Lutherna View of Church and State

SANCTIFICATION

2007-2008

LESSON SEVEN

I. Dying to Live (p. 146)

A. Gal 6:14.

B. Life under the cross.

1. Sounds a bit morbid.

2. Sounds like God wants masochists.

C. Cross

1. There was nothing pleasurable about the cross.

2. Was an instrument of humiliation, torture and death.

3. Yet: Php 2:8,9.

4. By His cross, He has won the victory!

5. Christian finds joy in the cross.

a. Not because of pain.

b. Found in the grace and mercy of God.

c. Here, God revealed the fullness of His love for us.

d. In our crosses, He draws us closer to Him.

D. “New Evangelicals” have difficulty with suffering and hardship.

1. If looking only “on the heights”, will miss God where He is usually at work - in the depths.

2. Pain and death are precisely the locations where God is often to be found in the word of His gospel.

II. Suffering (p. 147)

A. Must be clear: there is no virtue in suffering.

B. Humiliation and pain earn us no favor with God.

C. He takes no delight in our sorrow.

D. There is joy under the cross because that’s where we meet God.

E. His love and grace can only be received when our hands are emptied of all idols and our sinful pride is crushed.

F. The cross is the scalpel of His mercy.

1. He uses pain to crucify our sinful nature.

2. Gives us real life instead.

3. The life we received by our baptism into Christ.

III. Conclusion (p. 147)

A. Our sufferings

1. Are signs of God’s presence in our lives.

2. But are no more convincing to our reason than was His cross.

3. But they are no less real.

4. Those who understand the sign of Jonah.

a. recognize the cross as a badge of honor.

b. it is the mark of God’s ownership.

5. Ac 5:41.

6. Gal 6:17.

B. Want to keep your life, you lose it.

C. In losing your life, you win.

D. In dying, you live.

E. Is not a lifestyle; it is actually Christ’s life.

F. This life not hypothetical; it is an actual reality.

1. Offered us in the person of Jesus Christ, His Son.

2. He still comes to our world today as He did in the incarnation and the cross:

a. through channels which are tangible.

b. though hidden and lowly.

3. We call these channels the sacraments.