Lessons in the Lutheran Confessions

Scripture Text: 1 Corinthians 15:51-57

Click for online jigsaw.

• Image  • Index of posts

  Click for a recording of today's lesson.

1 Corinthians 15:51-57

From the Confessions: The Defense of the Augsburg Confession

Concerning Love and the Fulfilling of the Law 

Our eyes are to be turned far away from human reason, far away from Moses, and turned to Christ. We are to believe that Christ was given for us so that we may be accounted righteous because of him. We never satisfy the law in the flesh. Therefore, we are not accounted righteous because of the law, but on account of Christ, because his merits are granted to us if we believe in him.

Pulling It Together: I never understood why the rules of baseball allow a pinch runner. A coach is allowed to substitute a faster runner and remove the slower runner from the game. That does not seem fair. But if life, in the eternal sense, was fair, we would all die and that would be the end of the matter (Rom 6:23) because we have all sinned, and death is the punishment for sin (Rom 3:23). For all of our effort, we fall short of the glory of God. No matter how hard we try to keep it, we do not fulfill the law.

God must appreciate baseball, or at least the pinch runner rule. For he has substituted for all of us a more skillful keeper of the law. Jesus has come in to the game and that has changed the outcome. He has won the game of life for the whole world. The series has been decided.

That may not seem fair. Thanks be to God that he is more interested in the victory than in our sense of fairness. We may keep our eyes focused on the law, or even on how we can be good people. But then, we will miss the mystery of life. Death has been vanquished in a pinch, in the twinkling of an eye. “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Prayer: Thank you, Lord of life, for your victory over sin and death. Amen. 

Sola's Sunday Schoolhouse offers Christmas programs for each year of the program. 


Share this post


Click Here For Content Archives