The Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord – April 20, 2025Psalm 8; Job 19:23-27; 1 Corinthians 5:7-8St. Mark 16:1-20
In the Name of the Father, and of the +
Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.[1]
The fast is over, and the feast has begun. Christ the Lord,
who was slain, is risen from the dead. Alleluia! Christ has conquered sin and
death, buried them in the grave, never to rise again. Alleluia! Our hope, our
faith, rests on the historic reality of the resurrection of Christ. “Had
Christ, who once was slain, not burst His three-day prison, our faith had been
in vain: But now has Christ arisen!”[2]
Alleluia!
By all measures of how we understand history, the events of
the past, there can be no objection to the reality of the resurrection. Only
the logic of fallen man can insist Christ did not rise. Only the sin-stained
conscience can claim, “I’ve never seen someone rise from the dead, therefore
Christ couldn’t have risen.”
And yet the consolation of souls does not end with the
historic reality of Christ’s resurrection. We mustn’t hear the story of the
resurrection in the same way we hear and understand Napoleon’s defeat at
Waterloo, Washington crossing the Delaware, or Gordon’s last stand at Khartoum.
Christ did not just rise from the dead. He rose for you. His resurrection is
your resurrection. There is a great gulf of difference between “Christ is a
Savior and King” and “Christ is my Savior and King.”
Yet even the Christian conscience, still assaulted by sin,
struggles with this notion. Christ’s own disciples scarcely believed that He
had risen from the dead. We stand separated from the historic event by 2,000
years, making it even harder to accept. Yet Christ said, “Go and tell my
brothers.”[3]
Brothers and sisters in Christ, He was speaking of you.
“You have heard in the Passion how Christ let Himself be crucified and buried and how sin and death trampled Him underfoot. Satan and the sins of the world lie on Him in the tomb. Sin, death, and the devil are His lord. Therefore you must look into His tomb and realize that my sins and my death tear Him apart and oppress Him. There the devil regards himself as secure, and the chief priests boast and rejoice: He is gone and will not return.
“But in the instant when they believe Him destroyed, the
Lion tears Himself away from sin, death, hell, and the jaws of the devil and
rips them to shreds with His teeth. This is our comfort, that Christ comes
forth: Death, sin, and the devil cannot hold Him. The sin of the entire world
is powerless. When He appears to Mary Magdalene, one sees in Him neither death
nor sin nor sadness, but sheer life and joy. There I see that the Lor is mine
and treads on the devil. Then I find my sins, torment, and devil where I ought
to find them. There is the seed of the woman, who has struck the head of the
serpent (Gen. 3:15), and says, ‘Death, you shall die; Hell, you shall be
defeated!’ Here is the victor.”[4]
It is a Christian art to regard Christ as the One alone
whose business it is to deal with our sins. Malformed by sin, our conscience
wants to believe that either we can manage sin on our own or that nothing can
be done about our sin. In the first case, if we could manage sin on our own,
then we have no need for Christ. His death would be in vain, and salvation
would be according to your own ability to prove yourself righteous before the
Almighty God. You must be perfect as God is perfect. What a silly, self-righteous
notion that we could approach God in our filth and demand salvation.
In the second case, despair over your sin, there is nothing
you can do. Faced with sin, temptation, plague, and assaults of the devil, you
have no recourse…except to abandon what your conscience says and turn to
Christ. Look to what He has said and what He has done. Christ did not die and
rise for Himself. He gained nothing for Himself. He died and rose again for
you, to give you everything that already belonged to Him. He is the “Lamb of
God, who takes away the sins of the world!”[5]
He took your sins into death and the grave, and there they remain. He rose the
spotless lamb, no longer bearing your sins because they remained in the grave.
The devil will try to convince you otherwise, but you know the truth – Christ has
arisen for you! The deadly power of death is gone for Christ has destroyed it.
When your sins lie on Christ, you can see what they’ve done.
They crushed Him on the cross and drove Him deep into the ground. “But because
today He comes forth from the grave and remains in honor and glory, everything
that the devil, sin, and death have done is destroyed.”[6]
This idea is foreign and contrary to human reason, yet the Scriptures still
stand. The Scriptures do not lie when they say your sins lie on Christ and if
they are on Him, they are not accounted to you. The Christian has no sin and is
a lord over sin. This is most certainly true.
And satan cannot stand this. He has a tremendous labor to fight
against the resurrection and accuse Christians. We can stare into the very pits
of hell and proclaim, “You who have tortured and killed Christ, now you get
what you deserve! You thought you had won the victory but your coup de gras did
nothing but ensure your defeat. Christ is risen and you are defeated!”
The devil works hard to tear this truth from our hearts.
That is why we stand on the truth of the resurrection apart from the thoughts
of our hearts. The witness of the God-breathed Scriptures and the objective
testimony of history cannot be overthrown. It is true this day just as it was
true that first Easter morning. Christ is risen! Alleluia!
In + Jesus’
name. Amen.
[1]
This sermon is inspired by Martin Luther, “Easter Sunday Morning, March 28,
1529: The Resurrection of Christ and Its Meaning,” The 1529 Holy Week and
Easter Sermons of Dr. Martin Luther, Translated by Irving L. Sandberg (St.
Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1998), 119-127.
[2]
This Joyful Eastertide, refrain, LSB 482; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:14, 20.
[3]
St. Matthew 28:10.
[4]
Luther, “Easter Sunday Morning,” 124.
[5]
St. John 1:29.
[6]
Luther, “Easter Sunday Morning,” 125.
No comments:
Post a Comment