Galatians 2.16-20

Luke 12.16-21

St John writes: ‘In Christ, the WORD of God incarnate, was Life, and the Life was the Light of men…The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness could not ‘hold Him down.’ He was the True Light coming into the world, and as many as received Him, to them He gave the Power to become children of God.’

This ‘power’ to become children of God is the power of Christian Faith. We receive this faith, this power, if we desire it. It will not be given to us if we don’t desire it because God is love, and love does not force itself on un.

For, we cannot generate this Power, this saving Faith from ourselves any more than we can give birth to ourselves. We can believe with all our might until we’re blue in our soul; we still aren’t children of God. For to become a child of God is to be born of a power that is not from us but from God.

The devils believe, after all, and they tremble. They do not become children of God because their ‘belief’ is not ‘Christian Faith;’ it is not love for God; they have no desire to receive God or to become children of God. They desire, rather, to be their own gods; they desire power not to serve others but to serve themselves.

St Paul’s doctrine of ‘justification by grace through faith’ has been badly mangled and distorted outside the Faith of the Orthodox Church. I hope to illustrate St Paul’s doctrine of the Law and biblical Faith with certain biblical images.

Imagine Christmas without Christ and His Most Beloved Virgin Mother. Imagine the Cave of Bethlehem without the Virgin and the Christ Child. Imagine the Virgin Herself without Her Son, Jesus Christ.

Imagine the Cross without Christ nailed to it. Imagine the Tomb of Pascha without Christ inside it.

Now, imagine the Law of Moses, the Psalms, and the prophets if they do not hold within them the WORD of God. Imagine the Tabernacle of Moses, the Temple of Solomon, without the Glory of God filling them; or the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle without God sitting atop the ‘mercy seat’ of the Ark of the Covenant between the two cherubim, making Himself known to Moses and speaking to Him. (Ex 25.22)

Can you see in the icons these images draw in your mind that if there is no Christ in any of these different vessels, they would not be at all sacred? There would be no Life in them that is the Light of men. There would be only darkness and death.

In the same way, any talk of being ‘justified’ whether by faith or by ‘works of the Law,’ if Jesus Christ, God the WORD incarnate, is not in that Faith or those ‘works of the Law,’ they would be empty, lifeless, dark – they would be just ordinary profane objects.

The same could be said of the Church, of Her liturgical worship, Her sacraments, Her ascetical disciplines, the Cross we are called to take up, the virtues we are called to acquire. If they do not carry Christ, then they have no death-destroying and life-creating power, no illuminating Light.

If that were the case, then we could be ‘justified’ all we want. We could observe the ‘works of the Law’ or not. We could be circumcised or uncircumcised; we could keep the Sabbath or not keep it. We could be as pious as we can be. There still would be in our ‘righteousness’ and in our piety no life, no light, no power to become children of God, because there would be no Christ in them. We’d be nothing more than ‘Potemkins,’ play actors. Whatever life we built would be no more than a Potemkin village, a Hollywood stage set, following a script that ends for good on the last page. Or, following this morning’s Gospel, a barn filled with gold and silver that become absolutely worthless to us the instant we reach the last page of our life.

The LORD Jesus Christ is Himself the Power that gives to Faith its ‘justifying’ power, its power to raise men from death to life as children of God, or, as the LORD says through His prophet, King David, in the Psalm, the power to make them to be ‘gods, sons of the Most High.’ (Ps 82.6)

Let us understand that the ‘works of the Law’ to which St Paul refers in our epistle this morning had as their purpose to prepare Israel for the coming of Christ. As St Paul says this morning: ‘Through the Law I died to the Law that I might live to God.’ For Christ is the ‘end’ – the perfection, the completion, the goal – of the Law. (Rm 10.4) He is what the ‘works of the Law’ are working for – like the LORD’s Star in the East guiding the Wise Men to Christmas, to the Most Holy and Beloved Virgin and Her Child in the Cave.

And the Power of biblical Faith that ‘justifies’ and makes us ‘righteous,’ i.e., that raises us from death to life, illumined with the uncreated Light of God in whom is our eternal Life, is the Son of God becoming flesh and, by His death in the flesh, destroying death, and ‘building’ the New Creation, creating in us a new heart and putting in us a new and right Spirit.

That means that Christmas and Holy Pascha are the ‘end,’ the goal, the perfecting and completing of the ‘works of the Law.’ The Christ that is in the Cave and in the Tomb is Himself the substance of this Faith that is the Power to ‘justify us,’ to raise us from death to life and to make us to be a new creation.

Making our way now to the Christ Child in the Cave of Bethlehem – and from there to His Resurrection in the Tomb of His Holy Pascha, dear faithful – we are making our way to the Treasure that we have in our earthen vessels.’ For when we united ourselves to Him in Holy Baptism, we put Him on as our Robe of uncreated Light. And when we receive Him as our food and drink in Holy Eucharist, we receive Him Who is the Resurrection and the Life; we receive ‘the Power that is ‘beyond measure’ by which we are justified, by which we are raised from death to life, by which we are made children of God, sons of the Most High, the Power that is of God and not of us.’ [2Co 4.7]

With this treasure that is Christ within us, we now have the Power to ‘build’ our bodies, our souls and minds, not into barns filled with the riches of this world, but into Temples of the Holy Spirit, filled with all the Riches of divine Wisdom

The Power of the Christian Faith, dear faithful, is our love for the God who first loved us. In the fear of God, with faith and love, we receive Him; and His Love is united to our love so that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. [Phl 4.13] We can build our bodies into a Living Temple, because it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us.

Reading our Scripture readings this morning in this Light of the Power of the Church’s Faith, then, have we not been granted to see mystically, from afar, the wonder of Christmas? The wonder of Christmas is the Treasure of Jesus Christ that has been ‘placed’ in our earthen vessels as He was ‘placed’ in the Cave of Bethlehem.

If we desire to walk the Path that would lead us to the Wonder of Christmas, we can come to the Feast of the Virgin’s Entrance into the Temple (this Wed & Thurs, Nov 20 & 21), and go mystically with Joachim and Anna as they bring to the Temple of God their daughter, the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, She who is the Living Temple that will hold God.

We’ll hear Anna urging her daughter to enter the place no one may enter – that is the sanctuary of the Temple. It is the image of the sanctuary of our heart. And we’ll hear the Virgin urging us to enter with Her into this place where human thoughts may not pass – i.e., into the mystery of Christmas and Christ’s Holy Pascha that is beyond our mind’s power to comprehend. She urges us to enter with Her into the sanctuary, the ‘closet,’ the ‘tomb’ of our heart that will become the Bridal Chamber of the LORD’s Holy Pascha, in order to begin building ourselves in this season of Advent into a ‘beautiful dwelling place’ of God, that we may receive Him with joy and love on Christmas Day! Amen!