In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

There’s no denying the fact that the Easter narrative makes for one incredible story. The characters. The conflict. The emotion. The drama. The plot-twist, if you want to call it that. It’s great writing. But there are lots of stories out there that are good stories too. And we don’t get together as Christians every year, or every Sunday for that matter, just to hear another good story. This isn’t entertainment hour. At least, it’s not supposed to be. No, we gather together as the Body of Christ because of what actually happened. We gather together because of how it benefits us eternally. And we gather together because of what it means for our daily lives here and now.

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a fairy-tale. It’s not just some religious version of “Goldilocks and three bears” or “Harry Potter.” The things that we read about in the Gospels actually did take place in real life. They are historical facts. There really was, and is, a man named Jesus of Nazareth. He actually did heal the sick, cure the blind, and walk on water. He preached and taught the Word of God publicly for three years, claiming the whole time to be the Son of God, and then He was brutally put to death by Roman crucifixion. But after three days in a borrowed tomb, that same Jesus who was crucified and killed, came back to life again. 

The only reason why people are skeptical about the resurrection of Christ is because they’ve never seen something like that happen before. Sure, people still get sick and die all the time. But how many of them have you ever met that have come back to life again? I’m not talking about the guy who loses a pulse for 3 minutes in the hospital and then has to get CPR. I’m talking about somebody who was scourged, stabbed, suffocated, and then wrapped up like a mummy for multiple days. I’m talking about an Individual who was so obviously dead, that the only explanation for seeing Him walking around and talking again, would have to be that He actually rose from the grave.

Everyone who is suspicious about this being possible, though, should consider the fact that that’s exactly what all the other disciples of Jesus thought at first too. They didn’t believe it either. In fact, that’s why the women were on their way to the tomb that morning. They were going to anoint the body of Christ with spices so that it wouldn’t start to stink. And, of course, it wasn’t just the women who had their doubts. The men had theirs too. Thomas, who we’ll hear about next week, famously dug in his heels and said that he would never accept that Jesus was risen from the dead unless he got to physically touch the wounds on His hands and side for himself. And we all know what happened next, and Who showed up.

Besides all of the internal evidence from the Bible itself, and the litany of prophesies from the Old Testament that match up perfectly with the events that took place in Christ’s life, even though they were written down hundreds of years before any of it happened, the most compelling proof for the veracity of Jesus’ resurrection has to be the witness of the Apostles. These same men went from running away from Christ during His arrest, and denying that they ever knew Him, to later on maintaining that they saw Him alive even to the point of being tortured and killed for it. Who holds on to a lie for that long? Who makes up something like that and then refuses to let it go despite what they went through? Bartholomew was flayed alive. Peter got crucified too. Paul was beheaded. And John had years and years to think things over in exile. But none of them would take it back. Maybe one crazy person with a mental illness would fabricate a story and take it all the way to their grave. But all of them together? And that’s not even to mention the groups of people who saw Jesus alive at once. Remember how Saint Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians 15? He says, “Then Jesus appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time.” If somebody can get convicted of a crime in court today by the evidence of two or three witness, then this case should be open and closed. Jesus Christ really did die and rise again. It’s not just a feel-good story. It’s what actually happened.

And yet, just because something incredible happened a long time ago, that isn’t a good enough reason by itself for us to be here today. Incredible things happen all of the time. But what makes this event even more incredible is what it accomplished for us. The Scriptures teach us that Jesus died and rose for a reason. His death and resurrection have real and eternal benefits for us.

To being with, it assures us of the forgivness of our sins. God’s Word teaches us very clearly that the wages of sin is death. That means that the reason why people die is because they deserve it on account of their sins. So, when God raised Jesus from the dead, one of the things that it proved, was that Jesus, unlike everyone else, didn’t deserve to die. He was made alive again because His dying was not for His own sins, but for the sins of others. As the Scriptures tells us in Romans 4, “He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for ourjustification.” When Jesus rose from the dead that was God’s way of telling us that all our sins have been forgiven. It was His way of showing us without a shadow of a doubt that all of our sins really have been paid for by Christ, and that God the Father has accepted that payment. The fact that Jesus’ lives means that you and I are forgiven. Salvation and eternal life are ours because Christ did not stay dead. He came back to life again.

And that, of course, isn’t all. Not only did Jesus’ death and resurrection purchase for us the forgiveness of our sins, but it also guaranteed us our own resurrection from the dead too, as well as for all those we love, who have died in the faith. Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a Man has come also the resurrection of the dead.” When Jesus rose from the grave on Easter morning, He foreshadowed our own resurrection too. That’s what it means when the Bible calls Him the firstfruits of them that sleep. He was the first One made alive, never to die again, but He isn’t the last. The same thing will happen to all those who trust in Him too. They will not stay in their graves, but their bodies will be raised and glorified to be like that of Christ’s own body. They will be healed and restored. They will be transformed and made new. They will be perfected in every way possible, and they will be like that forever.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the proof of our own resurrection. It’s the promise of future glory. It’s God’s assurance of a joyful reunion with all those who share our faith. We gather together not just becauseof what happened, but because of how it benefits us eternally. 

And yet, just because the resurrection Jesus has eternal benefits for us, that doesn’t mean it has no meaning for us here and now. As we heard on Good Friday from 2 Corinthians 5, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” The impact and meaning of the resurrection should change our lives. It’s not something that we’re supposed to simply keep in our back pocket to take out whenever we want to. It ought to effect and guide every single aspect of our existence. Saint Paul said, we don’t live for ourselves anymore, but we live for the one who for our sake died and rose. We live for Jesus. 

That means we listen to His Word and seek to conform our actions to it. We follow His teachings and abide by His commands, repenting of where we fail, and seeking His grace to do better. His death and resurrection give us the forgiveness of sins, but it doesn’t give us permission to commit sin on purpose. We read the Bible daily, because it is the voice our Good Shepherd, who laid down His life for us. We seek to grow in our knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures because is the very Word of God. We pray and look to Christ for all good in every situation, because know that if He would suffer and die for us, He can be trusted to do all the rest. We come to Church weekly to receive His gifts in the Word and Sacraments and to be with our fellow believers. Every Sunday is a little Easter for us, because every Sunday the risen Lord enters into our midst to feed our souls us with the food that keeps us in the one true Faith. We cannot pretend to the Body of Christ while at the same time staying away from Christ’s actual body and blood. Jesus wants to be with us all the time, and not just once a month, or a few times a year. Everything that happens in our home, every decision that we make with our families, every thought, word, and that deed we do, yes, every single aspect of our lives is to be done for Jesus, because of what Jesus did for us.  

Our Lord has been raised from the dead. It’s more than just a good story. It’s a fact of history. Jesus died, but Jesus lives. And because He lives you have the forgiveness of your sins. Your body will be raised even after it has been put into the ground, and you will live with Christ forever. So, live for Him today too. Come and feast with Him at this holy altar. Take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. Do it today, next week, and the week after. And Christ who laid down His life for you and took it up again, will strengthen you by His grace, to life everlasting.

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

In Jesus’ Name. Amen

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Confirmation is the most beloved tradition in the Lutheran Church. Many of us still look back with fondness on the day when we were Confirmed and remember it as one of the most influential times of our lives. I can still remember how my hand was shaking when I reached out to receive the cup for the first time, because apparently, my parents and my pastor, had done a pretty good job of teaching me that it’s actually the real Body and Blood of Christ. Personally, I like Confirmation. And I’m glad that we still do it.

But I also think that we need to be careful about how we approach it. Like every man-made tradition, there’s always the danger that we would elevate it into something that it isn’t supposed to be, and because of that, put aside the real Word of God instead. This is literally what Jesus accused the Pharisees of doing in the Bible. They were teaching as doctrines the commandments of men, and making void God’s actual Word for the sake of their own made-up practices. We don’t want to do that with Confirmation. 

So, what I’m going to try and do in this morning’s sermon is clear up some of the most common misconceptions about this practice, so that we can truly honor Christ in the way that we observe it.

The first misconception about Confirmation is that it’s a Sacrament. That’s isn’t true. In the Lutheran Church we teach that in order for something to be considered a Sacrament it has to have three things. First, it needs a clear command from God in the Bible. Second, it has to join God’s Word of promise to a visible element. And third, it needs to offer us the forgiveness of our sins. Confirmation, of course, has none of those things. God doesn’t tell us that we have to do it anywhere in the Scriptures. It doesn’t join His Word of promise to any visible element. And we don’t get the forgiveness of our sins by going through it. So, Confirmation isn’t a Sacrament, and we can’t make it a requirement as if it is one.

But just because something isn’t a Sacrament, that doesn’t mean that its unimportant or useless. There are all kinds of things that we do in Church, which even though God hasn’t specifically commanded us to, we can observe in Christian freedom because of what they teach us. A good example of this would be something like the vestments. There’s nothing in the Bible that explicitly says that our pastors have to wear certain robes during the worship service. But we still choose to do it in order to communicate the importance of the Office of the Ministry. What matters most isn’t the man who stands in from of us and forgiveness us of our sins, it’s the Office in which he stands. It’s the Word that he proclaims.

And there is something similar going on with Confirmation. Because even though Jesus doesn’t tell us that we have to do it anywhere in the Bible, even though He never explicitly commands us that we need to get up in front of the Church and make certain vows if we want to be Christians, He does tell us that we need to confess Him before others. As our Lord Himself says in Matthew chapter 10, which by the way, is one of the main verses used at the beginning of the Confirmation liturgy, “Whoever confesses Me before men, I also will confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.” 

God’s Word calls upon us to confess the faith. Under the threat of eternal damnation, it tells us that we need to “let our light shine before others” and not shy away from identifying ourselves with Jesus and His teaching. This shows the world around us that we actually do believe what’s in the Scriptures and aren’t ashamed of them. And that’s one of the reasons why we have Confirmation. It gives our young people, in particular, the opportunity to publicly confess their faith in Christ. We give them a chance to do what Jesus says in the Bible.

As a side note here, we should also mention the fact that when someone takes their Confirmation vows in our church, we aren’t asking them to simply make a generic confession that fits every single denomination out there. We’re asking them specifically to pledge their fidelity to the Lutheran confession. As one of the questions says, “Do you confess the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from the Scriptures, as you have learned to know it from the small Catechism to be faithful and true?” Nowhere have we ever said that only Lutherans go to heaven, but we aren’t ashamed to assert that in the Lutheran Church, we have pure doctrine. The teachings of the Small Catechism are the same teachings that we find in the Bible. That’s where we got them from! So, having someone voice their support of the Catechism, and reject everything that disagrees with it, isn’t being arrogant. It’s being faithful.

Not every person who calls himself a Christian believes that Baptism has the power to wash away our sins or that you should baptized babies. Not everybody agrees that the Lord’s Supper is the true Body and Blood of Christ, and that we are saved through faith alone and not our works. Some people even teach that faith is a decision of our free will that we have to make for ourselves if we want to go to heaven. Well, is that what the Bible teaches us? No. So, we make our confirmands be clear. We ask them whether or not they want to be Lutherans, so that they can make a specifc confession about Jesus and not just a generic one, which isn’t really a real confession at all.

The second misconception about Confirmation, and this is very much related to that first one about it not being a Sacrament, is that Confirmation somehow secures us a place in heaven by the mere act of going through it. We’ve probably all encountered that individual before, or maybe we even know someone personally, who doesn’t go to church anymore or live a Christian life at all, but still makes a big deal about how they got Confirmed once, as if that’s some kind of get out of hell free card. But that’s not what Confirmation is supposed to be about. In fact, we could even say the same thing about the actual Sacraments, like Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Yes, God does offer us the forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation through them, but nowhere in the Bible does it teach us that they save us automatically. They only save us through faith. They save us because they present to us something that faith can trust and grab onto, namely, the promises of God. As Jesus says in Mark 16:16, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” not simply “whoever is baptized.” 

And the same thing applies to Confirmation. The mere act of saying certain things out loud in front of other people is not by itself the cause of anyone’s salvation. In fact, it’s possible to go through the motions, and take all of these vows, without actually believing in a single one of them. That’s the kind of scenario that Jesus is getting at in Matthew chapter 15 when He says, “These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” We need to be clear that no one will be saved who doesn’t believe in Jesus. No matter what else they say and do, even if they get Baptized, Confirmed, and take the Lord’s Supper every week, if they don’t repent of their sins and trust in Christ for forgiveness, they won’t go to heaven when they die. It doesn’t matter what else happens in their life, even if they get Confirmed in 8th grade.

The third misconception about Confirmation, and this one also has to do with the Sacraments, is that Confirmation is a sort of pre-requisite for Communion and that it entitles you to receive it whenever you want. Since we’ve chosen to observe the practice of Confirmation in conjunction with first Communion, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s also had some unintended consequences. One of them is the idea that going through Rite of Confirmation itself, and taking the vows, is what makes a person eligible for the Sacrament of the Altar. But that can’t possibly be true. How could the Rite of Confirmation do that when Confirmation isn’t even commanded in the Bible? That doesn’t make any sense.

However, the Bible does tell us that people need to be prepared before they receive Communion. This includes general instruction over the basic teachings of God’s Word, and specific instruction about the Lord’s Supper itself. As Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11, “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” If we choose to link together instruction with the practice of Confirmation, we can certainly do that. And asking someone if they are confirmed before we offer them Communion as a quick way to figure out what they’ve been taught and what they’re supposed to believe isn’t bad either.  But we shouldn’t confuse the ceremony itself, with the Catechesis that happened before it. What prepares someone to receive Communion is having the right faith. It’s about knowing what God’s Word says and believing it. Can a person know what God’s Word says and believe it before 8th grade? Sure. Can a person in 8th grade not know what God’s Word says at all and not believe any of it. Yep. So, we need to be careful not to give the impression that being a certain age, or having said certain vows, is what allows you to take Communion. 

Along those same lines, another issue that we run into here is the idea that once a person has been confirmed, they are automatically eligible to receive the Sacrament in the Lutheran Church for the rest of their lives. Confirmation becomes kind of a like a punch-card at the YMCA that gets you into the club whenever you want. You can just come and go as you choose. I can’t tell you how many times in my Ministry I’ve dealt with this exact situation. A person was raised in the Lutheran Church and got confirmed here as a young adult. Then they grew up and left the Lutheran Church and started attending somewhere else. But when they come back home for the holidays to see mom and dad, or whoever, they march right up to the Altar and demand to receive the Sacrament just like they did before. Sometimes they literally say, “I was confirmed here,” as if that makes a difference now when they go to a different church. But what church did we promise to go to when we said in our Confirmation vows that we would continue in this confession until we die? Were we promising to be Methodist or Baptist? Were we promising to be Roman Catholic or Reformed? No, we were saying that we were going to stay a Lutheran. We weren’t not going to depart from the teachings of the Catechism, which are the teachings of the Bible. And what do you think it means when we take that vow that we intend to receive the Lord’s Supper faithfully? Well, it certainly doesn’t mean receiving at a Church that doesn’t even teach that it’s the actual Body and Blood of Christ, or puts up with false doctrine.

Confirmation was never meant to be something that allowed us to avoid doctrinal differences. It was supposed to be something that made it clear which side we took on them. It wasn’t supposed to be passport stamp for getting the Sacrament whenever we want it. It was supposed to be a way to make sure that everyone who received the Sacrament together held to the same beliefs. We’re supposed to have unity in our confession, before we have unity at the table. That’s the point of having Confirmation in conjunction with first Communion.

And, the last misconception about Confirmation, which is probably the biggest one of all, is that Confirmation is some sort of graduation. It’s just another rite of passage like drinking a beer with your dad, or driving a car for the very first time. And once you get it over with, you’re good to go, and you don’t have to do any of the stuff that went along with it ever again.

My father, who was also Lutheran pastor, used to tell a joke that I bet you’ve heard before. It goes like this. What do you do to get rid of bats in the Church attic?  Just Confirm them, and then they’ll leave. It’s terrible. But the only reason why it makes any sense, is because there’s also some sad truth to it. I haven’t been a pastor for very long myself, but even in my short time in the Ministry, I’ve already lost track of how many kids I’ve seen come and go and never come back. It breaks your heart every time.

When then attitude is, “Great, now I don’t have to study the Bible anymore” or “Sweet, now I don’t have to pay attention to the sermon,” or worst of all, “Awesome, now no one is going to force me to go to Church,” you know that that kid doesn’t stand a chance. At least, not unless something drastically changes soon. 

Confirmation isn’t about being done with all the “Church stuff,” it’s about accepting more responsibility for yourself. The Bible teaches us that we are life-long students of the Scriptures. That’s literally what the word “disciple” means. It means a “student.” We never stop needing to hear God’s Word and receive His Sacraments. Even if no one is watching us, even if we don’t have a pastor grading our assignments anymore, or making us do memory work, that doesn’t mean that we can just coast through life and our faith will be fine. On the contrary, it will wither and die if it isn’t fed properly. So, we need to stay close to where God feeds it, and not neglect His gifts. We don’t treat Confirmation like graduation. We treat it like initiation. It’s closer to the beginning of our walk with Christ, not the end of it.

I love Confirmation. I think it’s a wonderful tradition in the Lutheran Church. If this sermon gave you the impression that it isn’t, that’s not what I intended at all. My only point was that we need to do it for the right reasons. It isn’t a Sacrament. It isn’t a get out of hell free card. It doesn’t entitle you to Communion whenever you want it. And it’s not some sort of graduation from going to church and studying the Bible. But it is a good practice. It reminds us of the importance of being instructed in God’s Word and the necessity of being prepared to take Communion. It gives us an opportunity to confess our faith, and makes it very clear which faith we are confessing. 

Mason and Devin, that’s what you’re doing today. It’s not your act of confession that saves you. It’s what you’re confessing. Christ is your righteousness. His death and resurrection ransomed you from your sin. And in His Word and Sacraments He offers you forgiveness for every last one of them. What you learned in the Catechism is the Word of God, because the Catechism takes everything from the Bible. And what you have here in the Lutheran Church might not be automatic salvation, but it is access to the pure teachings of the Scriptures, which save those who believe them.

God is giving you so much today. He’s given you so much already. When you’re old, I hope that you’ll look back on this day with fondness too. But above all I pray that you’ll never forget the promises you made, and more importantly, the promises God’s made to you. “Whoever confesses Me before men,” Jesus says, “I also will confess before My Father who is in heaven.” May you live in this confession all the days of your life, and suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Just because a person claims to be a true child of God that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are one. Take, for example, what we see happening in our Gospel lesson today from John chapter 8. That’s the account of Jesus’ tense interaction with the Jews. They had the revealed knowledge of God in the Old Testament Scriptures. They had the blood ancestry of Abraham, and the covenant of circumcision. They had the witness of the temple, the daily sacrifices, and the direct promises about the coming Messiah. And yet, in spite of all that, Jesus said that they were liars and enemies of the truth. Even though they considered themselves to be God’s special people, Christ had to forcefully show them that wasn’t the case.

A true child of God has to love Jesus. It doesn’t get more basic than that. As our Lord said to the Jews in verse 42 our reading, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came from God and I am here.” The easiest way to tell if someone is on God’s side is by asking them what they think of God’s Son. What do they think about Jesus? Do they love Him? Do they even believe that He exists? Do they confess Him as their Lord and Savior? If the answer is “no,” to any of those questions then the case is closed. We don’t need to do this whole thing about how only God knows what’s going in their heart. Of course, only God knows what’s going on in their heart, but we don’t need to see inside a person’s heart when we can clearly hear what’s coming out of their mouth. When people tell us openly and plainly that they don’t love Jesus, we should take them at their word.

The Jews in our text today said that Christ was a Samaritan and that He had a demon. They made fun of Him, and called Him all kinds of terrible names, even accusing Him of being the offspring of infidelity. They argued with Him over every single point of His teaching, and then, in the end, they even tried to stone Him to death. Now, if you can do all that, and still be God’s child, and have His blessing and favor, then what on earth do you have to do to lose it?

No! All those who openly reject Christ and do not love Him are not part of God’s family. That doesn’t mean that God didn’t create them in His own image and likeness, or that doesn’t want them to be saved. But it does mean that in their current spiritual state, they’re not His children. In fact, they are the children of the devil. That’s what Jesus literally says in our reading today. He says to the unbelieving Jews, “You are of your father the devil.” Everyone who denies the divinity of Christ, and doesn’t acknowledge Him as the only Savior of sinners is on Satan’s side. That includes the atheists and the agnostics. It includes the Muslims and the Mormons. And, yes, it includes even the present-day Jews, who do not accept Him as the Messiah.

Sometimes, because of our context today, and especially the ongoing war with Iran, we hear all sorts of rhetoric from Evangelical Christians about how the Jews are God’s special people. They make it seem like supporting the modern nation state of Israel isn’t just a good political move, which maybe it is, but that its some sort of a theological necessity. They point to passages like Genesis 12, which say, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you,” and they make it seem like that is about present-day Jews who reject Jesus as the Christ. But Jesus’ words are clear as day, “If God were your Father, you would love me.” The true children of God are not those who can simply trace their ancestry back to the likes of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s those who love Christ. 

As John the Baptist tells us in Matthew chapter 3, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.” Who you’re related to in this life, and who’s in your family tree, doesn’t do you any good if you reject the true Tree of Life, Jesus Christ. As Saint Paul also writes in Romans chapter 9, “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” What Paul is arguing here is that you can be descended from the man Israel, and still not belong to the true Israel. You can be a biological Jew, but not a real child of Abraham. And that’s because the true children of Abraham are those who share the same faith as Abraham. They are those believe in the same Christ. You and I, the Church, we are the true Israel of God because we are to ones who actually believe in Jesus. As Saint Paul also writes in Galatians 5, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” A true child of God is first and foremost someone who loves Christ. And loving Christ starts with actually saying and acknowledging that we do. 

But, that, of course, isn’t’ where it ends. As Jesus also tells us in our reading, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God.” A true child of God listens to God’s Word. They don’t just say that they love Jesus with their mouth, but they bear witness to that love for Him with how they live their life. They want to learn from God, and grow in their faith. They care about what the Bible teaches and they want to do what it tells them. Just looking at someone’s outward confessing, and whether or not they say that they believe is Jesus, is definitely a good place to start to know whether they are a child of God, but we should remember that that’s the floor and not the ceiling. Plenty of people are willing to pay lip service to Christ, and say that they believe in Jesus. But when push comes to shove, what they do, and how they act, reveals something different. 

You know how this goes. “So and so” doesn’t go to church. They don’t pray. They don’t read the Bible. And they don’t give. They don’t even try to keep God’s Commandments. More or less, their life is completely indistinguishable from that of their heathen neighbor. They sleep around and get drunk. They take God’s name in vain. They hold grudges. They gossip. They lie. They cheat. And they steal. They do what they want to do when they want to do it. But because they were brought up in a Christian household, and because when they get asked if they love Jesus, they nod their head along and say that they do, we say about them, “Well maybe deep down they really do believe.” Dear brothers and sister in Christ, we have got to stop doing this. It’s dishonest, and worse than that, it’s unbiblical. True faith in Jesus is living and active. It’s shows itself in real fruit, no matter how meager that fruit might be. It’s not just about what you say you believe, but about what you do because you believe. No, good works will not save anyone. But we should not image that true faith can exist without them. That’s literally what Saint James tells us in His epistle, “faith without works is dead.” What he means by that is that it isn’t true faith at all. And that’s what Jesus is getting at in our text today too, when He says, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God” and “The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” The Lord is reminding us that His true children, that is, true believers, want to hear what He has to say and they want to do it. They want to live by it, even though sometimes they fail. And when they do fail, they repent and seek God’s forgiveness. They trust in Christ as their Savior, not as their enabler. They look to the Him for forgiveness, and the strength to do better in the future.

They reason why we need to be so clear about who a true child of God is, and why all of matters, is because of what Jesus tells us at the end of our text today. He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” Now, that, of course, isn’t a promise about how true believers won’t physically die. That sort of thing happens every single day. Rather, it’s a promise about living eternally with God even if we do die. Yes, as the Jews pointed out somewhat correctly, Abraham died, as did the prophets. But where they went wrong was in assuming that because they died, they were truly dead. That’s not true. In fact, its blasphemous. Christ wasn’t talking here about a when a person’s lungs stop breathing and their heart stops beating. He was talking about the eternal nature of the soul. He was talking about how anyone who believes in Him will never experience everlasting punishment; how His true children will reside with the Him in heavenly bliss, even as they await the resurrection of their bodies.

A true child of God will never see hell. They will be spared from the agony of eternal judgment because they trust in the One who already suffered that judgment for them. They believe in Jesus and love him, because they know that He loves them, and that in that love He died to save them on the cross. As Christ said to the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” When Abraham took his son Isaac up on the mountain to sacrifice him, and God intervened at the very last minute, providing him with a ram to kill instead, he was given a picture of what the Messiah would do to rescue the world from their sins. He was given a picture of how God would provide His only begotten Son, as a spotless lamb and substitute in our place. Abraham saw Jesus’ day by faith, and God counted that faith to him as righteousness. Therefore, Abraham is not dead, but is alive with the Lord. He is alive because he believed. And the same is true for all our Christian friends and family who share Abraham’s faith too.  

Being a child of God is the greatest blessing we could ever have in this life. It’s a blessing we should want not just for ourselves, but all those around us too. We pray that God would open the eyes of everyone who reject His Son. We pray for all those who are hostile to the Christ and critical of His Word. We pray for our enemies who curse Jesus and mock the Scriptures. We pray for those who have walked away from their Confirmation vows and abandoned their first love. And we pray for the Jewish people who though they had the right and privilege to hear the Gospel before anyone else, have still refused to believe it. We pray for their salvation. But we don’t act as if they, or anyone else, will somehow be saved apart from the Savior. We don’t act as if it’s possible to still be a true Child of God with loving God’s Only Begotten Son. 

What makes us God’s children is not the blood that runs through our veins. It’s the blood of Christ that cleanses us from our sin. It’s Jesus, who not only loosens our tongues to confess His Name, but equips us in this life for every good deed. He is our treasure. He is our inheritance. He is our Lord and Savior. He is the eternal Son of God. And it’s only in Him that we are God’s children too. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.