Tomorrow brings us to the powerful words the Holy Spirit inspired and worked through Saint Paul to write in Galatians 2:20 and 3:13.

Have you ever noticed that some of the most important things that are also popularly known, are frequently misunderstood?

Let me give you a rather innocuous example: BMW…we see this on thousands of cars (fairly expensive ones) all around us. What does it mean? Answer: Bavarian Motor Works. Did you know that?

There are many examples of this sort of thing. We hear words, ideas and concepts and “know” them in terms of having heard them frequently, but it is easy for the actual meaning to get by us.

Tomorrow we will give clarity to this word: faith.

What is that? The word of course is used ALL of the time. We hear it constantly. But what is faith?

Needless to say that since the Word of God teaches that faith is necessary to be saved from sin and necessary to have eternal life with God, we should be crystal clear about it. In tomorrow’s sermon you will be.

As I teach about it, I will also present one of the FANTASTIC ways to understand the significance of the saving Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ for us: something called “the wonderful exchange.” What is that? You will be glad you came to church! Bring a friend so that your friend can learn about “the wonderful exchange.”

Finally, come receive the medicine of immortality, that is the Lord’s Supper and be strengthened and renewed in the saving faith.

I hope to see you in God’s house. Let’s keep up our worship attendance as summer vacation does not mean vacation from the Word and Sacrament.

Here is an excerpt from tomorrow’s sermon:

It is one thing to accept that Jesus is real. It is to go further and trust that He is the Savior of sinners. But it is most important that our lives actually enter into His life and that His life actually enters into our lives. Our terrible sin is that we compromise what faith is. We placate ourselves into treating faith like checking off boxes on a form: “Yeah, I believe in Jesus,” as if faith were simply an intellectual exercise. Like playing a game and you come up to the clubhouse and you’re asked the “secret pass word,” and you say, “Jesus” and they let you in. That’s not faith. That’s a game! Faith impacts your life. It changes you. It makes you – by the grace of God – into a different person. Yes, one who still struggles against sin (grant it), but also one who now follows Jesus.

Luther elaborated on such a living faith that does not simply accept and trust, but lives out its relationship with God:
Thus faith is a divine work in us, that changes us and regenerates us of God, and puts to death the old Adam, makes us entirely different men in heart, spirit, mind, and all powers, and brings with it [confers] the Holy Ghost. Oh, it is a living, busy, active, powerful thing that we have in faith, so that it is impossible for it not to do good without ceasing (Triglotta, 941, F.C., Sol. Decl., IV).

Listen to this beautiful commentary from Luther:

“[faith] unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31-32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage…it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his (LW 31:351).”

And it’s here that we finally really begin to understand what makes faith powerful in impacting the lives of weak and helpless sinners: faith is God’s gift to us through the Word and Sacrament that affects what Luther called “the wonderful exchange.”

In Your Service and To Christ’s Glory,

Pastor Espinosa