Just by way of review, Paul has reminded us that we are more than servants—we who believe now belong to God, having been purchased by Christ and brought into God’s household by faith.  It is good to belong to God, bound by blood.  The other options are all rather terrifying.  Every other “lord,” including that angry little idol Self, is a vicious slave-driver.  Paul has also shared his deep gratitude for his fellow believers—his fellow slaves—and tells them he’s always praying for them and giving thanks for them.  This is a very good way to approach every brother and sister in Christ: less reserve, more regard.

Today, we hear about power.  A few years back, a neighbor offered us the use of a golf cart like everyone tools around in there in Columbia Lakes; we were grateful.  All four of us piled in: what fun.  I made sure the tires were properly inflated; I was told the battery was fully charged, although the cart had sat around unused for a long time.  I probably should have looked into that more closely, because when the cart died on us out on the golf cart path on the far side of the subdivision, it was sort of inconvenient to push it back.  (And yes, about halfway, we did get an assist from some guys in a truck.)  That day, I got a laborious reminder of what no power means.

Two Sundays back, I spoke about vitality, the quality of empowered discipleship.  With God is resurrection power; all who belong to Christ are richly empowered.  Paul speaks of the Good News as power, God’s power, “that brings salvation to everyone who believes” (1:16).  Power is for work; power gets things done.  No power means no work, no ability, no progress, just stuck.  I suppose we’ve all been through a “just stuck” period in our lives, not knowing how to make things different.  We realize a change is necessary in external circumstances but also, probably, internally.  Salvation, faith, Christ—power—changes us.  We do not cause this change or even will this change.  The change, the difference, the power, comes to us: a gift, revelation, breath, light.  At this time of year, we keep reminding ourselves of the one gift that matters most.

Salvation, the good news reminds us, is Christ who is power for change.  Where Christ is, there is hope.  Often when we’re feeling stuck, hope has become stuck.  The 121^st psalm sets the scene perfectly: “I lift my eyes to the hills.”  If one is looking up to the hills, then one is down in the valley, and the valley the psalms know so well is the valley of the shadow of death.  And death?  Death is the wages of sin, what sin gets us.  All sin will get us, in the end, is nowhere, nowhere we want to be: stuck, no power.  Hopefully, if by grace we’ve come to our senses, we’re looking around for real help.  And if we’re really seeking, we shall find.  It’s a promise.

The biblical witness regularly interprets reversals and disasters as consequences of the sin all around us and of our own sins, God-disregarding choices catching up with us.  To disregard God is not always to reject or defy God.  To disregard God in our decision-making, more often, mostly means not consulting God at all, not seeing any reason to, or just assuming that whatever we want to do, whatever we choose to do, is okay with God, anyway: why wouldn’t it be?  God is love, right?  And love means that, no matter what I do, to myself, you, or others, you’ll always take me back, right?  Love means I do my thing and you don’t criticize me, right?  When we know that we’ll hear “No, don’t do that,” and we want to do that . . . well, just don’t even bother to ask or mention it.  Disregarding God is not really so difficult, as we know, to our sorrow.

Our need for salvation, restoration, blessing, and help never really goes away.  Salvation—power, power for change—comes to us in Christ.  Sickness can leave us weak.  Recovering from an injury or a surgery can take months, or longer.  And recovering does not mean we were just like we were before, does it?  The wear and tear of life depletes us, not just physically but mentally, morally, and yes, spiritually.  As the broadcast news batters us, we may come away with the impression that we are in a time not of cooperation but of conflict, where the very idea of cooperation, let alone compromise, is cowardice.  Constant conflict does nothing to build anyone up.  All constant conflict does is leave ruins where prosperity had been, hopelessness where there had been a sense of possibility.  Conflict produces frustration, anger, and despair.  Who benefits from that?

Every two years, we’re told on every side without relief that real, meaningful change will come once we put the other party back in control: you know, the sane people who care about you and me so deeply.  Beloved, the change you and I and everyone genuinely needs will not come with a new administration or with the glorious and tragically overdue return to ascendancy of the other political party.  The trouble runs much deeper than these surface features.  The trouble, as Paul will go on to identify, is a root godlessness that has been around as long as the Fall.  The basic problem with which each human being must contend is wandering lost in a fallen world.  We come up against the frustrations of fruitlessness in this life often enough, all too often: Job, Ecclesiastes, and so many psalms are giving voice to what we know and feel so well.

Every man, woman, and child stands in need of salvation: rescue from our lost wandering through this fallen world.  Without this salvation, the end result of wandering lost in a fallen world is set: to be under God’s wrath and curse and to come under God’s judgment on the appointed day.  Several times, Scripture reminds us that all will be judged upon what they have done.  That’s not a judgment under which I want to come.  I am not a good person.  My good deeds do not outweigh my bad choices.

Lost is not necessarily not knowing the way out, though it can be that; lost, maybe more often, is not wanting the way out that God offers.  It’s like standing there with seven doors before you, only one of which will get you to truth, reality, love, and life.  A one-in-seven chance is not very encouraging odds: 14%.  And even if, by grace, one happens to open the right door—which really means that it is opened for you—it may still be the case that what one sees on the other side, the revealed side, holds no great attraction.  People know there are churches, congregations—lots of them; people know there is a Bible; people know about Jesus.  No strong attraction.  They neither want nor value the offered way.  They may say this and that once in a while, but there is no movement; they are stuck.

Salvation is God opening the door from His side, breaking through, tearing through, as Mark described it at the baptism of Jesus.  Jesus is the salvation power of God; Jesus is the one who, by taking upon himself all God’s wrath against sin, God’s curse upon sin, provides rescue for those who cling to Christ as to a life raft.  Salvation comes to all and for all who believe.  Salvation requires faith.  Faith is the key that opens the door.

So, how to get this salvation, then?  How to obtain this faith?  They are given.  God, breaking through to us, demolishing the wall of sin between us, calls to us: come with me if you want to live.  At Christmas, the angels were calling to the shepherds; the star was calling to the wise men.  Come.  Come and see.  Come and know.  Come and wonder.  Come and worship.  We need ears to hear, eyes to see, and legs to help us to stand and walk.  All these are gifts, gifts of Christ, through the Spirit.  Salvation brings with him all that is necessary for us to receive salvation and benefit from it.  We love opening those presents; we wait for it all year, and it is a happy time: enjoy it!  And remember, also, to enjoy the one who gives you everything.  As we are reminded, maybe not often enough: we can’t take any of our stuff with us; we can, however, have Jesus with us, always.  What Jesus offers is simple and sufficient.  Life begins to change for us when we begin to realize the simplicity and sufficiency of Jesus.

There is joy in receiving what is joyfully given.  With salvation, there are no prerequisites.  The main problem in the earliest years of the church is not really a problem at all for us, now.  In the early decades of the church, Christianity was largely regarded as a sect of Judaism, something some Jews were doing.  Gentiles could participate, certainly, provided they became Jews and lived as Jews live.  Salvation, in other words, was only for the Jews, and every Jew knew that being a Jew meant keeping all the Law, living the commandments of God completely.  And every Jew knew that was impossible.  But all things are possible with God.  Paul reminds us that salvation, actually, is for all: everyone and anyone who will receive the Good News as the joyful treasure from God that it is.  The salvation of the righteous is not in keeping and performing a list of rules but in living the faith God gives.

Faith saves us by changing us, drawing us into holiness.  That’s the real change we all really need.  Holiness was the heart of the law, the vital pulse.  What mattered about the Law was not so much that it pointed to all that was to be regarded as sinful: don’t eat this, don’t do that, don’t live that way.  What mattered most about the law was its aim to keep always before God’s people the importance of holiness.  There is a way God wants us to live.  To be holy meant to do God’s will, to live in such a way that your will became patterned after God’s will and more and more reflected God’s will.  Not the will, the ways, customs, and values of the time and place, the culture or society then in ascendancy, but God’s will given to us in God’s Word.  And God’s Word is Christ Jesus—power, salvation power, power for change—who came to live with us, and in us, by faith, faith that looks like something.  Holiness was and remains a matter of whose lordship our lives demonstrate.  And we know holiness is a lifelong labor.  Remember the joy of the labor, and the peace that comes.

“[T]o everyone who believes” (1:16).  That was the scandal and the stumbling block.  Everyone meant just that.  No prior qualifications or prerequisite accomplishments.  Salvation was not like getting into Harvard or the Air Force Academy: if you don’t have the record of accomplishment, the endorsements from powerful, connected people, forget it.  Salvation was not like getting that choice job or trophy mate, or having what it takes to buy the Mercedes or live in River Oaks or even just Bellaire.  Salvation was unlike anything we had been taught to compete for, train ourselves for, or desire.  We could not merit, earn, or even desire God’s salvation.  It is purely, perfectly, entirely a gift; it is God who opens and causes people to receive it, value it, and give thanks for it.  Paul understood that very well.  Before Christ called him, Paul—Saul at the time—had lived to be elite, the best.  He had formerly delighted in comparing himself (favorably) to the riff raff he encountered all around him, freaks, fools, and failures.  By his lineage but mostly his education, his superior intelligence and insight, his will, his choice, his singular devotion, he had proven his worth.  But no achievement, no accomplishment, no medal or diploma could qualify him for salvation.  He did not have that ability.  He did not have that power.  He did not have that holiness.  It had to be given, and it is given because it is love.

The Gospel—God’s love—is power, true power, real power.  Salvation is not in the color of one’s skin.  It is not a matter of one’s sex.  It is not in one’s place of birth, native language, or ancestry.  It is not in one’s political preference, personal values, so tender heart, or presumed intelligence.  The power of salvation is not the reward for one’s record or character—quite the opposite!

What, then, is the power of salvation, what is the power of the Gospel?  The power is “the righteousness of God” (1:17).  God’s righteousness, God’s character, God’s nature: given to us, in Christ.  Salvation is in relationship, vital relationship, with God who has the power to save, to give life, abundantly, eternally.  In Jesus,   God offers us His own righteousness in place of our sinfulness, His perfection in place of our brokenness, His healing in place of our hurt, His purpose in place of our wandering lost down one wearying, worthless way after another.

Righteousness is revealed: God has to show us, or we’ll never see.  Revealed means God must open our eyes, because we’re blind to it, otherwise.  God only can give all these blessings.  God gives.

We access the blessings of this righteousness through faith, “a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith’” (1:17): by trusting God’s Word, valuing God’s promise, desiring God, what God only can give, and then living like people who trust, value, and desire God.  We receive what God offers when we want what God offers.  And we say, “Well, who wouldn’t want what God offers?”  Then we look around.  Salvation is a free gift, indeed—the costliest free gift that ever was or could be!  And the free gift, received, will change us, the way a seed begins to change as it receives light, air, water, warmth, being in the good soil.  Salvation, grace, faith, Christ—these work together to remake—to restore us—into who God means for us to be.  O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!  Live in our hearts and be our Lord, today and always.