Romans 11:33–12:8; Matthew 16:13–20
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And their response was that some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
And then Jesus turns the question on them: "But who do you say that I am?"
That's the most important question that anybody could ever ask them. That's the most important question that anybody could ever ask you. Who do you say that Jesus is?
And how you answer that question defines how you look at reality as a whole. How you look at the world we live in. How you look at who God is and what He has done for you.
Who do you say that Jesus is?
And those answers that the disciples give for other people are similar to the answers that many people will say today. Well, maybe Jesus was a great prophet. He's a great guy. He had a lot of nice things to say. Or maybe people will say He wasn't really anybody special at all. He was just an ordinary man that just kind of got elevated up on a pedestal, and His disciples took things a little bit too far.
But that's not what Jesus allows you to think about Him. He doesn't allow you to just think that He was some great guy but not the Son of God. He doesn't allow you to think He was just an ordinary guy, but rather He reveals to you over and over again who He is, that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
He has been showing His disciples this all throughout the Gospel of Matthew. The prophets have proclaimed this about Him. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God in our Gospel reading for today.
And that is the confession of Jesus' holy Christian Church on earth: that He is the Christ, our Savior. He is the Son of the living God in human flesh, and we find life in His name.
That's the message that our text has for us today: Jesus is the Christ, and His Church confesses Him by word and by deed.
Jesus said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
It's a very significant statement that Simon Peter says: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And we need to talk about what this means.
When Peter says that He is the Christ, he means that He is the Anointed One of God. He's not just a great prophet. He is the One that God had promised from the beginning who would redeem His people.
This goes all the way back to the garden when God said to the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel."
God had promised that a man would come who would redeem His people and save them from their sins. That is the Christ. That is the promised One.
God promises again in Psalm 132:11, "The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which He will not turn back. One of the sons of your body, I will set on your throne."
The Son of David, then, Jesus Christ, fulfills this promise to be the true King.
And then in Jeremiah 23:5, the prophet says, "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and He shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land."
Jesus is that promised One. Jesus is that Anointed One. Jesus is the One promised from God to save His people, to save all the world through the forgiveness of their sins.
And then not only this, but He is the Son of God. He is true God taking on human flesh. This is what the Gospel of John proclaims to us in John 1:14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."
And Jesus Himself has been proclaiming this truth to His disciples and to all the people around Him all throughout the Gospel of Matthew up to this point.
Do you remember the story from Matthew chapter 9 when Jesus is healing the paralytic? And the people doubt that Jesus has authority to forgive sins because He first tells the man, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
And Jesus' opponents question Him and say, "How could He say this? Who has authority to forgive sins except God alone?"
And Jesus says, "In order that you might know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins," that authority that only belongs to God, "I now say to the man, rise, take up your mat."
And he does rise. Jesus heals this paralytic and shows through His miracle that He has the power of the Son of God and then also that He has the authority of God to forgive sins.
You see here how Jesus clearly proclaims to His disciples and all the people around that He is the Son of God taking on human flesh.
And this is very clearly declared by God from the very beginning of Jesus' ministry when Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan River. And then the voice from heaven, God the Father, says, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."
Jesus came into the world, but the world did not receive Him. This truth was proclaimed by God from heaven, shown by Jesus through His miracles and through His teaching, and it was not received by all. Some believed; some firmly rejected.
That's why Jesus says to Peter in Matthew chapter 16, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven."
If it was just up to us, we would be lost. We would not be able to come to faith in Jesus by our own power because we are so corrupted and so sinful. We couldn't come to that conclusion on our own. We couldn't figure it out by our own power or come to God by our own power.
It's something that needed to be revealed to us by God. God had to come to us and declare it to us through His Word.
Like St. Paul said in our reading from Romans chapter 11, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!"
That in Jesus Christ our Lord, God reveals Himself to you. He reveals His heart to you, a heart of love and compassion and mercy, that He sent His Son to redeem you, to give His Word to you, and through that Word creates that faith in your heart so that you can say, like Simon Peter, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," and that by believing in Him you might have life in His name.
We need that Word preached to us because the Holy Spirit works through that Word to create faith in our hearts. Like St. Paul says in Romans 10:17, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ."
So when Jesus comes to His Church, when Jesus builds His Church on that confession that St. Peter made, that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, what does He give to His Church?
Well, first of all, He gives us life. He gives us His own life. And through Him giving His own life on the cross, He gives us eternal life.
When He died on the cross in our place and then rose again on the third day, He crushed death under His feet forever, so that in Him you might have life in His name.
And that's what Jesus promised to Peter: "I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
On this confession that Peter had made, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," on that truth, on that truth of Jesus, the Church is built and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.
Because Jesus has destroyed death. Jesus has destroyed Satan and all of his forces, and they have no power over Him because He is Lord over all.
He builds His Church on this truth, that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And hell, though it might try to overturn the Church, cannot and will not because Christ is Lord over all.
And then what else does Jesus give to His Church that He has established? He gives her the forgiveness of sins through His blood.
If you keep reading in the Gospel of Matthew, in Matthew chapter 16, right after Jesus asks His disciples, "Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?" and Peter makes this confession, Jesus will go on to say that the Son of Man must suffer and die and rise again.
And why does He do this? Why is it necessary for the Christ, the Son of the living God, to suffer and die and rise again?
It's because you need the forgiveness of sins. You need the forgiveness of sins that only His holy and precious blood could pay for.
So He goes to the cross to suffer and die and take all of your sins onto Himself. And through His blood shed on the cross, He cleanses you from all your sins, so that you're no longer separated from God, but you are reconciled to the Father once again.
You are Christ's own through His forgiveness that He has won for you.
And then Jesus' forgiveness is the gift that He keeps giving to His Church. This is what He said to Peter: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
The Church has the task of declaring the forgiveness of sins that is won through Jesus to people.
This is the business that we are engaged in in church, constantly pouring the forgiveness of God onto God's people. And this happens in all the different ways that God wants to give Himself to us.
He declares that forgiveness through His Word. And that Word creates faith in our hearts so that we cling to the forgiveness of Jesus.
The forgiveness of Jesus comes to us in Holy Baptism, when you are clothed with the righteousness of Christ and your sins are washed away by water in the Word.
The forgiveness of sins comes in the Lord's Supper, when that blood that was shed for you and that body that was broken for you is given to you: "Take, eat; take, drink, for the forgiveness of sins."
The forgiveness of sins that Jesus won on the cross is His gift to His Church. And the Church is constantly giving that forgiveness and that gift to you each and every day.
Because, dear friends, we need it each and every day.
So we are the Church built on that confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, in receiving all of the gifts that the Christ, the Son of the living God, wants to give us.
So then, what does the Church act like? What does the Church do in this life? How do we live out this confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God?
St. Paul talks about this in our epistle reading from Romans chapter 12:
"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
When we confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, this is the confession that He is Lord over all and He has redeemed me with His blood and I am His.
So I am no longer authorized in this life to continue on going on my own way and pretending like I don't care about what Jesus says. That is not what the life of the Christian can look like.
We are not to be conformed to this world, and we are not to be conformed to our own desires of our own sinful human nature. But rather, St. Paul says we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to Christ.
We offer ourselves as His own people, and we are conformed to His will, His image, walking in His ways.
And then how do we interact with one another in the Church?
St. Paul goes on to say in Romans 12:3, "For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you to not think of himself more highly than he ought, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned."
Because the way of the world and the way of our own sinful human nature is always to exalt ourselves over others and then ultimately over God.
We want to be the one calling the shots. We want to be the one who is making the final decision about my own life. What I want, that's what I get. And if anybody else gets in the way, if God's Word gets in the way, I'm going to go with what I want.
That's the will of the sinful human nature.
And then also, I want to assert my will over others. The people that God has put around me in this life, they need to know just how great I am. That's what the sinful human nature wants.
But that's not the way of Christ, who took on the form of a servant, even washing His disciples' feet, even going through the humility of the cross, taking on all the punishment because of you, because of His great love and compassion and mercy for you.
So that's the way of Christ. And then that is also the way of the Christian, the way of the holy Christian Church.
St. Paul says here to not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but to act with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
Then in Romans 12:4–5, he goes on to say:
"For as in one body, we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another."
So this causes us to believe two things about our life together in the Church. One is that we're not all the same, but we're all necessary for the Church of Christ. And then two is that we're all accountable to each other.
First, talking about how we're not all the same, but we are all serving the same Lord in providing necessary functions for the Church.
It's very easy to look around in the body of Christ and say, "Well, I'm really the one that's holding this place together, and what I'm doing is really necessary, and other people are not doing their part or their part is less necessary."
It's easy to do in the Church. It's easy to do in life. But St. Paul is urging us not to think that way.
We can recognize that we do different things in the Church and in life. We all have different talents. We all have different functions. We all have different abilities, but we're all serving the same Lord. We're all performing the necessary functions of the Church.
And maybe someone else that I think isn't really doing anything is doing far more than I could ever imagine.
That also goes with not thinking about ourselves too highly as we ought.
But St. Paul urges us that we need to recognize that though we might be different members performing different functions, doing different things, and having different abilities, we're all part of the same body, serving the same Lord. And all of us are necessary in the body of Christ.
And then the other part of this is that we are all accountable to each other as the body of Christ.
Because this is the temptation in the modern Christian Church: to say, "I'm just going to go off on my own, and I don't need anyone else. I don't need the communion of the saints. I can go over here and be a Christian on my own."
And that's not the way the Scriptures ever talk about the Church. We're always talked about as a communion, as a body gathered together around the Word and the Sacraments.
We need each other. We are accountable to each other, as St. Paul says here in Romans chapter 12.
And that's necessary for your life as a believer because it is a beautiful thing when people know your joys, when people know your sorrows, know what you need, know what's going on, and you need your fellow Christians to pray for you and to pray for each other.
We're accountable to each other in that way.
And then it's also necessary that we are accountable to each other. So, I've got people in my life that will call me on my sin because it's so easy to say, "I'm going to go off and be a Christian all by myself."
And then that also makes it so nobody's watching me, keeping an eye on me, and going to call me out for my sin.
But I need that. I need people that will hold me accountable to the Word of God.
This is true for all Christians. We must be together. We are accountable to one another, and we lift one another up and turn each other toward God because we are the body of Christ and we all confess the one Christ.
Like St. Paul says in Ephesians 4:5–6, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."
So who do you say Jesus is?
He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
His is the name that gives you the forgiveness of sins. His is the name that gives you eternal life. His is the name that you are baptized into and walk in all the days of your life.
His is the name that we are all joined into and therefore also joined to one another through.
His is the name that gives you life, for He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Amen.
And now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
To read more sermons, click here
Whether you're a lifelong Lutheran or simply exploring the Christian faith, the best way to continue your journey is by visiting.
worship with us