The Second Sunday of Easter
I John 5:6a
The philosophy for dog obedience training has changed quite a bit in the last few decades. It used to be that many dog obedience schools operated by teaching the dog, “you better obey me, because I’m your master. And if you don’t obey me, bad things will happen.” And plenty of dogs were trained this way, and trained well. They obeyed, but they obeyed out of fear. But now there has been a shift in the thinking of many trainers, though some still do it the old way. If the old way was punishing disobedience, the new way could be characterized as rewarding obedience. In this new way of training, you don’t strike the dog, you don’t yell at him any more than a firm “no!” But whenever you catch him doing something good, he gets praise and rewards. The thinking here is that the dog is going to want to do the things that make you happy, because positive things happen to him when you are happy.
Both obedience philosophies get results, but they produce very different dogs. The old way produces a dog that is terrified to do the wrong thing. The new way produces a dog that is eager to do the right thing. And these two schools of thought work not just for dogs, but maybe you’ve seen children raised by these two ways. And this should be nothing new for us, since basically we are talking about the difference between Law motivation and Gospel motivation. In our lives, sometimes we do things, like hitting the brakes when you see a cop car, that would be obeying out of Law motivation. It is the fear of punishment that motivates you to slow down. But now let’s say that you are driving your children in the car with you. You are so happy for the gift of a family that God has given you, that you want to drive as carefully as possible, and so you don’t even think about breaking the speed limit. That would be Gospel motivation. You are motivated by thanks and love.
This morning, the Lord takes us all to obedience school. Sometimes, he uses the Law to motivate. But he would much rather use the Gospel to get his people to obey. That’s what he’s going to do this morning. We are going to look at Jesus, who is our motivator, our pattern, and our Savior. We will take a look at his brand of obedience, which consisted of two parts: the Active Obedience of Jesus, and the Passive Obedience of Jesus.
Part I
Every once in a while, there is a passage that you read from the Bible, you read it again, and you are still a little puzzled about what exactly it was saying. Maybe that’s what you thought when you heard our sermon text this morning, the first half of verse 6, where St. John writes, “This is the one who came by water and blood – Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood.” What on earth does this passage mean, with Jesus and water and blood? Maybe you thought, “this passage must be talking about the Sacraments. Water – that must be a reference to Holy Baptism. Blood – that must be a reference to Holy Communion.” That would be a good guess, but that’s not what this passage is talking about. While it is true that Jesus does come to us through the waters of Baptism, and he does come to us through his blood in the Lord’s Supper, look at this passage again, “this is the one who came by water and blood.” St. John isn’t talking about something that happens in the present, he’s referring to something that happened it the past. In an almost poetic way, John is talking about two pinnacle moments in the life of Jesus. One of these moments has to do with water. The other event has to do with blood.
And there is where we see that this is a text that is all about obedience – the obedience of Jesus Christ. The first part of Christ’s obedience had to do with water. And this does refer to Baptism, but not the Baptism that Christ gave us, rather the Baptism that he underwent under the ministry of his cousin, John the Baptist.
Why did Jesus get baptized? Did you ever think of that? I mean, if Baptism takes away our sins and creates faith in our hearts, that wasn’t really anything that Jesus needed. He had no sins to be forgiven of. And of course he had a perfect faith in his Heavenly Father. Perhaps you even remember that John tried to convince Jesus not to get baptized. So what was the point of Jesus being baptized if he didn’t need it? One word: obedience. You see, a lot of times we talk about how Jesus died on the cross to take away our sins so that we would go to heaven, but that was only half of Jesus’ work. He had to do something else to save us. Since we people don’t do a very good job of keeping God’s laws, Jesus also had to do that for us. This is what we call “the Active Obedience of Christ.” And part of this Active Obedience was Jesus getting baptized. He underwent this, not for his benefit, but for ours. Jesus did that so that we could be sure that everything that we need to do to get to heaven was done – by him! Jesus was actively obedient for you!
So we see that Jesus serves as our Savior because of his obedience. But he also serves as our motivator. Now we want to serve God because of the work that Jesus did for us. Let’s say that you were driving along, and you got a flat tire. A black Toyota Camry stops to assist you. The driver works with you for half an hour in the hot sun, helping you with the spare. When it is all completed, he leaves. You follow a few minutes later, and you come across the same Black Toyota Camry stalled on the side of the road, out of gas. Would there be any way that you could drive by and not help? Of course not! Jesus motivates us to obey, because he helped us out first by his obedience. And Jesus serves as our pattern. When we want to see what it means to obey the way that God wants, we look and we see how serious Jesus was about obeying God.
You and I obey God by actively being obedient to his commands. The most basic way that we do this is by daily, hourly even, repentance. Remember, that was another thing connected with Baptism. The Apostles encouraged, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you.” God wants a repentant heart inside of a baptized soul. And repentance is work on your part. It is active obedience.
Repentance is like weeding the garden. You never get all the weeds out. Some are too small to see. Some have left their seeds to germinate the next week. A good gardener keeps the weeds out of his garden by walking through it every day, pulling out the weeds as they come up. He never lets the weeds take over his garden. It’s the same with the Christian’s life of repentance. We won’t get rid of all our sins until Jesus comes and restores us completely. But until that day comes, we need to take a daily walk with the Holy Spirit through our life and pull up the weeds that want to choke our faith.
The problem is when we have a sin weed that is 3 feet tall. It’s been growing there so long, that it’s just become part of the landscape. We start to even like that weed, and instead of pulling it, we nourish it. My friends, active obedience calls on you to pull all those weeds. If you have a big one, you might have to get some help for it, and that’s why Jesus gives pastors, teachers, elders, and Christian friends to the church. Much better though, to yank those little weeds out right away. It’s daily work, but when you do this work, you are actively obeying your Heavenly Father.
Part II
Jesus came by water and by blood. We’ve talked about the water, not what about the blood? The blood reminds us of the other tower event of Jesus’ life, the crucifixion where he shed his blood. Theologians refer to this as the “Passive Obedience of Christ.” It’s passive because Jesus wasn’t doing anything, other than sitting back and letting this happen to him without complaint.
Jesus worked hard to keep all of God’s Laws for us, but he also laid back and absorbed all of God’s punishment for us. And now we look at the marks of pain that Jesus endured to save us. We heard Jesus say to Thomas the Disciple, “hey, look at these holes in my hands. Look at this big gash in my side. These are the imprints of redemption that I was willing to endure or your sins.”
A 13-year-old boy was ashamed of his mom. She helped serve school lunch, she cheered for him at sporting events, and she picked him up every day after classes. She had once been a pretty woman, but scars, really revolting scars, covered one side of her face. He could hear his classmates whisper, “what happened to her!” One day he asked his mom to stop coming to school. His mother knew that he was ashamed of her. The time had come to tell him the story – the real story – of how her face had been mangled. Thirteen years earlier she woke up in the middle of the night and smelled smoke. Even though she could have escaped the burning house easily, she fought through the flames, she ran into the nursery, grabbed her little baby, wrapped him in a blanket, and fled, getting horribly burned in the process. Tears streamed down his face, evidence of his love for her who had saved him from death.
Sadly, we are sometimes ashamed of Jesus. I’m guilty of it, and so are all of you. Sometimes we might not hide our faith, but we don’t go out of the way either to let people know that how much Jesus means to us. “Oh man, my friend will think I’m nuts if I tell him about the Savior. I don’t want to be known as the ‘Jesus-Freak’ at work, so I won’t say anything about my faith unless someone asks me about it first.” Are you ever ashamed of Jesus? I’ve never had a nail driven through my hand. I imagine that would hurt quite a lot. Not to mention the whipping, the beating, and the mocking that Jesus endured. Not to mention the very hell that he suffered for you. And yet we sometimes think, “Oh, I don’t want to bring Jesus into this conversation and ruin this good relationship that I have.” Ashamed of Jesus? Are you ashamed of those nail marks on the hands of your God and the gouging split in his side?
Don’t be ashamed. Those are the wounds that saved you from hell. Jesus did so much for us…let’s do more than just the minimum for him. Actively obey God by pulling the sin weeds out of your heart every day, but passively obey him by allowing him to use you to bring the Gospel to another person. I don’t know the same people you know. Each of you knows people well who don’t know their Savior at all. Each of you has at least one person who trusts what you say. Isn’t it time that we all come out of our comfort zone? That we all open our mouths and tell that person how much we care about where they spend eternity? Isn’t it time to stop being ashamed of Jesus, and start being proud that Jesus Christ was willing to come out of heaven and suffer for worthless beings like us? Oh! What a great God we have! Oh, let’s serve him, my friends! Let’s give him our best!
Conclusion
God could scare us into obeying him. Like an overbearing owner with a timid dog, God could say, “you better try to live a Christian life or you’re going to hell!” But that’s not how he operates toward us, his loved people. Instead he tells us, “look at all I’ve done for you. Look at all I’ve given you. I love you. I’m giving you a place in my heaven.” Boy! Doesn’t that just make you want to say, “Lord, what do you want me to do? I’ll do anything for you…my God and my Savior!” And God tells us to thank him with obedience: active obedience that daily works to root out sin, and passive obedience that lets God will rule our lives. God’s richest blessings to you as you work to obey him. Amen.
sdg
