..per Mission.. The Last Sunday of the Church Year, Sunday Twenty-Three After Pentecost, 16 November 2014, Concordia Lutheran Mission, Terrebonne, Oregon. “The World Ends when the Last Believer Comes to Faith through the Gospel.” I Corinthians 15:28. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. Introduction. When will the world end? The world will end when the last man comes to saving faith in Christ. What other purpose would there be to let a sinful fallen world keep on turning other than bringing men to saving faith and life eternal through the Gospel? This completed work the Apostle St. Paul describes by saying Christ is subject to the Father, not according to His Person, but according to His Mystical Body, i.e. the Church. When the Church is completed, the Work of the Gospel is completed and the age closes. The world comes to an end when the last believer comes to faith through the Gospel. I. Changes in Christ Refer to the Human Nature of Christ, through which He Redeemed Mankind, not His Deity. A. Subordination arguments based on I Corinthians 15:28 contradict themselves. I have had representatives of the Jehovah’s Witnesses use this passage from the Apostle St. Paul to try to prove that Christ our Savior is not God. They have argued that because Christ is subject or subordinate to the Father, He is inferior to God and, therefore, not God. Let’s have a look at what the Apostle St. Paul writes: And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. “See! See!”, they exclaim. “The Son is subject (subordinate) to the Father. He, therefore, is not God.” But here they have slipped up. The Apostle St. Paul writes, “then shall the Son himself be subject unto him that put all things under him ... .” So, it’s then. What about before “then”? The Son wasn’t subordinate before then? The Son, therefore, was not subject to the Father but then later on He was? This answer is simply self-contradictory nonsense. The arguments that use I Corinthians 15:28 to prove that Christ is not God fail because the argument contradicts itself. B. Any change in Christ refers not to the Deity but the human nature assumed into the Person of the Son of God for the Salvation of men. What are we to make of Christ not being subordinate and then being subordinate in this passage? The answer lies in remembering the Son of God is now Incarnate, i.e., has taken up human nature into His Person. Human nature changes. Human nature has beginnings, growth, increases in knowledge, and so on. The Deity undergoes no change but is the same from eternity to eternity. When we see changes in Christ it is always according to His assumed human nature, not according to His Deity. Some examples of change in the human nature of Christ are His Blessed, Pure, and Holy Conception in the womb of the Virgin St. Mary. The Apostle St. Matthew writes: But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. But why would the Son of God be conceived in the womb of the Virgin St. Mary? Obviously, God has no need of a human conception or birth but rather enjoyed a Pure Conception and Birth in order to provide us who are fallen into sin with a pure conception and birth. David writes that we are conceived in sin: Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. The Apostle St. Paul writes that Christ was born of a woman for our sakes: But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Because Christ was conceived and born Purely of the Virgin St. Mary, we now enjoy a pure and sinless birth by the Gospel through faith. Luther writes of the Birth of Christ for us: Christ is born for you and ... his birth is yours, and come to pass for your benefit. For the Gospel teaches that Christ was born for our sake and that he did everything and suffered all things for our sake ... . Christ has a pure, innocent, holy birth. Man has an impure, sinful, damned birth, as David says in Psalm 51[:5] ... . There is simply no remedy for this except through the pure birth of Christ. ... Christ willed to be born so that we might be born in different manner ... . In this manner Christ takes to himself our birth and absorbs it in his birth; he present us with his birth so that we become pure and new in it, as if it were our own, so that every Christian might rejoice in this birth of Christ and glory in it no less than if he, too, like Christ, had been born bodily of Mary. Christ also underwent change in His assumed human nature when He grew in the manner that all men grew. The Evangelist St. Luke writes: And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. But doesn’t Christ already enjoy God’s favor because He is God’s Son? Indeed, He does. But God’s Son is now Incarnate, i.e., has become man , and also now grows perfectly as a Man worshiping God and obeying His will perfectly throughout His life. Naturally, because Christ increases in good works as a Man pleasing to God, He grows in favor with God. Christ fulfilled God’s Blessed Will from the womb of the Virgin St. Mary. Jesus says: But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon thee: thou art my God from my mother’s belly. How many of us can say God was our God from the womb? None of us can because we all are born in sin. Christ, however, had God as His God from the womb, fulfilling perfectly the Ten Commandments for us even from the womb. Christ dedicated His Entire Life to the Service of Fallen Men, living every moment of His Blessed Life for us. Jesus says: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. Christ’s Entire Life, from birth to the grave, waking and sleeping, is given as ransom or payment to purchase as back from the wrath of God over our sin. This Blessed Work of obeying God throughout His Entire Life for us is called Christ’s Active Obedience , namely, His fulfilling all of God’s commandments for us that we be made the righteousness of God in Him. The Apostle St. Paul writes: But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of son. The Rev. Dr. Francis Pieper writes of Christ’s Active Obedience: This teaching of Scripture is of great practical importance. In his life of faith the Christian continually resorts to Christ’s vicarious fulfillment of the Law. Luther: “He satisfied the Law; He fulfilled the Law perfectly, for He loved God with all His heart, and with all His soul, and with all His strength, and with all His mind, and He loved His neighbor as Himself. Therefore, when the Law comes and accuses you of not having kept it, bid it go to Christ. Say: There is the Man who has kept it; He fulfilled it for me and gave His fulfillment to me. Thus the Law is silenced.” Through the Perfect Obedience and Holy Life of Christ, we gain the Righteousness of God. The Apostle St. Paul writes: For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Christ also underwent a change according to His the human taken up into His Person when He died for the sins of all men. The Apostle St. Paul writes: For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures ... . The Apostle St. John writes of Christ truly suffering a human death because he writes of the separation of body and soul of Christ when He died on the Cross: When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. The definition of human death is to suffer the separation of body and soul. Christ, therefore, suffered a truly human death when He “gave up the ghost” on the Cross. This truly human death was also the Death of God because God has now become man. While God in and of Himself cannot die, God can and did die the Cross because God had become man. The Lutheran Church confesses: We Christians must know that if God is not also in the balance, and gives the weight, we sink to the bottom with our scale. By this I mean: If it were not to be said [if these things were not true], God has died for us, but only a man, we would be lost. But if “God’s death” and “God died” lie in the scale of the balance, then He sinks down, and we rise up as a light, empty scale. But indeed He can also rise again or leap out of the scale; yet He could not sit in the scale unless He became a man like us, so that it could be said: “God died,” “God’s passion,” “God’s blood,” “God’s death.” For in His nature God cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one person, it is correctly called God’s death, when the man dies who is one thing or one person with God. Because Christ’s Death is God’s Death, human death died in the Death of Christ because not even death can hold the Almighty God. The Rev. Dr. Francis Pieper writes: Christ could not dispense with His deity in the state of exinanition [humiliation ]. He had to attach the full weight of His deity to His obedience, suffering, and death, as Scripture tells us Gal. 4:4-5 and Rom. 5:10. Facing death, He had to be the mighty God that He might be able by His death to overcome death, to raise up again the temple of His body (John 2:19, 21), to take up His life again (John 10:18). Jesus Christ “died not simply as any other man, but in and with His death conquered sin, death, hell and eternal damnation” (Trigl. 1023, F.C., Sol. Decl. VIII, 25 [this is a reference from the Confessions of the Lutheran Church]). When we see changes in Christ, we must recall we are observing God Incarnate. Changes in Christ, therefore, occur not in Christ’s Deity, which is changeless, but in His Human Nature Assumed into the Person of the Son of God. This human existence the Son of God lived in order that He present to us a pure and perfect human life forever pleasing to God. The Apostle St. Paul writes: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. The Rev. Dr. Francis Pieper writes: Jerome Kromeyer (professor of theology at Leipzig, d. 1670) ... says: “Christ passed through all stages of our life in order that He might thoroughly heal our sinful conception and birth.” II. When the Last Man Comes to Saving Faith through the Gospel, then the Body of Christ is Subject and the World Comes to an End, the Current Age Closing. A. The Subordination of Christ refers to the Mystical Body of Christ, i.e., the Church. Scripture also speaks of Christ’s Mystical Body, i.e., the Church. The Apostle St. Paul writes: And he hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. One becomes a member of Christ’s Church and, therefore, His Mystical Body, by faith through the Gospel. The Church is the whole number of believers in Christ through the Gospel. The Apostle St. Paul writes: There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. ... And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry , for the edifying of the body of Christ ... . Again, the Apostle St. Paul writes: For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body ... . The Lutheran Church confesses: ... the Church properly is the congregation of saints and true believers ... . Men come to believe or to faith through the Gospel. The Apostle St. Paul writes: So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Again, the Apostle St. Paul writes: For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Of this Body, the Apostle St. Paul writes in today’s epistle: And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. When men come to saving faith in God through the Gospel, they willingly subject themselves to God in the “obedience of faith”. Hence, by the Gospel through faith, men subject themselves to God, become a part of the Body of Christ, and Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church, is subject to God. The Rev. Dr. Francis Pieper writes: The words: “Then [after the Last Day] shall the Son also Himself be subject,” do not, we repeat, refer to the Trinitarian relationship ..., but these words refer to the Son in so far as He is a unit with the Church, which indeed remains also after the Last Day subject to God. ... Gerhard had weighed a number of interpretations, and his reasoning shows that he was well acquainted with the linguistic usage of Scripture: “Scripture ascribes to Christ a twofold body, a personal one, which was assumed into the Person of the Logos, and a spiritual, or mystical, one, which is united with Him by the bond of His Spirit, the members of which body are all true believers. The Apostle is really speaking of this mystical body when he says that Christ is to be subjected to His Father in the Last Day.” ... Because the Church is united with Christ in one mystical body, the Church is directly called Christ ... in 1 Cor. 12:12; and, speaking of Christ in the same relation, 1 Cor. 3:23 says: “Christ is God’s.” The subordination of Christ to God in these passage refers to the Mystical Body of Christ, i.e., the Church. B. The world ends when the last man comes to saving faith in Christ. This Mystical body of Christ grows through the Gospel until the end of the age. Jesus says: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. The Lutheran Church confesses: For they first say this, namely, that the name of the Lord will be great. This is accomplished by the preaching of the Gospel. For through this the name of Christ is made known, and the mercy of the Father, promised in Christ is recognized. The preaching of the Gospel produces faith in those who receive the Gospel. They call upon God, they give thanks to God, they bear afflictions for their confession, they produce good works for the glory of Christ. Thus the name of the Lord becomes great among the Gentiles. When the last man comes to saving faith through the Gospel, then the Mystical Body of Christ is complete and the age comes to a close. For what purpose is there in letting the globe turn if not to build the Body of Christ? Certainly, God would not let the world turn in order just to produce unbelievers and sinners. Hence, the Last Day is when the last man comes to saving faith in Christ. From that point on, God will be all in all, men forever remaining blessed in the immediate presence of God. The Apostle St. Paul writes: And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. Conclusion. The world comes to an end when the last man comes to saving faith in Christ. For the only purpose for this fallen, sinful world to keep turning is to pluck men out of it by the salvation of the Gospel through faith. Through the Gospel Christ gathers His Church, the Whole Body of Believers. This Body of Believers is the Mystical Body of Christ. When the last man comes to obedience through the Gospel and subjects Himself to the Will of God, then Christ’s Mystical Body, i.e., the Church, is complete, the age comes to a close, and all believers in Christ will enjoy the eternal blessings of God. Amen.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 03:04:19 +0000
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