2 Corinthians 13:11-14 Finally, brothers, good-bye. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All the saints send their greetings. 14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Amen.
It’s not easy going to work in the morning knowing that if you make the slightest mistake, your boss is going to berate you in front of the other employees. It’s no fun waking up in the morning dreading another day of boredom in the classroom and teasing in the hallways. It’s not pleasant going through the day concerned whether you’ll have enough money for groceries, gas, and mortgage.
It’s not easy going to sleep at night knowing that your body will be wracked with pain from arthritis and old age when you get up the next morning. It’s no fun going home to another lonely evening of binge-watching Netflix and doom-scrolling through social media. It’s not pleasant going through another sleepless night concerned about your myriad of health, marriage, and family issues.
It may not be easy to get up in the morning or go to sleep at night if you’re only relying on yourself and what you see and feel. But your Triune God gives you every reason to wake up cheerful and every reason to go to sleep content. St. Paul gives you the reasons with the Apostolic blessing written at the end of his second letter to the Christians in the city of Corinth. “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
Those words “grace”, “love”, and “fellowship” may appear small, but they are really powerful and magnificent.
St. Paul was writing to Christians in Corinth who had all kinds of issues within their congregation. They were slow in forgiving their offending brother. They were disorderly in their worship. They had been consumed with the sexual sins of their culture. They were fellowshipping with pagan unbelievers. They refused to use their spiritual gifts for the edification of the body of Christ. They had a tendency to fracture in factions instead of holding together in loving unity around the gospel.
The Corinthian congregation had a lot of issues! Paul very well could have written a letter that said, “To the Church in Corinth, God has written you off! The end.”
But he didn’t. Instead, he wrote, “The grace of our Lord Jesus … be with you all.” They desired this grace. They needed this grace. They cherished this grace.
We, too, need this grace. Are we 21st century Christians really any different from those 1st century Christians? The times and locations have changed … but the sin and sinners have not changed. We still deal with sexual sins in our culture and in our own bodies. We are slow to confront sin and equally slow to offer forgiveness. We support companies and celebrities who hate us and what we believe, so we compromise our beliefs. We are lazy with our spiritual gifts for the benefit of our church. We easily and quickly splint into factions and cliques at home, at work, in school, and even in church.
We need to repent of all these sins. We desire grace. We need grace. We cherish grace.
What is grace? Grace is God’s undeserved love. Perhaps you noticed this week when we’ve finally had some nice, warm weather that we seemed to have gone pretty quickly from the cold of winter to the mosquitoes of summer. And, what to you do with a mosquito? You squash it under your hand. If the mosquito has been active, there is a bit of blood left on your arm.
God has every right to squash us like mosquitoes under his righteous right hand. We are just as guilty of drawing blood from Jesus Pontius Pilate, the Roman soldiers, and the Jewish religious leaders. The blood of Jesus is on us and on our children. It was us and our sins that drew blood when we slapped Jesus with the high priest’s hand, when we tore his back with our scourge, when we nailed his perfect hands and feet to the cross, and when we pierced his side with our spear. We are worse than bloodsucking insects for we know better. We are worse than bloodsucking insects for we have drawn blood and killed the Son of God.
But God doesn’t squash us. He forgives us! He covers us with the innocent blood of his Son, Jesus Christ to pay for our sins and remove them from us. Instead of turning his righteous anger on us, Jesus absorbed his Father’s anger. Instead of squashing us, God nailed his Son to the cross. That’s grace! That’s powerful! That’s magnificent!
Now you can wake up every morning excited for another day of experiencing God’s grace. Now you can sleep soundly every evening comforted by the Triune God’s grace that’s yours through Jesus Christ.
Paul continues with his blessing, “The love of God … be with you.” Our love is often fickle and convenient. We love if it suits our needs. We love if we have the time. We love as long it fits into our schedule.
We may have difficulty waking up in the morning feeling like we are in a loveless marriage. We may have difficulty at night checking on social media and reading all the loveless comments from our so-called friends. And we often respond with less than charitable words and actions of love. We need to repent of our lack of love toward God and absence of love toward those around us.
On February 10, 1970 John Baca led his army unit through intense fire to rescue a platoon in South Vietnam. After they were successful in setting up a protected firing position, Baca and his pals started to fight back. That was when a fragmentation grenade was thrown into the middle of him and his pals. Baca covered the grenade with his helmet and then he covered the helmet with his body. … Then the grenade exploded.
That was love. Not the smoochy-smoochy type of love people celebrate on Valentine’s Day. Instead, it’s the type of love we remember on Memorial Day. It’s the type of love, which John Baca receiving the Medal of Honor on June 15, 1971.
It’s also the kind of love that St. Paul mentions in “the love of God.” It’s agape love – a self-sacrificing kind of love. The kind of love that is willing to die for friends.
That’s the kind of love John Baca had for his pals. That’s the kind of love Jesus has for us.
Well, that’s not quite right. Jesus has a love far greater than that of John Baca. You see, while Baca was ready to die for his friends, he was also willing to shoot at his enemies. Jesus, though, allowed his enemies to crucify him. These are the enemies who hated him, mocked him, spat on him, whipped him, crucified him, and sinned against him. Jesus died for his enemies. Scripture says, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners [enemies], Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
That’s love. That’s agape love. The love God the Father has through Jesus Christ, his Son.
We need this love. We desire this love. We cherish this love.
Now you can wake up every morning excited to experience another day of God’s love. Now you can go to sleep at night comforted by the knowledge that no matter how bad your day was, the God of the universe loves you.
Paul completes his threefold blessing by saying, “The fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.” Fellowship involves sharing, partnership, and enjoying things in common.
The Corinthian Christians certainly need that blessing of fellowship. One of their bigger problems was factions within the congregation – separate cliques standing around in holy huddles, only speaking with those they were comfortable with. God’s work was not getting done. That’s why Paul urged them, “Finally, brothers, good-bye. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.” Paul even encouraged them to make use of the common public expression of unity, “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
We need to repent of our lack of fellowship – when we separate into cliques, holy huddles, factions within the church. Then God’s work is not getting done.
Because of the grace of Jesus Christ and the love of God, now we have fellowship with our Triune God. Because of our sin, we are separated from God because a three-time holy God cannot be in the presence of sinners. But through the sacrifice and resurrection of the second person of the Trinity, we now have fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have the name of the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – placed on our heads at our Baptism.
Now that we have fellowship with God, we have fellowship with each other as God’s children. We enjoy the blessings of this fellowship – a new life in Christ, answered prayers, the comfort of forgiveness, the assurance of a life that never ends, and unity with our fellow believers.
What a blessing it is for us to enjoy fellowship from the Holy Spirit. The Greek word is koinonia – communion, what we have in common. Celebrate the fellowship we have together whether it’s Christian Friends going miniature golfing this week, Lutheran Voyagers kayaking and canoeing yesterday, or the pastor mountain biking with our teens on Friday.
It’s sharing Kringle, cookies, and coffee in the Friendship Room or the narthex. It’s talking to each other at a WLS basketball game or a Shoreland concert. It’s receiving the Lord’s Supper together. It’s praying with and for one another. It’s prayerfully and financially supporting the ministries of Water of Life and the WELS.
We need this fellowship. We desire this fellowship. We cherish this fellowship.
Now we can wake up in the morning to look forward to another day of worshiping our Triune God together with our family of believers. Now we can go to bed at night comforted that our family of believers are praying with and for us.
That’s the reality of the Trinity. Every day filled with God’s threefold blessings. Amen.
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.