Theme: “Confirmed and Not Conformed”
Text: Romans 12:1-2
Confirmation Sunday
April 5, 2009
At Baptism the Holy Spirit comes and creates faith and delivers God’s gifts. That day the Church confessed that faith as God gave it to you. Today, you confess the faith before the Church, confirming the fact that you hold that faith.
To prepare for this day, you have been instructed in the basic tenets of the faith. You have them before you in the catechism and more important, you have in your hands God’s inspired inerrant Word, the Bible. You have come to this day through many classes. Now the day is here. So now what?
Now is the time to confess your faith, in words and by living God’s way. It is time to follow God’s will, inside and out. Our actions are to confirm our confession of faith and not to conform to the ways of this world. God tells us that directly, through the pen of St. Paul . . .
Do not conform to the pattern of this world. Be in this world but not of this world, that is the way it is said elsewhere in the Bible. The words used carry more than this translation. They say don’t even be outwardly conformed to the ways of the world and especially don’t conform to them inwardly. Don’t let this world set right and wrong for you. Don’t let it tell you how to think and especially don’t let it tell you what to think. Why?
Because this world is evil and will turn you away from God’s truth and His Gospel. This world has been corrupted, ruined by the fall into sin. And those who live by the ways and thoughts and standards of this world are against God. He warns us, again through Paul’s pen, to “see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophies which depend on human principles of this world rather than on Christ.
So what would that mean today? Don’t let public opinion, or your friend’s desires, set right and wrong for you. Don’t let those who deny God take you in to their way of thinking. Don’t give in to their attacks on God’s definition of marriage or His design for sexuality. Don’t let the philosophies of this world, no matter how learned they seem, replace God’s Word as the source of truth and authority or tell you that there cannot be absolutes in either. There is absolute truth and absolute authority and God is the source of both. Holding to such truths and living by them is not easy. So how do we resist the world and stand with God’s Word and God’s way?
How do we do it? We don’t. God’s power transforms, just like He gave us the faith in the first place. He transforms us and with His Spirit enables us to live His way. This is Life in Christ, life in His body the Church, life in the Word. Jesus is the Word made flesh and the Bible is the Word written. We live in Him when we live with the Bible as our guide, our standard. There God tells us His good, pleasing and perfect will. There He alone defines good and right. Living God’s way and in His truth we live in Christ and He in us for Jesus is the way, the truth and the Life.
What we do with our bodies, what we think with our minds, indeed our whole life is to be evidence of a complete and constant change, a transformation, an inner metamorphosis. The thing that is really good is that which is well pleasing and complete in God’s eyes. Test all things, always by God’s Word and will.
Living out this transformation is where we go from here. It is why I say over and over again that confirmation is not graduation. Today you confess your faith. The way you live each day is to confirm your confession of faith. The wonder of all of this is that it is all for our benefit. It is all meant for our good and is all given to us by God’s grace.
The Lord promises to always be with us. He transforms, supports and blesses us. He calls on us to live in Him, in His will, in His written Word, not to make us jump through a set of hoops. He has great blessing waiting for us as we live His way. No I am not talking about earthly wealth, power or possessions. It is much, much more than that. Living in God’s will and His way is to live in His presence. That is something far beyond what the world can offer. Living transformed is living where Jesus is and . . .
Yes, I just said that. Think about this with me. Hell is described as separation from God. That is what Christ suffered on the cross. That is what awaits unbelievers forever. But then what is heaven. It is not a physical location in this universe. It is being with God. That is where His children, those who trust in Jesus’ work on their behalf for salvation, will spend eternity. If heaven is being in the presence of God then it begins now. That is what God wants for you.
Jesus is God, so being with/in Him is to be in heaven. Before these verses, Paul has been talking about all that God in His grace has done for us. He provided salvation through Jesus, so that we might be in heaven with Him. To be in Christ, to be with Him, is to be in heaven now. Oh it will get better when we enjoy its fullness but God touches us now and gives us time with Him. He spends time with us when we are in His Word the Bible, where we meet the Word made flesh. That Word touches us when He gives us His body and blood to eat and to drink in Holy Communion.
These are the things God wants for you. These are blessings of being transformed by our Lord Jesus Christ, the blessings of living in Him and not in the ways of the world.
SDG
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