This Life Only

If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

Being baptized into Christ Jesus is a “both/and” condition, for you have His blessing in this life as He carries you through all troubles in love, and in the life to come as He carries you into the bosom of the Father where eternal joys are found.

Following his conversion, the Apostle Paul lived day by day with his eye on the goal of eternal life. It was this hope that drove him forward in such devotion that he underwent severe suffering at the hands of men, and yet endured with love and grace, being at peace with all men.

The separation between life in this world and life in the world to come can be a difficult thing; in fact it is impossible without the grace of God in Christ Jesus. It is your nature to be drawn toward the things of this world as if they are permanent; as if they are the source of true joy and satisfaction.

Only as the Gospel of your dear Lord Jesus Christ rings into your ears - how He suffered and died and rose again for your sin and the sin of the world – does the prospect of enduring this life patiently and looking forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come have any appeal.

This appeal is to your new nature as Christ Jesus abides in you, urging you to flee from sin and seek asylum in His merits and righteousness, which can never be taken away. This righteousness avails before God your Father in heaven to the extent both body and soul are preserved for eternity.

The full nature and extent of your salvation is not merely a pie-in-the-sky platitudinous undertaking, but a reality that draws you bodily from earth below to heaven above, because it is your bodily Christ – your risen and living Christ in the Flesh - Who feeds you with His own body and blood in the sacrament of the altar, Who is ever-so-patiently refining and forgiving.

Because the joys of this life are often overwhelming, it may at times seem as if you would rather stay here forever. But those joys are only a small foretaste of the true joy that awaits you. You are not counted among those who are most to be pitied, but among those who are most blessed. You will be delivered from all evil as you abide in Christ.
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The Ready Ear

It will also come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.

Because Christ Jesus is risen from the dead, all answer to prayer is made, even for those things you fail to ask or think. The heart of your Creator has always been such that He would go ahead of you, making all things new before you even knew your need.

When Jesus taught among his earthly disciples as we read in the Holy Gospels, He taught them in particular what to ask as He taught them the Our Father. Every petition of this prayer, which addresses our every need in this life, has been answered before you ask, because you are intimately joined to Him Who asks on your behalf before the Father.

It is the deepest desire of your Creator to reveal Himself to you as merciful and kind; your only Hope; your utmost Good; your Savior. He does this as His Word sounds out into your ears, pure and unadulterated in itself, but subject to questioning only because your old Adam is not about to give up.

And yet, before you could even ask your old Adam to give up and go away, your Father in Heaven drowned him in the One Holy Baptism sanctified by the Word of Christ. Before He baptized and taught you in the Faith, He saw to it that the work of Christ Jesus would be complete on your behalf, being crucified, arisen, and ascended so that He might be present in His Baptism for you in every need according to His glorified flesh.

Your prayer is heard while you are still speaking, because it is Your Creator and Redeemer who taught you to pray, having gone before you to win the prize of salvation before you entered the world to live out your days under the sun.

Consider how it is that Your Father in heaven has already answered your prayer:

He has made known to you His Name in truth and purity.
He has brought His kingdom to you in Holy Baptism.
He works His will in and through you despite your weakness and sin.
He provides you richly with daily bread.
He forgives all your trespasses and sets your heart at peace.
He leads you in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.
He has already placed you in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, thus delivering you from the evil one.

All this is accomplished for you because Christ Jesus is risen from the dead, and live and rules ot all eternity for the sake of His dear children, among whom you are counted.
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Treated and Released

But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing and her people for gladness.

It is with the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead in view that your Creator spoke through the prophet Isaiah saying that He creates Jerusalem for rejoicing. Without this resurrection there is no joy or gladness. With it there is joy and gladness that lasts forever, for in Christ Jesus your sin has been treated to its just deserts, you have been released from bondage to it, and your body is no longer subject to permanent decay.

The effect of sin and death, were it not for the saving work of God in Christ Jesus for you, would have consequences of permanent sorrow and banishment from the Garden of Paradise. With this resurrection, however, the Garden of Paradise is wide open, because Christ Jesus made substitute for your flesh of death, was crucified to make payment for it, and is now risen to intercede for you and bring you into this new creation through His living flesh and blood.

It is true enough that in this Jerusalem there remains a remnant of sorrow. You still experience pangs that, at times, cause you to wonder whether this could possibly be true. The cross is like that. There are matters attendant to your own sinful flesh that still need discipline and refinement. But even in these matters, because you are joined to Christ Jesus by faith, by His Word in Holy Baptism and Holy Supper, He is always at work in you to will and to do His good pleasure.

This Jerusalem, the Church of rejoicing, is His creation, not yours. Because it is His creation it is true and everlasting. As He teaches you in love, the reality of this new creation is what causes you to rejoice greatly, precisely because you know for certain that what you see and experience of the sinful flesh is only that which is being cast off and put away, drowned as it were, so that the new creation may spring forth.

The proof of this new creation is the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead, which has been testified to in word and deed from the time the first man, Adam, fell into sin, to this very day. It has been witnessed and testified to directly by those who saw with their own eyeballs that Christ Jesus did not remain sealed in a tomb. It was also witness directly and abundantly that He shed real blood, and at the end said, “It is finished.”

“He is not here. He is risen.” Because of this you may walk even through the valley of the shadow of death and rejoice, because He goes before you, and with you, into this new creation made for your rejoicing.
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