Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

“To my true child[ren] in a common faith:

 

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior” (Titus 1:4).

 

 

Christmas is often called a time of giving. Many people will give a little extra to charities at this time of year. The local food bank is the recipient of a lot of donations from the local citizens. Major financial gifts are also given to Brock University and the Niagara Health System by wealthy philanthropists. You can often see their names on the buildings or the equipment that they helped to fund.

 

Our Church Treasurer is often happy to mention that in December our members’ offerings to Lutheran Church-Canada missions are usually double than for any other month of the year. That kind of giving makes us all happy. We appreciate it when people give generously and give to a good cause, and sending the good news of Jesus out through the missions of our church is a good cause indeed.

 

In today’s Epistle Reading God’s goodness and loving-kindness toward us is emphasized. He is acknowledged as the philanthropist who gave His own Son to save us. But did He give to a good cause? Well, ‘yes’ in the sense that we sure needed Him to save us, but perhaps ‘no’ in the sense that there was no good evident in us before He gave His gift.

 

Most major donors want to give to a cause that has already proven itself to be doing some good in the world. That is not the case with God giving toward our salvation. St. Paul boldly wrote to St. Titus about the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior appearing, and that “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness” (Titus 3:5). In other words, there was nothing good in us that looked promising to God, and yet He gave anyways.

 

There was nothing that we had done to show God that we would be a good place to make a major gift, a good cause that just needed a little injection of grace as a start-up and then we would really be able to do something. No. In other places St. Paul says that “there is no one who does good, not one” (Romans 1:10). And that before God reached out to us with His donation of grace and mercy, we were “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). It is like God looked for a failing charity case that wasn’t doing anything to help anybody but rather adding to the greed and selfishness in the world, and for some reason He said, “That is where I want my donation to go.”

 

Although we were a hopeless cause because of our sins, He saw it as a good cause, an opportunity to save the hopeless. A way to help those who cannot help themselves. We cannot get ourselves out of the debt of sin. We cannot give enough to church or charity that would pay off the debt we have incurred because of our sinful selfishness and vanity. Even if God were to give us a start-up fund, we would quickly waste it away. If He would supply us with a loan, we would squander that too and never be able to pay Him back.

 

Yet God saw us as the right recipients of His gift because we needed saving and He is a Saviour. That is what this God does. He doesn’t look for what people can give to Him but what He can give, and He gives more than we could ever ask or imagine. At this time of year when people are making generous donations to all kinds of charities, we remember that God gave more than anybody would be willing to give. He gave His Son into this world of sin and death in order to make us into new people.

 

The birth of Jesus Christ was God coming in human flesh in order to save human beings. The gift of God was His own suffering and death for our sins, the very things that make us such a hopeless case without Him. The birth of Jesus Christ was so that we could have a new birth, a baptism in which our old sinful nature is put to death and we emerge to live a new life in a righteousness we could never have without the gift of Jesus.

 

So St. Paul, writing to Titus, calls Baptism “a washing of regeneration and renewal” (Titus 3:5). And St. Paul knew what that was all about. He used to think that he was a holy and righteous man, more so than most people. He even thought he was doing something good for God by having Christians arrested and punished. But then God gave him a gift. Jesus came to him unwrapped. Paul saw the gift of the Son of God and it blinded him. He suddenly became aware of the terrible sins he had done even while thinking he was doing good for God. He knew that his old life was over as he had to be led by the hand even to cross the street. God’s gift of the unwrapped Jesus was more than Paul’s sinful nature could stand and he fell to his knees.

 

Still God knew that Paul needed His gift, as do we all because of our sins. So God wrapped up His gift and gave it to Paul a different way. He gave Paul a new birth wrapped up as a washing of water with His Word, a true regeneration through Baptism at the hand of Ananias (Acts 9).

 

This new birth that God gives in Holy Baptism is the gift of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ His Son. It is a new birth into the life of Christ. The Son of God who was born into the world while angels sang Glory to God’s Holy name (Luke 2:10-14) is given to you as the water pours over your head and the Word of God’s grace in Jesus washes away your old life of sin.

 

This is how the gift of the birth of Jesus is also a gift to you. It is a new birth (a regeneration) for you, too. “All of you who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death[.] We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4). That was God’s gift to St. Paul and that is His gift to you. He gives you Jesus wrapped up in Holy Baptism so that you may live a new life.

 

At His death on the cross for you, Jesus breathed out the Holy Spirit (John 19:30) and when the soldier pierced His side with a spear, water flowed out along with the blood of Jesus. Water and the Spirit are God’s gift to you through the gift of His Son. It all comes wrapped up in Jesus. The birth of Jesus was so that you could have a new birth through Baptism.

 

By now You might be thinking, and I was thinking at this point in writing this sermon, that we are getting away from Christmas with all this talk about Baptism. Why was this Epistle reading that clearly talks about Baptism appointed to be read on Christmas Day? The only tie-in from the passage itself is the way it begins, “When the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Saviour appeared” (Titus 3:4). It appeared at the birth of Jesus. What was wrapped up in the prophecies and the history of the children of Israel appeared when Jesus was born and the Son of God was revealed to the world.

 

The angels sang because this birth was the goodness and loving-kindness of God extended to men. “Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace” (Luke 2:14). The shepherds left their flocks and came to see this appearing and then went and told everyone.

 

We are not meant to separate the gifts of God as if one came at Christmas and another at Easter and another on our baptism day. It is all the same gift. It is all Jesus being given to us for our salvation from sin and death. It is God’s loving-kindness expressed in His philanthropic gift.

 

On Christmas God’s gift was wrapped in swaddling cloths, and when it was personally presented to you it was wrapped in water and the Word. Jesus’ birth became your new birth. Through this regeneration we become the children of God. Our old sinful self is put to death and we are born again by water and the Spirit.

 

In this way, the donation of God was for a good cause, His cause to save us from our sins and to have us become His children, those “who are born not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but born of God” (John 1:13), made holy and righteous purely by His loving-kindness toward us, saved by grace alone, “not because of works done by us in righteousness” (Titus 3:5).

 

That is why it is proper to tie all the gifts of God back to the birth of Jesus Christ, His coming in human flesh and blood. We had nothing to do with that. It was clearly God’s gift to us, a donation to a lost cause. And the same is true of all of His gifts to us, including Baptism. There is nothing that we can do to earn that gift either. That’s why even babies are given this gift. It is not earned. It is not God’s investment in you. It is His gift of new life for you, just as much a gift of grace as the birth of Jesus.

 

And God is glad to have His name on this gift. As we are baptized into His name (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), we come into His family. Jesus makes us heirs together with Him of the eternal glory of God. You know a gift is yours when your name is on it, and you know who it is from when the giver puts his name on it. In Baptism you have an undeniable gift from God, His grace poured out upon you to give you a new birth into His eternal family. You may have been a lost cause, but you are no longer lost. God has put His name on you after donating His Son for your salvation.

 

 

“Grace be with you all” (Titus 3:15).