A prophecy of justification & sanctification for Israel

Posted on May 20, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the week of Easter 6

Ezekiel 36:25-27

Israel’s return from captivity in Babylon is prophesied in Ezekiel chapter 36. God promises to return them to their land. But He promises to do much more for them than that. This chapter points to some literal fulfillments, but mostly to spiritual fulfillments, talking about sin, and grace, the expansion of Israel in the New Testament era, and all the way into the perfection that awaits after the Day of Judgment. Here, in the three short verses before us, God’s plan is revealed—His plan to turn Israel, finally, into the people they were always meant to be. His plan to justify them, and to sanctify them, by His Son and by His Spirit.

The Son of God, the promised Messiah, is not specifically mentioned in Ezekiel’s words. But He’s there beneath verse 25, together with the Spirit of God: Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. The whole picture of sprinkling unclean people with clean water in order to cleanse them comes from the Law of Moses. That’s how a ceremonially unclean person was to be ceremonially cleansed. If, for example, a person touched a dead body, the Law considered that person ceremonially unclean until he was sprinkled with the water of purification. And if a person wasn’t sprinkled with that water and tried to approach God’s tabernacle in his unclean state, he was to be cut off from Israel, permanently excluded from the people of God.

If touching a dead body made a person ceremonially unclean before God, how much more did idolatry make a person truly unclean! There’s nothing morally, inherently wrong with touching a dead body. That was a ceremonial picture God used to teach Israel about uncleanness. The true uncleanness that makes a person unable to stand in God’s presence is sin, and idolatry is the chief sin from which all other sins flow. And the Israelites had been guilty of it in spades. So the people didn’t only need to be purified for ceremonial purposes. They needed the forgiveness of sins.

That forgiveness could only be purchased through a true atoning sacrifice. Not by the ceremonial sacrifices of animals, but by the actual sacrifice of the Substitute that was worth the lives of every sinner. Only the sacrifice of the Son of God could actually atone for their sins.

And only the preaching of the Gospel and the purifying waters of Holy Baptism could apply Christ’s atoning blood to those who needed God’s forgiveness. As the writer to the Hebrews says, Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. That pure water that actually cleanses our consciences is the water connected to God’s promise, He who believes and is baptized will be saved.

So Ezekiel’s words are a prophecy both of the sacrificial death of the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit’s working, through the Word and through the water of Baptism, to cleanse the Israelites—and all people! —of their idolatry, and of all their sins. It was a prophecy of justification, which would be brought about by the Son of God and by the Spirit of God. Not the justification of the whole nation of Israel, but of those in Israel who would be brought to faith in Christ Jesus. Not of believing Israelites only, but of all sinners who would hear and believe in God’s promise of justification through faith in the Lord Jesus.

That’s what the next verse is talking about: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Israel’s old heart, and your heart and my heart by nature, was made of stone. It didn’t listen to God’s word. It was determined to believe what it wanted to believe, to worship how it wanted to worship, and to pursue every sinful pleasure and every prideful thought. But God promised Israel that He would give them a new heart and a new spirit. Not magically, not by zapping it into them, but through the preaching of His Word, of His Law and His Gospel, He would bring them to repent of their idolatries and all their stubborn rebellion, and to become new people, with new desires, and with a new love—a love for the God who gave His only-begotten Son into death for their sins. In other words, He would create a new man within them.

And that new man who would be created in them would no longer walk according to the flesh, would no longer turn to idols for help, or ignore God’s word and God’s commandments, but would truly love the Lord, love His word, and be eager to walk according to His commandments, as we see in the third verse of tonight’s lesson: I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. What Ezekiel is describing here is what we usually refer to as sanctification, the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work of turning believers into people who lead holy lives, who walk according to God’s commandments. Sanctification always begins simultaneously with justification, and it must continue throughout a person’s life. If it doesn’t, if you don’t want to walk in God’s statutes, if you don’t struggle against the Old Man and his evil desires, if the Spirit of God is not working within you to keep God’s commandments, then you don’t have justifying faith, either. But if you now view sin as something detestable, because God Himself detests it, that’s the work of God’s Spirit within you. If you are determined to please God and not yourself, that’s the work of God’s Spirit within you. If you love the word of God and are eager to submit to it, even though your flesh pushes back against you, that’s the work of God’s Spirit within you.

Again, this is not a promise that every Israelite would be justified and sanctified. Those who didn’t want God’s Spirit dwelling in them would not be forced to become temples of the Holy Spirit, just as those who didn’t want to be baptized wouldn’t be forced into Baptism. What we have here in Ezekiel is a gracious Gospel promise that would be extended to Israel, and beyond Israel, in connection with the coming Christ. It’s a promise of spiritual deliverance of those who were once bound in sin, and of Spirit-worked godliness in those who formerly were ungodly and idolatrous.

And it’s important to notice who is in charge of all this. It’s not you, or I. It’s God who does it to you and for you. It’s God who justifies, on the basis of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. It’s God’s Spirit who converts unbelievers and changes them into believers, who takes sinners and turns them into saints. As for those who remain unconverted and unbelieving, they have only themselves to blame. Because, as Ezekiel prophesies in tonight’s reading, God offered purification and a new spirit to everyone, on the basis of Christ’s atonement, which would also be for everyone. Don’t let God’s promise pass you by! Embrace it, and rejoice in it, in God’s plan to justify you and to sanctify you, by His Son and by His Spirit. Amen.

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Holding out the testimony of the Spirit and apostles

Posted on May 17, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Sunday after Ascension – Easter 6

1 Peter 4:7-11 + John 15:26-16:4

For forty days the Paschal candle was lit during our services here, until it was extinguished this past Thursday when we celebrated Jesus’ ascension into heaven. As I said after the service, it seems a little strange, not having it lit anymore. Imagine how Jesus’ disciples felt, watching Jesus leave them, knowing that they wouldn’t see Him again for the rest of their earthly lives, and then waiting for the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, the Helper who would testify, and also waiting to testify themselves, as Jesus told them they must do—oh, and also waiting to be hated, persecuted, and killed for their testimony, as Jesus told them they would be.

That testimony of the Spirit, and of the apostles, now belongs to us, to the Christian Church that’s built upon it and that still holds it out to the world. Of course, that means that the world’s hatred will also belong to us. But, then, so does the help of the Helper!

But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me, Jesus says.

Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit after His ascension. He would send Him “from the Father,” because that’s how it works in the Holy Trinity. The Spirit proceeds from the Father, but also from the Son, as we confess in the Nicene Creed, in the sense that the Son is responsible for sending Him into the world from the Father. The Spirit’s work is to testify. But this is important: Notice what the content of His testimony is: “He will testify about Me.” The Spirit’s testimony is about Jesus. The Spirit bears witness to what He has seen and heard about Jesus, and, as a Person of the Holy Trinity, the Spirit knows Jesus perfectly. He has testified about Jesus throughout the Old Testament and throughout the New. When He spoke by the prophets in the Old Testament, the focus was always on the coming Christ. Now it’s on the Christ who has come. Any supposed testimony of the Holy Spirit that doesn’t focus on Jesus, or that doesn’t tell the truth about Jesus, isn’t coming from the Holy Spirit, but from an unholy spirit.

How would the Spirit of truth testify about Jesus? He would do it in three ways. First, through signs and wonders and various miracles, starting with the miracles of the Day of Pentecost which we’ll consider next week. It was about Jesus, because those signs were always connected to the apostles’ preaching about Jesus, the message that He was the promised Christ, that He suffered for our sins, that He was raised to life for our justification, that He has ascended on high to reign as King over all things at the Father’s right hand, that He will return one day for judgment. This outward testimony of the Spirit was important as the apostles began to spread the Gospel throughout the world. But it was temporary; that testimony has already been entered into evidence. It’s done.

There is another testimony of the Spirit, in the hearts of the apostles, enabling them to teach (and to write!) about Jesus correctly. He guided them into all truth, as Jesus said He would. He emboldened them to preach the Gospel of Jesus with new-found courage and conviction—just as He had done, by the way, with the Old Testament prophets, as Peter writes: the Spirit of Christ who was in [the prophets] testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

Then there is the testimony of the Spirit in the hearts of the hearers of the Gospel as He works through the preaching of the Word, enabling the hearers to believe and understand the Gospel about Jesus. As Paul writes, No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. And again, The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, enabling us to cry out to God as our dear Father. In the hearts of those who believe the Gospel, the Spirit continues that testimony on a daily basis, urging you to know and to follow Jesus more and more.

But the Spirit doesn’t testify alone, separately from the preached Word. His testimony is always connected with that preaching. Jesus goes on in our Gospel, And you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning. These words aren’t spoken to all people. They’re spoken to the apostles who were literally “with Jesus from the beginning.” Theirs is the eyewitness testimony, the testimony on which the Church is founded, together with that of the Old Testament prophets. And, just like the Old Testament prophets, the apostles recorded for us the very words that the Holy Spirit gave them and has faithfully preserved for us in the holy Bible.

You and I cannot offer that kind of testimony. We were not eyewitnesses to everything Jesus said and did, or to His death, or to His resurrection. We can testify only to the faith that each of us has in that testimony. We can and should tell the world that we have been convinced that the apostles’ testimony is true, that Christ is risen, that Christ is King, and the Christ is returning. But when we invite people to church, we’re not inviting them to come and hear our testimony. We’re holding out to them the testimony of others—of the Holy Spirit, and of the apostles (and prophets). And that testimony is not without power. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

But, it comes at a cost for those who testify and for those who hold out their testimony—a cost that Jesus Himself willingly paid, a cost that He was not about to hide from His apostles. In fact, the persecution of God’s faithful people is actually part of God’s plan for this time in between Jesus’ ascension and His coming at the end of the age, a plan which Jesus revealed ahead of time.

They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is coming, when whoever kills you will think he is rendering service to God. They will do these things because they have not known the Father nor Me.

The Spirit of God who testified in the Old Testament about the coming Christ is the same Spirit who would testify about Christ after He came. That means that the Old Testament Church is really the same Church as the New Testament Church. But, as Jesus predicts here, most of the Jewish people would depart from the true Church by rejecting Him and His apostles after Him, proving that they never really knew God the Father rightly, that their version of the Jewish religion was a sham. And they would keep up the sham. They would keep their synagogues and their temple even after Christ’s resurrection and ascension. They would hold onto the customs and rituals and traditions of the Old Testament. But their Christ-less religion would not tolerate the preachers whom Christ would send out. The synagogues in Israel and in every nation should have naturally turned into Christian churches when the Spirit and the apostles testified there, but instead, the Christ-less Jews would excommunicate the Christian Jews from the synagogues. And they would go further than that. They would persecute and execute the apostles and many who believed the testimony of the apostles, thinking they were serving God as they did it. That’s why, in the book of Revelation, Jesus refers to them as “synagogues of Satan.” Because they weren’t serving God by rejecting Christ or by persecuting His witnesses. Jesus says, They have not known the Father nor Me. They were serving Satan instead.

Now, you and I can’t be put out of the synagogues. We didn’t grow up attending one like the apostles did. (Like Jesus Himself did!) But the testimony about Jesus that we believe, the testimony about Jesus that we hold out to the world still draws hatred from Jews and Gentiles alike.

Are you prepared to be hated? Seriously prepared? Are you ready to say no to your boss when he demands that you speak or act contrary to the word of Christ? Are you ready to lose your job? To lose your possessions? To lose your reputation? To lose your freedom? To lose your life? If not, then you should stop calling Jesus your Lord and your King, because you can’t be His disciple if any of those things come before Him. If you are unwilling to be persecuted and to lose all things for the testimony of Christ, then you have already denied Him before men, and will be denied by Him before His Father in heaven.

Or, are you prepared to lose all those things, but you struggle against the weakness of your flesh that fights so hard to avoid suffering like that? Then be assured that you will have help on the day of decision, when you must give a testimony of your own, knowing it may come at a great cost. The Helper, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit of God Himself lives within every believer, and will be your strength and your help in the day of trouble. Oh, you may still lose it all for Jesus’ sake. But in losing your life for His sake, you will find it! And you will gain far more than you ever gave up.

Who would willingly do such a thing, knowing the consequences that will follow? Only those who believe that Jesus rose from the dead and lives and reigns forever at the Father’s right hand. Only those who believe that heaven is our home and that even death can’t rob us of our eternal life with Christ our Savior, who suffered the loss of everything for us, that we might be saved from sin and death. Only those who know that the consequences of not holding out the testimony about Jesus are far worse than the consequences of holding out that testimony. Because if we don’t hold it out, who will? And if no one does, who can be saved?

It’s a lot to ask, a lot to expect. But you are not alone. You have a divine Helper to guide you, to strengthen you, to comfort you through it all, to testify along with us and to shore up our confession. The Helper has come, and He is still here. And next week we’ll celebrate the day of His coming. May the Helper, the Spirit of truth, grant you all the help you need, to believe in the testimony about the Lord Jesus and to hold it out to the world, with the boldness and confidence of those who truly believe it. Amen.

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Christ is risen. Christ is King.

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Ascension of Our Lord

Acts 1:1-11 + Mark 16:14-20

When doubts assail, when evil appears to triumph, when troubles abound, when the future seems hopeless, there is one short sentence that is able to break through the darkness, if you believe it: “Christ is risen.” Christ, who loved us and died for our sins, is risen from the dead, and lives forevermore. Death is defeated. Sin is atoned for. And life is assured to all who believe. You can always, always find comfort in Christ’s resurrection.

But Christ’s resurrection is only half of the comfort for the Christian. The other half is just as important, and it’s what His ascension into heaven is all about. Yes, Christ is risen. And, a truth that is just as important, Christ is King.

Before His ascension, the King gave His apostles a command, which is stated in various ways by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

In Matthew’s Gospel: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

In Mark’s Gospel, which you heard this evening: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

In Luke’s account from his Gospel: Repentance and remission of sins must be preached in Christ’s name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

And in Luke’s account from Acts 1: You will be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

“Go, preach, teach, baptize, and testify!” Those are the King’s marching orders, to His apostles directly, and then, by extension, to His Church. Not that every member of the Church is told to do these things, but the Church, as it gathers around the ministry of the Word, is to call men, after the apostles, until the end of time, to do these things, each one in the place or the area where the King calls him through the Church. And because the King Himself has commanded it and authorized it, no one on earth has the right to tell them to stop going, preaching, teaching, baptizing, and testifying.

The King also attached a promise to this command. He said to His apostles: You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Ten days from then, to be exact, on the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit would be poured out on them, giving them inner strength, assurance, and guidance to carry out the King’s command. He also attached another promise, as you heard in the Gospel: And these signs will follow those who believe: In my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and the sick will recover. Miraculous outward signs, worked by the Holy Spirit, would accompany the apostles’ preaching among those who would believe. We see some of them already being displayed on the Day of Pentecost, and others throughout the first-century ministry of the apostles. Those signs weren’t meant to be repeated forever. Just until the foundation of the Church was built—on the foundation, St. Paul says, of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.

After giving and repeating His command and His promise over the course of forty days, the risen Christ then took His eleven apostles to the Mount of Olives—the same mount from which He began His Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem, the same mount where the Garden of Gethsemane is located—and was lifted up into the sky, while they were watching, and a cloud took him from their sight. Jesus wanted His apostles to see Him going to the Father, so that they would understand that this leaving was “permanent;” He wouldn’t keep appearing to them, as He had been doing for the past 40 days. The King was going back to the Father’s side in victory, having fulfilled His earthly mission of providing redemption for mankind. But His work for our salvation wasn’t done.

Mark tells us that Jesus ascended and “sat down at the right hand of God.” Paul tells us that the same Father who raised Christ from the dead also seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Christ ascended, not to abandon His church, but to reign over all things for the good of His Church. To be seated at the right hand of the Father is not to be restricted to a physical location, but to be given a position of ultimate power and honor in the heavenly realms, like a king sitting on a throne. And it is a throne, because Christ is King.

What is the King doing from that position of power and honor? Mark’s Gospel mentions one thing: The apostles went forth and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them, confirming the word with the accompanying signs. The Lord Jesus is not absent from His Church. He works with those whom He has sent to preach His Word. In the case of the apostles, it was the Lord Jesus who, by His Holy Spirit, performed those miraculous signs among those who believed. And notice what the signs were for! They were to “confirm the word.” A handful of men, mostly fishermen, sent out into the world couldn’t possibly convince anyone that their teaching was the only true teaching. But the power of the word itself, combined with the Lord’s outward confirmation of His word, brought men all over the world to faith in the Lord Jesus.

Today, the King still works with the preachers, or else no one would believe. His promise was to be with us always, to the very end of the age. It is still He who works through the members of the Church to call men into the preaching office, who guides and teaches them, and who works through their ministry. Wherever the ministry of word and Sacraments is being carried out, Christ, the King, is working. That’s part of His reign.

And wherever people hear and believe the Gospel and are integrated into the Church of Christ, that is where Christ reigns. That is His kingdom. His kingdom is not, has never been, and never will be an earthly kind of kingdom. When the apostles asked, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?, they showed that they still didn’t understand Christ’s kingdom. They still held to the “Jewish opinion” that the Christ would set up an earthly kingdom, whose capital was Jerusalem, that His kingdom was a matter of establishing justice and righteousness among men. But the truth is, Christ’s kingdom is not any earthly government or earthly society. It’s the Christian Church, which is made up of all who believe in Christ Jesus. As Luther puts it in the Catechism: How does God’s kingdom come? When the heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word, and lead godly lives, here in time and there in eternity.

But that’s not to say that Christ doesn’t also rule over the secular kingdoms of the world. He does. But He does it in the hidden ways of God, just as He reigns invisibly even over the devil and his demons so that they cannot do all the harm they wish they could do. The King reigns in the world, not to establish justice on earth, but to preserve His saints even in the midst of injustice, and to build His Church, seeing to it that the Gospel is still being preached, in spite of the devil’s opposition and interference, and that the souls who will believe it are still hearing the Gospel and still being served by it, in spite of the world’s desire to snuff it out.

And if the King reigns over the world that hates Him, how much more zealously does He reign over those who love Him, in the lives of each one of His kingdom-subjects, whom He has made members of His own body, for His beloved Christians—mediating for you, interceding for you, advocating for you at the Father’s right hand, justifying you, sanctifying you, preserving you, and guiding you, from the cradle to the grave, and to the life that awaits after that.

So when doubts assail, when evil appears to triumph, when troubles abound, when the future seems hopeless, remember the two short sentences that will shatter all the darkness around you: Christ is risen. And Christ is King. Long may He live! And long live all the subjects of His kingdom! Amen.

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In the day of trouble, pray!

Posted on May 10, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Easter 5

James 1:22-27 + John 16:23-30

What do you do when you have troubles, or are in trouble? What do you do when things are falling apart, and all appears hopeless? What do you do when you have some great need? There are two things a Christian should always do in such times, and sometimes there’s a third. The first thing is to turn to God’s Word, both reading it and hearing it preached. The second thing is to turn to God in prayer. Pray to your Father in heaven, which is the theme of this Sunday in the Church year. The third thing, if it’s available, is to do something about your trouble. If you need a job, don’t just read and pray. Go look for a job! If you’re hungry, don’t just read and pray. Eat something, if you can! If you’re injured, don’t just read and pray. Seek medical attention! Sometimes there are things you can do about your troubles. But often times there isn’t much you can do about them. There are some problems that you can’t fix. And so you’re left with the first two things, which are very powerful things. Let your troubles drive you back to, into God’s Word. And then turn to God in prayer.

What is prayer? Christian prayer, Biblical prayer, is talking to God, pouring out your heart to God, calling upon God for help in the day of trouble, whatever the trouble may be, asking God for the things you need. We begin every Sunday service with a prayer, an invocation, calling upon the name of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—to receive our worship, to hear our prayers, and to bless our hearing of His Word. Prayer is only and can only be directed toward God, because prayer presupposes that God knows you, whoever you are, and can actually hear you, wherever you are, and that He can hear and attend to, not only you and your prayer, but every human being who is praying at the exact same time. Only God, who has the divine attributes of omniscience and omnipresence, can do such a thing.

Who can pray? Not just anyone. The one who prays to a false god provokes the true God’s wrath. The one who prays while doubting that God hears, or while doubting God’s goodness, cannot actually pray. As James says in his epistle, If any of you (that is, you believers in Jesus) lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

So who can actually pray? Only the one who knows and who believes in the true God. Which is the same thing as to say, only the one who believes that God the Father sent His only-begotten Son Jesus into human flesh, to redeem mankind from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Only the one who believes in Jesus, who died for us on the cross, and rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, back to the Father’s side. Only the one who uses Christ as our Mediator before the Father’s throne and trusts that He will hear and help. To everyone else, the Father holds up His hand and says, “I will not hear you, apart from My Son, because you are a sinner. But through Him, I will hear you, even though you are a sinner, because, through faith in Him, I account you to not be a sinner. Approach Me through Him, and you will always have My ear!”

Why? Because the Father himself loves you, Jesus says to His disciples, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God. The word for “love” in this verse is not the love God has for all men, the sincere devotion He has toward all men, desiring their salvation. No, the word for “love” here is the love of friendship, of fellowship, of common interests and common likes. The Father will hear the prayers of those who love Jesus, because He loves and accepts them as His own dear children for Jesus’ sake.

So ask!, Jesus says. Pray to the Father and ask for help in My name, and you will receive. You will receive exactly the help you need, even if it’s not exactly the specific help you asked for.

And how do we pray in Jesus’ name? It starts with using Christ as your Mediator, going to the Father through Him, trusting that the Father will hear you, not because you have earned His favor, but for Christ’s sake, because Christ has earned His favor, and His ear, for you.

Then it means to pray as Jesus prayed, trusting in the Father’s love, trusting in the Father’s goodness, trusting in the Father’s wisdom, trusting in the Father’s plan. Ask for the things you need in the day of trouble, in the day of sorrow, and trust that your Father cares and knows how best to send help, and that you will receive from Him the best help, the best fulfillment, even if the fulfillment looks different than what you specifically asked for. Trust, and also, submit to God’s care, as Jesus also did in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He prayed, “O Father, take this cup from Me! Yet not My will, but Your will be done.”

So. Are you in trouble, or do you have troubles? Pray! Are you sad, or lonely? Pray! Are you depressed, or confused about the future? Pray! Do you have a need? Pray! Are you thankful? Pray. Have you sinned? Pray, in Jesus’ name. Moms and dads, pray for your children! Children, pray for your mom and dad! Husbands and wives, pray for each other. Church members, pray for your fellow church members, and for all Christians everywhere, and for the non-Christian, too, who has no right or ability to pray for himself.

And, of course, if there is something you can do about your situation, take the strength and the wisdom God will give and do it. And, of course, don’t neglect the reading and the hearing of God’s Word. That should go without saying. Prayer that is not grounded in who God is, what He has done, what He has commanded, and what He has promised, as revealed in Scripture, is prayer without a foundation. But combine your study of Scripture with prayer. And you will have a powerful remedy in the day of trouble. Call upon Me in the day of trouble, says the LordGod. I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me. Amen.

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God reconciles the world through the ministry of the Spirit

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the week of Easter 4

2 Corinthians 5:14-21

We’ve been talking in Bible class recently about atonement and reconciliation. Well, we have both of them before us this evening in St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian Christians. “One died for all.” That’s atonement. “Be reconciled to God!” That’s, obviously, reconciliation. And what is it that ties the one to the other, the bridge between the atonement Christ made on the cross and the reconciliation of the sinners for whom Christ died? The answer? The office of the holy ministry, the ministry of reconciliation—the same ministry we talked about on Sunday morning, where Jesus promised the help of the Holy Spirit, who would work effectively through His chosen ministers. Let’s take a brief look at these verses, where we find that God reconciles the world through the ministry of the Spirit.

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died. And He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. The “us” here is Paul and the other ministers of the Gospel. What compels them to preach? What compels them to face one hardship after another, many of which Paul lists in this epistle? What compels them to even risk their lives, and give up their lives, in order to keep going out and preaching the Gospel? “The love of Christ compels us,” Paul says. If Christ loved the world enough to die for the world, then clearly He also wants the world to hear the Gospel and be reconciled to Him. And if Christ loved us enough to die for us, and if He has also made us alive by sending His Spirit, in the Gospel to bring us to faith, then how can we not face the hardships that go along with the ministry? How can we not take the Gospel to the world? How can we not preach? We must do these things! Because we no longer live for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and rose again. Every Christian must live for Christ, in every vocation. And for a minister whom Christ has sent out to preach, living for Him means carrying out his God-given ministry in the world, no matter the cost.

Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. In other words, since Christ died for all, and we live to serve Christ, we don’t care about external, fleshly attributes. It doesn’t matter if a person is Jewish or Gentile, old, young, rich, poor, male, or female. It doesn’t matter what country a person is from, or what the color of his skin happens to be, or what language he happens to speak. These are all earthly things, fleshly things. And we who are in Christ, we believers, and, in Paul’s case, we ministers, refuse to think of people that way anymore, as if those fleshly things were their most important quality. The most important thing now is being “in Christ,” which is what happens when a person hears the Gospel, repents of his sins, and believes in Christ. He is grafted into Christ, baptized into Christ. He is a “new creation.” All the old things about that person have passed away, not into non-existence, but into non-importance. Christ died for all, made atonement for every human being, and wants all men to be saved. That’s, by far, the thing that matters most about any person.

Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. All these things come from God—the atonement Christ made, bringing people to spiritual life through faith, and remaking that person into a new creation. The apostles themselves were among the first to receive those gifts. Paul isn’t speaking about all people in this verse; he’s speaking about the order of things for himself and the other apostles and ministers. God “has reconciled us to Himself and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” The same ones who were reconciled to God have been given this ministry of reconciling others to God. Paul’s own story is well-known. He was an enemy of God when he was persecuting the Church. But God found him on that road to Damascus and converted him, bringing him to repentance and faith in Christ, and having him baptized by Ananias. And then God immediately made him a minister to the Gentiles. Each minister had own story of being reconciled to God when the Gospel of Christ was preached to him. And then each one of them, once they were changed from God’s enemies into His beloved children, was also given a ministry, an office, an official calling to go and reconcile others to God by preaching that same Gospel to them.

that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. God was in Christ. “The Father is in Me,” Jesus said, “and I in Him.” What Jesus does, the Father does. So when Jesus called out to the world, “Repent and believe the good news!,” that was God Himself calling out. When Jesus, through His preaching, brought sinners to repentance and faith, and forgave them their sins, and reconciled them to Himself, He was reconciling them to God. When Christ reconciled the Jewish tax collectors and sinners to Himself, they were being reconciled to God. And as you know, Jesus didn’t restrict His reconciling ministry to the Jews only. God was in Him, reconciling the world to Himself, inviting all people, Jews and Gentiles, to believe in the Lord Jesus and be reconciled to God through Him.

But that ministry of reconciliation didn’t stop with Jesus. He appointed the apostles to carry out the exact same ministry. “As the Father has sent Me,” He said on Easter Sunday, “so I also send you.” And so Paul says, Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. “We” does not mean all people. It’s doesn’t even mean all Christians. We refers to the apostles, to the “sent ones,” to the ministers sent out with the authority of Jesus Himself to speak in His name and to act in His name, as official ambassadors of Christ, to forgive sins to the penitent, to reconcile sinners to God, in the stead, in the place of Christ.

We implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. This is the word of reconciliation that has been going out since the Day of Pentecost: We, God’s appointed ministers, implore you, the people of the world: Be reconciled to God! How? By confessing your sins, and by believing in the One, Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, who was sinless and righteous, who was “made sin” for us all, that is, who took our place as sinners under God’s wrath and received the punishment we all deserve—who gave His life as the atoning sacrifice for our sins—so that we might be brought into Him through faith, clothed with Him through Holy Baptism, and so be counted righteous in the sight of the righteous God.

This is, and has always been, the way in which God reconciles the world to Himself, through the ministry of the Spirit. All of us here have been made the righteousness of God through that same ministry. All of you have been reconciled to God through this ministry, and are no longer counted as His enemies, but as His beloved sons and daughters. This is the ministry you support with your prayers, with your offerings, with your attendance at these services where the ministry is carried out, and with your ongoing encouragement. You may not see or understand most of what God is doing in this world, but this much you have to believe: God is reconciling the world to Himself through the ministry of the Spirit, and He will see to it that the work continues, until every one of the elect, of those who will believe the Gospel, is reached with the Gospel, until His Church is completely built. Amen.

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