LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1971, Page 97

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EVENING DEVOTIONS 97

minimal love for Him that we protest, and turns over
the care and the leading and the feeding of His little
ones to us, the infinitely important but easiest work in
the church because the little ones are ready to accept
the care and the leading and the feeding that we offer.
If we do not accept this responsibility and are not en-
gaged in this task, we put a big question mark over
any and every claim that we make of being friends of
Jesus.

But the Lord is not willing to let it go at that, even
though He has already brought us low from all the
high and mighty claims that we make for ourselves.
He asks us the second time: “Do you love Me?” Now
there is no comparison with others, no more nor less,
but the simple questioning whether our own personal
relationship with Him is the relationship of love at all.
Why would our Lord do something like that to us?
Because He knows us better than we know ourselves,
knows us just as well as He knew Peter, knows us as
willing to hang on to anything as long as it gives us
a firm grip on ourselves and therefore unwilling to
capitulate to Him and His love in total and final sur-
render. He gives us a little job in some corner of His
church because He trusts us, and we immediately equate
our friendship for Him and our willingness to be in-
volved with Him at all with His own love for those
whom He has given us to serve. How shall we respond
now that our Lord asks us whether we even love Him
at all? We had better be honest lest we frustrate the
very love with which our Lord probes our love. “Yes,
Lord! You know that I am Your friend!” No boast!
No pretensions! Nothing more than that I am a friend
of Jesus Christ, the Friend of sinners, the Reconciler
who can plead through us with all on the basis of our
friendship with Him: “Be friends of God because God
was in Christ making friends of the whole world!”
That’s how we get involved in the more difficult task
of tending the sheep as Christ is able to beseech men
through us, His friends: “Be friends of God in Christ!
If even I can be His friend, then who must remain His
enemy!”

But still our Lord is not satisfied. Now He asks us:
“Are you My friend?” And that’s enough to make us
sorrowful, almost to the point of running out and weep-

ing bitterly. Christ is the Lord who will let us rest
nowhere except in Him alone. Christ is the Savior who
must save us to the utmost because there is no hope
and no help in ourselves. Christ is the Seeker of the
lost, and He will never find us unless He first shows us
how lost we are. Christ is the Vine, and we are only the
branches, so that apart from Him we are nothing but
dried sticks fit only for the fire; without Him we can
do nothing, not even love Him, still less bring forth the
fruit that He has ordained, still less build the church o
which He alone is the Builder. It’s good that our Lord
grieves us because the sorrow that He works is always
unto repentance. If by His questioning He has brought
us to that godly grief, then we will give up our last
stronghold of being and saying and doing and claiming
as it is in ourselves, and we will cast ourselves entirely
upon Him. “Lord, You know all things, You Yourself
recognize me as Your friend!” Now He can entrust the
flock that is His to us because we no longer are what we
are by ourselves but altogether and only what we are
by Him. Now it is no longer what we say and know of
ourselves, but what Christ says of us when we offer
ourselves to Him as He knows us. Now we live, yet not
we, but Christ lives in us, and the life which we hence-
forth live in the flesh, we live by the faith of the Son
of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.

That’s how Christ finally has His way with us and is
able to work His work in us and through us. He breaks
into the very core of our being, that which makes us
what we are, and replaces our enthroned self with Him-
self, our knowledge of self with His knowledge of us,
our loves which we are able to generate for ourselves
with His love which we can receive only as gift. He
frees us from every bondage which enslaves us so that
we might be His very own and live under Him in His
kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness,
innocence, and blessedness. Before, we could not go
where He went or be baptized with the baptism with
which He was baptized. Now, it’s not only possible, but
it’s really all that’s left for us. Or don’t we hear the
Friend of sinners telling His friends and enabling them
as His friends with: “Follow Me!” Only as we follow
Him can we lead and feed His sheep! Amen.

Wm. A. BurcE

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