Today's Reading: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
Daily Lectionary: Genesis 7:11-8:12; Mark 3:20-35
“For He says, ‘In an acceptable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you.‘ Behold, now is the good time, behold now is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2)
Happy Lent! In the name of Jesus. Amen. Smile. Be happy. God doesn’t hate you. The Father wants to save you. He wants to forgive you in Christ. He wants to give you heaven.
Even better–the Father has already given you heaven! He has given you His Son, who lived anddied for you. He did both—He lived His life perfectly in your place and then He died for all the times you don’t live for Him. Jesus, His holy life and his sufferings and death, is the grace of God.
Christ even died for when you abuse His grace. He even died for the times when you treat His salvation as a nothing or don’t think of it at all. Can you get any more gracious than that? I don’t think so!
What do you do? You despise His grace. Don’t say that you don’t–you do. Every time you take your sins lightly, every time you sin figuring you will get forgiveness afterwards, every time you ignore the Law because you think God will be gracious to you, you are despising the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
What would you do, if you did something nice for them and they took advantage of you? Would you make a mental note to never do anything for them again? Would you take back what you did for them? Would you repent of ever doing them a kind thing?
God should. You’d think He would, but, He doesn’t. Instead, He pleads with you, begs you, to turn from your despising of His gifts and cling all the more to His mercy.
“Your way is going to end in death and hell. You can’t despise what I did and expect to be saved from hell,” He pleads. “I will forgive you. I will listen to you. I will help you. Today is the day of your salvation.”
He has washed your sins away in your baptism. He has enlivened you with His Words—in church, in Sunday School, in confirmation, in Bible Study, in your private reading of the Scriptures. He feeds you—even you—with the very Body and Blood of His crucified and now risen Son. His gifts raise you out of your sins, out of your deadly despising, and give to you eternal life.
His gifts enliven you to live a life not for yourself any more, but for Him. They may even put a smile on your face or make you crack a smirk. Your sins, your despising, your treating His grace in vain has been absolved. It has been washed away in Christ. Happy Lent! In the name of Jesus. Amen.