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Know your enemy.
If you want to win any sort of victory, you have to know who’s trying to beat you, and what their weapons are. You need to ask, “What are the opposing team’s strengths and weaknesses? What defensive maneuvers can we use to safeguard against their attacks, and what offensive tactics will allow us to conquer them?”
Do you know who your enemies are? Perhaps disease, cancer, heart disease, chronic pain, an abusive family member, bullies, the devil are examples that come to mind. Those types of enemies do need to be dealt with in different ways, but none of those is your biggest problem. Your final, ultimate enemy, is death. God’s Word teaches that on Judgment Day, “the last enemy to be destroyed is death,” 1 Corinthians 15:26. That’s good news for Christians, but it also contains a sharp warning: death cannot be your friend, but it is the last enemy of us all.
Death is a tenacious enemy. By taking our loved ones from us, he makes life more sad and bitter, and he won’t give up until he claims us, too. Death is so strong that he cannot be defeated in this lifetime by any human efforts. The so-called wars against coronavirus or cancer or other diseases are really just small battles in an unwinnable war, since even if we found a cure for one killer, it would only postpone the inevitable. Death still comes for all. We really shouldn’t call doctors and firefighters “lifesavers,” but instead call them “death-delayers.”
So from a worldly perspective, the fight against death is hopeless, and this fact is intensely painful for those who love this earthly life, whose hopes are built on this temporal existence. However, the death of the body is nothing in comparison with facing the defeat of everlasting death in hell under God’s judgment. God’s Word teaches that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,” Hebrews 9:27, that is, judgment by God. Who, then, can rescue us from temporal and eternal death?
Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. God the Holy Trinity has had mercy on us. God the Father sent His only-begotten Son to be conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born into the world as the God-Man Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. And then in His baptism in the Jordan, He was identified as the ideal Son of God who would fulfill all righteousness, that is, He would be the Child that Adam and Eve and all of us never could be, for Jesus would never sin but would live a perfectly righteous life in our place. And one day, John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Not only did Jesus live a righteous life, but He became the spotless, sinless, priceless Lamb who took the guilt of all of God’s enemies into His own flesh and then went up on Good Friday to suffer and die for the sins of all people.
But as we celebrate at Easter, Jesus did not stay dead in the tomb but is risen, ascended, and glorified at the Father’s right hand, never to die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him, for He has triumphed over sin, death, hell and the devil by His righteous life, in His sufferings and death, in His glorious resurrection. And you have a full share in that victory by your Baptism into Christ and by faith in Him. God’s Word teaches that Baptism unites you with Christ’s death and resurrection, so that your death becomes His, and His life becomes yours. In Holy Baptism, Christ takes away all your unrighteousness, guilt, shame, and death and exchanges it for His righteousness, forgiveness, glory and indestructible life. You have been reconciled to God by Christ’s death for your sins, and now that you are united with Him by Baptism and faith, you will be saved by His life. Jesus is the only true Lifesaver in the whole universe, and He comes to rescue you through His Word and Sacraments given out in the Church, in which He is week in and week out distributing to you the forgiveness, life, and salvation you need to win the victory. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen.
