The Lutheran Hour
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"The Great Put-On!"
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Text: Romans 13:11-14
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Grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus, our Savior. The Word of God we hear is from Romans 13: 11-14. “And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with, that is put on, the Lord Jesus the Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” This is God’s Word, and we pray:
Gracious Heavenly Father, You have every reason to be “put out” with us sinners. But instead You “put on” our humanity through Your Son, Christ Jesus, who took our place under the Law and who then suffered all, even death on the cross of Calvary, to cover our sin and guilt with His own blood. But Jesus, Your Son and our Savior, conquered death with His resurrection, and now lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit eternally, and will return in glory to receive the faith-filled ones unto You for all eternity. Continue to guide us into all truth, until You put on us Your eternal glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
I suppose we all know people who try to impress us as they put on airs. They want others to think of them as being more impressive than they really are. This usually carries a negative connotation, and we think less of the person than if he would just be his natural self. For instance, a person of our social class who constantly gives the air of the elite and sophisticated, with his nose-in-the-air type of attitude, we say is a put-on.
But not always is a put-on a negative thing. A clown puts on a different face and costume, and he entertains us all and helps us to forget our worries and cares and frustrations for a time, and to laugh at life and often at ourselves, for a while.
Or an actor puts on a completely different character and can transport us vicariously into a completely different world of thought and action, which we might not be able to attain or experience in any other way. In a sense, we put on the character as we get caught up in, and with, the drama being enacted.
All of these put on situations pale into insignificance, however, when we consider the situation of which our text speaks on this first Sunday in Advent and the first Sunday in a brand new Church Year, as we consider together “The Great Put-On!”
St. Paul writes, “Be clothed with (or put on) the Lord Jesus the Christ!” This beautiful invitation of Scripture is couched in a not-so-pretty setting, but rather an ugly setting into which each one of us fits to some degree or another. For you see, this New Testament lesson is talking about each one of us in our natural condition by reason of sin. God Almighty knows what the natural condition of man’s heart is, and what we must put off before we can put on the Lord Jesus the Christ. Jesus speaks in St. Matthew’s Gospel of this in these terms: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matt. 15:19).
St. Paul says elsewhere in Romans, “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:19). And again we read, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:14)
Friends, in our natural sinful condition, about the only thing we can put on would be a horror mask and a red suit, typically found in Satan’s closet, as we walk about in what our text speaks of, saying, “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and runkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.” We, too, must finally admit with St. Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24)
Who or what shall deliver me? We must ask that question with St. Paul. But no, let’s rephrase that question: Who has already delivered me? For you see, we Christians are no longer in a “natural” condition, destruction-bent and hell-bound! For we have been privileged to put on the Lord Jesus the Christ!
Now it’s not a matter of our putting on, but of God the Father’s putting it on us. It’s not like I dress myself, but it’s God Himself in love putting His pure robe of beauty and righteousness on me, covering my sin-wretchedness with His pure grace and love. And it all happened in and through a Baby. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16)!
Our everlasting God and loving Lord took on our flesh and was born in Bethlehem a couple of millennia ago as Jesus our Savior. He put on our flesh and blood for a third of a century, fulfilled the entire Law in our behalf, and then gave that very flesh and blood into death on the Cross of Calvary, and in doing so was able to deliver God’s forgiveness and salvation to us sinners, as He put on us His own righteousness, assuring us of the same with His glorious and victorious Easter resurrection!
Our just and holy God now sees us not merely as the sinners which we are by nature, but by His grace He sees us as forgiven sinners—saints–because of this Baby Jesus who is the Man Christ!
As the hymn writer says, “Jesus, Your blood and righteousness, my beauty are, my glorious dress. Mid flaming worlds, in these arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my head” (Lutheran Worship, Hymn #362, stanza 1). Awesome! Fantastic!
St. Paul speaks of this fantastic situation when he writes to the Galatians (3:27), “For all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with (that is, have put on) Christ.”
And again, “Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24). The greatest put-on of all time goes on in the life of every soul on the face of this earth, who in faith is led by the power of the Holy Spirit to receive Christ Jesus and His righteousness, and seeks to serve Him in ongoing righteousness and in true holiness. This robe of Christ’s own righteousness covers us in our baptism. This robe of Christ’s own righteousness is daily renewed in us by the power of God’s Holy Spirit as we encounter Him in His Word and seek Him in prayer and serve Him in faith as we serve His people in Christian love.
And you know what? Pretty soon, if an individual assumes another’s character long enough, it becomes his own character, no longer a false and pretentious expression, but an increasingly natural conveyance.
The more we practice Christ-likeness, the more we become Christ-like, never, of course, fully attaining to that perfection in this life, but always “striving toward the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus,” as St. Paul tells us: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:12-14).
Not that we have to anticipate suffering under Pontius Pilate, being crucified and all such, as our Lord Jesus the Christ did, that we might atone for our own sins and work ourselves up out of our own natural but ugly condition of lostness. We cannot! Our Lord never asks us to walk that road of Christ-likeness. He once-and-for-all has made atonement for our sins and the world’s sin, through His perfect life, His redeeming act in His death on Calvary’s old rugged cross, and at the open tomb of Easter. Now He simply asks us to accept this all-atoning love of His and by the power that He gives, to live in that love and to give expression to that love in lives of Christ-like service. “Put on the Lord Jesus the Christ!”
What a privilege is ours to put on! Not a false and hypocritical-type of put on, but a God-directed and heaven-blessed one, where putting off that which is displeasing to our Lord and Savior Jesus, we are free to accept what He freely offers and intensely desires to give to us – Himself, and His love and forgiveness and peace and joy and salvation.
What a put-on! Undeserved by us, and foreign to our natural inclinations, to be sure! But freely given to us by Him, our Advent King and our everlasting Lord, Christ Jesus!
We dare not forsake or refuse so great a gift as He comes bringing, but rather we are privileged to daily put on His image, living always to His eternal glory, even that of Christ Jesus, who has by His grace, put on His heavenly ledger our names for all eternity.
All glory be His, and all joy is ours! In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for November 28, 2004
Topic: Why Do Christians Confess that Jesus was Born of the Virgin Mary?ANNOUNCER: And now , Pastor Ken Klaus answers questions from listeners, I’m Mark Eischer. Today’s question is: “Why do Christians insist that Jesus was born of the ‘virgin’ Mary?” I think what the questioner really wants to know is, why was it necessary for Jesus to be born of a virgin?
KLAUS: Another one of those questions easy to ask, hard to answer.
ANNOUNCER: But is that because there isn’t an answer?
KLAUS: No, it’s because there are so many answers. I’m going to have to be content to just touch upon a few of them. Jesus had to be born of a virgin because that was the prophecy. In his Gospel, Matthew repeats the words taken from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. Centuries before Jesus was born, under the Holy Spirit’s direction, the prophet wrote, “Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Is. 7:14). If Jesus hadn’t been born of a virgin, He would not have fulfilled the prophecy. If Jesus hadn’t fulfilled this Old Testament prophecy, one of many, He couldn’t be our Savior.
ANNOUNCER: Now some who doubt the virgin birth say that this original text could also be translated as “young woman” instead of “virgin.”
KLAUS: Yes, there are a number of replies to that. Here’s one that’s easiest to understand. What would you think if the text had read, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: a ‘young woman’ will be with child, and will give birth to a son, as we’ll call him Immanuel.” Would you be impressed if you heard that happening?
ANNOUNCER: Certainly not. That happens every day, and it wouldn’t be much of a sign or a miracle.
KLAUS: And God wanted to give us something unique, something special, something that would not go unnoticed. The Lord wanted people to know and to be able to identify the Messiah when He was born. As the angels said, this was good news of great joy. It had to be something the world had never seen before, or since.
ANNOUNCER: I understand that, but Pastor, you said there were a number of other reasons why Jesus had to be born of a virgin?
KLAUS: There are. If Jesus was going to be the Savior of the world, it was absolutely necessary for Him not to have a human father. If Jesus had had a human father, along with having a human mother, He would have been just regular person, like all the rest of us. He would also have been, like all of us, a sinner. Mark, sinners can’t be Saviors.
ANNOUNCER: So as we confess in the Creed, Jesus was “conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary,” which sets Him apart from our humanity, at the same time that it connects Him to our humanity.
KLAUS: Because Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, it also means that He was God’s Son. It means that Jesus was born true God and true Man, but without sin.
ANNOUNCER: By the way, while we’re talking about this subject, many Muslims would say that Mary is one of the persons of the Trinity.
KLAUS: They do. When we talk about Islam and its idea of the Trinity, it’s kind of like asking a stranger who doesn’t know you, to draw a picture of your family and it kind of comes out distorted to where you can hardly recognize who’s who. Islam does not acknowledge the Triune God. What you described is actually their perception of what they think Christians believe. They think Christians worship three gods – Father, Son, and Mary. In truth, we worship one God with three Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
ANNOUNCER: Getting back to our question for today, you said Jesus was true Man and true God; why is that so important?
KLAUS: It’s important because Jesus had to be truly human. If He was going to take our place under the Law of God, He had to be truly human so He could be tempted. He had to be fully human so He could live for us, suffer for us, die for us; to be our Perfect Substitute and stand in our place.
ANNOUNCER: And true God?
KLAUS: He had to be true God so He could resist those temptations. He had to be true God so He could conquer sin, death, and the power of the devil. He had to be true God so that after His sacrifice for us was complete, He could rise again on the third day. The fact that Jesus was true Man and true God makes our faith unique. Every other religion of the world says sinful humankind has to work its way up to heaven. Christianity alone says that God came down to us, and did all the work for us so that all who believe might be forgiven and therefore be saved. Jesus, true Man, true God, pays the entire price for us once and for all.
ANNOUNCER: This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.