is body and soul and mind together in unity. Therein lies part of the tragedy and horror of our enemy death. It separates what God has joined together in the very creation of human life made in His image. And this is why murder in any form is so utterly despicable. We are not set apart from animals merely by degree.

To be a man or a woman is to be an instantiation of the image of God by His will and purpose. What is not according to God’s will and purpose is sin and its concomitant of death in its spiritual and physical dimensions. But the crucified and risen Jesus Christ have won the victory over these enemies and has silenced the accuser, Satan. We live in the historical time of the achievement of the new reign but in the shadow of the old which is falling and fading, to be put away for good on Judgement Day. The contrast between the light of Christ and the darkness of death and the devil will become more apparent. We are baptized into Christ, into the uncreated Light, and that cannot be overcome. Pray that by the Holy Spirit, the Word of God would work in you continually the power of the Light and the redemption that is ours. Pray that the Lord would keep you steadfast in that reliance until we shall behold the fulfillment of all things with our own eyes in flesh of immortality. Let us hold fast our confession without wavering and without distraction. Let us give and speak words of grace in Christ freely as we have received and offer up the sacrifice of thanksgiving generously that the Gospel would be preserved where we are place by God and where the Lord would send His Gospel into the world for the life of the world. Let us not grow weary but keep a loose hold on this world and latch on firmly to that which is eternally ours. And may the Spirit of Truth grant us wisdom to live and navigate the rough seas of this life knowing that the Lord is with us in the boat of His holy Church.