[AI translation] The most significant event in the life of our congregation in recent times was without doubt the evangelisation that took place here in the church a week ago. We heard a lot of very good preaching, the blessing of God flowed among us with truly great abundance, the seed of the Word fell with unspeakable richness into so many human hearts. A week has passed since then, and now we can measure: what has been the result of the evangelization week in our practical life? Do you feel that you have had such a truly spiritual bath? Has something happened to you, in you, that others can see in you? Has the grace of God that has been spoken of here for a week, and that is spoken of again every Sunday, really reached your heart? Which is represented in the communion?In practical terms, this is the question: is the life of a believer any different from that of a non-believer? Because if there is no such difference, then there is little point in all this religion, faith, prayer, divine revelation, then the whole thing is just a fruitless spiritual indulgence, a spiritual lusting after, which is not worth much. Well then: according to the Bible there is a difference! And it is precisely on this difference that you can measure what evangelism means to you, and even whether you are a redeemed child of God or whether you imagine yourself to be one. You know what Nietzsche famously said: if Christianity were true, Christians would have to look much more redeemed. The truth of this saying is that if you are a truly saved Christian, you must look truly saved!
1) So there is a difference. First, there is an invisible difference. Our Word says it this way: "You are no longer under the law, but under grace!" What this means is that there has been a change in man's legal position vis-à-vis God: he has undergone a judgment at which, though he was found very guilty, yet quite incomprehensibly and illogically the judgment was acquittal. The sinner who deserved the most severe punishment was granted a full amnesty, full pardon, full forgiveness - and this forgiveness means that God forgot everything for him, the sinner, because the merit of Jesus had completely erased from his memory everything he had ever done! So the position, the status of the believer in Jesus has changed: he is no longer under accusation, no longer in a litigious relationship with the Lord, but under an eternal acquittal! And he lives! If I am a believer in Jesus, then the condemnation of Jesus on the cross means for me a full and final acquittal of all charges. From the accusation of my conscience too. It is not because God or my conscience no longer accuses me, because there is nothing to accuse me of - oh, there is - but it is all forgiven! I am absolved, my guilt is no longer on me, but on Jesus!
Knowest thou for thyself with certainty that this acquittal is also for thee? It is an invisible difference between a believer and a non-believer, but it is essential! In fact, this is where faith, living faith, the believer's life, begins! It is there that something happens inside you, from within, invisibly! Your legal standing with God changes, because you believe that Jesus' condemnation of you is an acquittal from the most severe judgment, and that Jesus' death is a warrant for eternal life. Let me add, if you have not been able to accept this before, you can believe it at this moment, because, as I know from experience, there is no sin so great, and there is no sin so great for you, that God's grace is not even greater. There is not a vile, hateful sin, not even for you, that God's forgiveness cannot digest! All I can say is that whoever believes in Jesus Christ in this way is subject to what Paul says: "You are no longer under the law, but under grace." Whoever believes in Christ crucified and risen is no longer under the law, but under grace! That is the first, crucial, big difference between the believer and the non-believer! It is invisible!
2) But it also has visible consequences, consequences that affect the whole life, every manifestation of life. For - and this must be emphasised for the second time, on the basis of our Word - it does not follow from being under grace that I can continue to live as I have done up to now, that is, up to my neck in my old sins, since God forgives me anyway, oh no, indeed! The fact that God has not punished me, but has given me grace, does not make me irresponsible and frivolous, but makes me truly responsible and strict with myself! Thus says Paul: "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound the more? Far be it from us: we who are dead to sin, how shall we yet live in it?" By grace God makes a man a prisoner, a captive. For what is grace? Undeserved love! And do you know what disciplining, binding, imprisoning power love has? Far greater than anger, than punishment, or severity. It is recorded of Vrede Matild, the angel of Finnish prisons, that she once wanted to visit a prisoner in her cell who was almost furious in his despair. She was begged not to expose herself to the animal brutality that such a visit could entail. But he went in anyway. No sooner had she set foot in the cell than the prisoner lunged at her with some horrific howling profanity and pushed the frail woman out of the cell so hard that she slammed into the wall on the other side of the corridor. But Matild Vrede, as soon as she recovered, smiled and said back to the furious prisoner: "I'll be back tomorrow. They wanted to beat the prisoner with iron, but Matild wouldn't let them. And the next day, when he rejoined her, the tamed prisoner was waiting, sweeping up the stone of his cell with his own hands, spreading his handkerchief on the dirty seat and apologising with blushing shame for his behaviour of the day before. He was quite disarmed and captured by an undeserved, incomprehensible love!
Even more so with the love of God. For him who has once experienced the greatness of God's grace, this undeserved love becomes the supreme guiding and disciplining factor for the rest of his life. It is said that once beaten, he is no longer the man he was. I was told this by a friend of mine who was once well beaten up in the Nazi world. If the man who was once beaten is no longer the man he was, even then the man who has been replaced by another man, another man hanged, another man executed: that man can no longer be the man he was - he must become another man. And we are all such people, who have been replaced by someone else, by someone else beaten, by someone else hanged, by someone else executed: Jesus! This fact must make us different! If there is one thing that motivates us to do all good and to avoid all evil, it is this incomprehensible great love. It is precisely by forgiving him that God best disciplines the believer in him, and by reminding him: 'Man, I have already forgiven you this or that sin, how can you still live in it?' He has no greater sorrow than to see that he has again offended the One he loves so much! Well, then, in the midst of your temptations, of your physical and spiritual struggles, think of the grace you have received: you will see what a power it gives you to do differently, to say differently, to feel differently than before!
3) Now we are talking about something quite practical, something that is very much visible in your outward behaviour. Something has happened in the believer, something mysterious, which Paul expresses in the Word he reads, "You have died to sin, but you have lived to God!" A mystical death and resurrection takes place in the believer in Christ. Look, Paul says: "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death: that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also might walk in newness of life. For if by the likeness of his death we have been made one with him, we shall certainly be also by the likeness of his resurrection." In other words, Jesus draws us into his death and resurrection. Jesus' death and resurrection happened not only for us, but also on our behalf, on our behalf as well. Somewhat like - forgive the metaphor - when the Hungarian national football team wins against a foreign team. We who did not play, and perhaps did not even see the match, say that we won, right? We won, and we weren't even there. Because they won on our behalf, their victory is our victory! So Jesus also died and rose again on our behalf, on our behalf. Jesus not only died in my place to save me from eternal death, from damnation, but in His crucified body, as it were, my old man died, the one who was a slave to sin with all its good and good, ugly and bad qualities, and so by dying with Christ we are freed from sin. Like a slave: when he dies, he is freed from all the tyranny of his former master. A dead man can no longer be ruled. He is dead. He can no longer serve his tyrannical master, sin. The man under grace has died with Jesus to sin, to Satan, to death! He has nothing more to do with them! He is dead!
And he is risen: together with Christ again, to a new life! To a life pleasing to God, helping people, serving people. And this is not an exaggeration, not an empty phrase, but a mysterious reality. Look, the prodigal son, for example, at the moment he was heading for home, was really dead to a life among pigs: something that had hitherto drawn him to a frivolous, futile life, that something died in him. Reaching men bear very happy witness to this death. A man, who had also abused the patience and fidelity of his wife, said that when he received pardon from the Lord for his many heinous sins, instead of punishment, he was astonished to find that, with the acceptance of grace, that something died in him which had been living under the spell of fornication and could not escape. Now he was suddenly set free without having to struggle for it. Another man was addicted to drink. His situation was becoming very tragic. Once the grace of God took hold of him, he came to know Jesus, and miraculously he testified that the feeling that kept him craving the drink, that kept him addicted to it, had died... Now he doesn't even have to struggle against the desire, because there is no desire, it is gone from him. Like when someone dies, the person who wanted the drink is gone. So Paul says: "our old man is crucified with him..." Now a man is free to live for God without any bondage! For the glory of God and the good of his neighbour! New life!
The only problem is that we dare not give ourselves so truly to the death and resurrection of Christ! We dare not draw the ultimate consequences of our faith in Christ. We dare not "die" with Christ! Our old man is still very much alive, and until then our Christian life will always be a whining, powerless one. For only when the I, the great I, is no longer alive, dead, can Christ live in me! This was Paul's experience when he said, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me!"
So what do we do? This is what Paul says: "...consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in our Lord Jesus Christ" - That is, consider the death and resurrection of Christ, and consider yourselves as having died and risen in Him, and now living in Him with unhindered, full devotion to God. As long as you look to Jesus in faith and look only to Him, you can truly see yourself as having died to sin and been raised to a new life, because until then you have! Until then there is truly a mystical death and resurrection happening in you! It is not self-suggestion, it is not conceit, it is happy reality! Believe in it, see yourself in the death and resurrection of Christ. Then you will see the difference between your old life and your new life!
If your heart is ready for death and resurrection with Christ, then the evangelization and the Lord's Supper were not in vain, you can now say with calm joy, together with the first verse of Canticle 426:
I have taken up my cross
And for thee I leave all.
You are all I have, I am an orphan,
I am a heart without a home.
I gave desire and purpose to the past,
I have no more blind hope,
Yet I remain a rich gentleman:
God and heaven are mine.
Amen!
Date: 13 May 1962.
Lesson
Róm 6,1-14