Dear Lord God and Father, convert and control. Convert
FIFTH SUNDAY those who are still to become children and members of your IN LENT kingdom, that together we may serve you in your kingdom in the right faith and true love and pass from this kingdom begun here into your eternal kingdom. Control those who would not withdraw their might and means from disturbing your kingdom. May they be dethroned and in humiliation stop molesting your kingdom. Amen
From Luther’s Small Catechism:
The Apostle’s Creed Third Article: Sanctification
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen
What does this mean?
I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort
believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith. In the same way he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. Almighty God, our redeemer, in our weakness we have failed In this Christian church day after day he fully forgives my to be your messengers of forgiveness and hope in the world. sins and the sins of all believers. On the last day he will raise Renew us by your Holy Spirit, that we may follow your me and all the dead and give me and all believers in Christ commands and proclaim your reign of love; through your eternal life. Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. This is most certainly true. Gospel: John 12: 1-8 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Beloved, I do home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There not consider that I have made it my own but this one thing I they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus feet, and heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of the WHAT DOES THIS MEAN ? disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denari and the Not as though I had already attained, either were already money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, he kept the which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus Philippians iii. 12. said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with Therefore none of the saints regards or confesses you, but you do not always have me.” himself to be just, but they always pray to be made just and wait for those who confess that they are sinners and abhor SECOND Reading: Philippians 3:4b-14 their sins to be justified. Hence the whole life of the new and faithful and If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have spiritual people consists in the fact that with the inward more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the groaning of their hearts, with the cry of their works, with the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of toil of their bodies they desire and implore for this one gift: Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor that they may be satisfied until death; that they may never of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. stand still, never think themselves to have already attained, 7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to never regard any work as the goal of justification actually regard as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I regard already attained, but await it as though it were beyond their everything as loss because of the surpassing value of reach so long as they still commit sins. knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order Commentary on Romans. 146, 153 f. that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one Taken from the book: that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from Day by Day We Magnify Thee by Martin Luther God based on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming Page 269 like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own,