Listen here.
Welcome to
Devotions for Worship where we meditate on the appointed Scripture readings for
the upcoming Sunday. I am Pastor Eric Tritten from Gloria Dei Lutheran Church
in Hudson, OH.
Thank you for
being with me today.
Just as the
Gospel lesson revealed Jesus’ identity as the Christ, and as the Old Testament
showed us how God changed Abram’s name and changed his identity, our epistle
lesson speaks to our identity without Christ in our lives, and the new identity
we have in Christ.
The Epistle
lesson for the 2nd Sunday of Lent is Romans 5:1-11, and I will be
reading from the English Standard Version translation.
The Reading:
Romans 5:1-11 (ESV)
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have
also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice
in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our
sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and
endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and
hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our
hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
6 For
while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7
For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-- though perhaps for a good
person one would dare even to die-- 8 but God shows his love for us
in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since,
therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved
by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we
were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are
reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we
also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now
received reconciliation.
Comments
Did you notice
the way this passage describes us before we had Jesus in our lives? It calls us
weak, ungodly, sinners, and enemies of God. Those are pretty depressing
descriptions! However, these are not really the passages focal points. The main
message of the passage is what we are now. It is important to remember what we
were before we had faith in Jesus so that we can remember how incredible of a
miracle God has made in our lives.
From weak,
ungodly sinners, we have now become those who are justified by faith. From
enemies of God we now have peace with God. And with peace we gain access by
faith into this grace in which we stand. We know what we were, and now we have
hope and life through faith in Jesus. We stand before God in peace and filled
with hope because we believe Jesus has justified us by his blood. He has
reconciled us to God, even as He lives and reigns to all eternity.
When we know what
we’ve been and what God has done about it, it gives us courage to face the life
we live right now. Are we suffering in faith? God uses suffering to produce
endurance. He uses endurance to produce character; that is, he uses endurance
to shape us into the kind of people He wants us to be, the kind of people who
reflect His truth, goodness, love and mercy to the world. Character produces
hope as it returns, over and over again, to the reason behind our character:
our faith in Christ. And hope does not put us to shame because our hope is not
pie-in-the-sky, but it is confidence in Christ who revealed the love of God to
us and gave us His Holy Spirit.
Meditate on the
today: Suffering. Endurance. Character. Hope. And hope does not put us to
shame. What are you suffering or enduring for Jesus’ sake? Where is your
character being formed? You can have hope because God is in all of it and He
has reconciled you to Himself in Christ.
Prayers
O God, while we
lived as Your enemies, You gave Jesus to die to save us from Your wrath. You
raised Him from the dead, and in His life we are reconciled with You. Thank You
for giving us standing before You in Your wondrous grace. Forgive us for the
times that we return to our weakness, and our ungodly, sinful, nature. Work
through the suffering in our lives to produce endurance, character, and hope so
that we may rejoice through our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Memory Verse:
Joel 2:13 - Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious
and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents
over disaster. (Joel 2:13 ESV)
Thank you so much
for using Devotions for Worship, I pray that our time together has blessed you
and given you something to meditate on – some reminder of God’s grace to rattle
around in your brain – for the rest of the day.
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favor? If you got something out of this devotional time, would you like and/or
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others.
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God bless you!
Comments