Together Again

By Dr.Arthur A. Just, Jr.

Life is all about relationships. That’s the way God created us—to live in communities. That’s because God Himself is one God, a community of persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit both created the world and redeemed it.

One of the core values at the time of our Lord was holiness—the holiness of God. The most holy place in Israel was the temple, particularly the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. Here is where God dwelled, which is why all the people yearned to come to the temple.

Many people were not worthy to enter into God’s presence, and God’s presence was not something to mess with. It could be both the source of great blessing or the cause of great harm. People had a healthy fear about entering into God’s presence. They wanted to be worthy before they ventured into the place of God’s holiness.

God’s presence gave people freedom from bondage to a fallen world infected with the virus of sin. They knew that what God created good had suddenly gone wrong and needed to be made right. Only God the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ, was able to make right what had gone wrong, to restore humanity’s broken relationship with God. Human beings were not able on their own to overcome sin, death, and the devil. Only God could make new what had been infected by sin.

God made right what had gone wrong when He sent His Son into this world. Jesus invaded our world, coming from heaven as the Creator to enter His creation as one of us—bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Jesus was made man to redeem us from our sins and show us what God had created us to be—free from sin as His forgiven people.

God made right what had gone wrong once-and-for-all through the suffering and death of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Only through the shedding of His blood is Jesus able to make right what is wrong—to grant us the forgiveness of sins. Only through the shedding of blood is the broken relationship between God and man restored to what God intended it to be.

God made right what had gone wrong through the resurrection of Jesus Christ who brings all of creation with him when He rises from the dead on the third day. Jesus’ resurrection declares to the world that all things have been made new. Jesus shows us in His resurrected body what we will one day be in our resurrected bodies.

Through water, Word, and Spirit, we are joined to Jesus Christ and to His death and resurrection. In baptism, God makes right what has gone wrong in us by washing our sins away. In baptism, we die with Christ and rise with Him to a life that never ends. Now Christ dwells in us, and we dwell in him because we are the temple of His holiness.

The church, the body of Christ, is where our relationship to God and to one another is most intimate. The church gathers around the bodily presence of Christ in Word and Sacrament. Jesus is present in His Word that calls people to repentance and forgives them their sins. Jesus is present in the Lord’s Supper where God’s people eat Christ’s body and drink His blood for the forgiveness of sins. This is the place of God’s holiness, the new temple in the new Jerusalem.

In our worship of Word and Sacrament, Christ is present with His gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation. The gift of forgiveness releases us from the bondage of sin. The gift of life is the union of our life to the life of Christ that knows no end. The gift of salvation is rescue from our enemies of sin, death, and the devil. Relationships with God and one another are only possible where there is the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus.

We worship to receive these gifts from Christ’s presence and respond to him in love, with thanksgiving and praise. We respond to God and to our neighbor in love by confessing our sins to him, singing hymns, confessing our faith, praying for church and world, and offering him our thanks. We respond to our neighbors who do not know Christ by bringing them into the presence of Christ in worship so they might receive the gifts. Only here will their broken relationship with God be restored.

In our worship, heaven and earth are joined together in the bodily presence of Jesus. Wherever Jesus is, there is heaven and all its gifts. In Christ, we worship with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. At the Lord’s table, our fellowship in Christ joins us with all the saints in heaven and on earth in singing praises to the Lamb. In worship, there is life eternal because of our relationship with God –Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Eternal life is all about relationships. That’s the way God created us. To live with him forever.

Dr. Arthur A. Just, Jr. is dean of the Chapel and professor of exegetical theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.