Opening Prayer
Your name, O Jesus, is an ointment that is poured forth (Song of Solomon 1:3).
Text: Galatians 3:23-29
But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Devotion
“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Luther says: “These words of Paul we ought to note with all diligence, in order to defend the true meaning and use of our Holy Baptism against the Anabaptists1 who destroy Baptism’s majesty and glory and speak blasphemously about it. Beware of such devilish scoffers, I sincerely advise you. Listen rather, long and hard, to how gloriously and comfortingly St. Paul speaks about Baptism, when He calls it ‘a washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit’ (Tit 3:5). And here he says that all those who are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. As if he would say: You have not received Baptism as an outward sign, by which people should know that you belong to the number of Christians. That’s how the heretics usually speak of it when they make Baptism into an external freedom or a simple and plain sign that is of no use. But you, as many of you as are baptized, he says, you have put on Christ. That is: You are freed from the captivity of the Law, and in Baptism you are reborn. Therefore you are now no longer under the Law, but you have put on a new robe, which is Christ’s righteousness.”
So then indeed believing Christians are God’s children and heirs, as it says in our Epistle: For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. “Whoever now can speak so masterfully according to the art of oratory” (again Luther says), “I would ask him, the best he can, to expound this passage about the incredible grace and glory we have in Christ Jesus, and then to discuss this matter in detail as it deserves, namely that we poor sinners, who by nature are children of wrath, come to the honor that by faith in Christ we become God’s children and heirs, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ and lords over heaven and earth, although no tongue of man or angel can praise and honor this glory high enough. Therefore I will ask everyone especially to study this carefully. I cannot express it with words or figure it out with my thoughts. Here we can only stumble through it until we arrive in heaven. Then we will see it and have eternal joy in it and praise God for it forever.
Closing Prayer
Help us in this, O God, by grace through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
Hymn
The newborn Child this early morn,
The dear Christ-Child of virgin born,
Again brings from His heav’nly home
A new year to all Christendom.
This causes joy to angels fair,
Who love to keep us in their care;
They sing that in this wondrous Child
God now with man is reconciled.
Since God is reconciled with men,
What harm can Satan do us then?
O’er Satan and the gates of hell
This Christ-Child shall for us prevail.
He brings the year of jubilee!
Why doubt we yet despondently?
Rejoice! This is a happy day.
The Christ-Child drives all care away.
Schneegass: L 180:3-4 ELHB 169 tr. E. Cronenwett;
tune: Ich komm aus fremden Landen her (ELH 154); alternate hymn: To Shepherds as they watched ELH 154:2-6 or God’s own child ELH 246:1.3