In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the messages of this week, I would like us to consider what is required of us to make the most of the approaching season of the Holy Week. I do not mean the practical details of which services to attend and how to participate, but the spiritual preparation and focus that turns us again to the death and the resurrection of God made man for our salvation, Jesus Christ.
In 1 John 3:8, we read,
He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.
How we live represents the source of the life within us. God himself came into the world to destroy all the works of the evil one. He came to gain victory for us over the one who had deceived our father Adam in the beginning. Therefore, he lived a life of complete holiness and obedience so that there was nothing in him that belonged to the devil. In our Agpeya prayers every day we read from the gospel where the Lord Jesus says,
The ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me.
Who is the ruler of this world? It is Satan, because Adam who had been given charge of the whole world gave it over to Satan when he sinned and made himself a slave of sin and of the devil. God has come into the world to destroy the power of Satan, and there was nothing of the devil in him because he did no sin, nor was any disobedience, self-centredness, pride or any other corruption found in his heart.
Having come into the world to destroy all the works in the power of the devil, the events of this Holy Week represent our freedom and liberty. God himself became man so that he might enter on our behalf into the contest with the devil which our father Adam lost, and in defeating him and destroying his power and the power of death, he gives us freedom and liberty in him and in the grace of the indwelling Holy Spirit which he has restored to mankind by his glorious resurrection.
What is required of us in these days as we approach the Holy Week this year? It is surely that we put into practise this victory that is celebrated in the prayers and services and Liturgies of the week that is to come. If Christ our God has won the victory for us and destroy the power of Satan then we must surely put this victory into practise by the grace of God in our own lives.
God wants us to overcome sin in our lives so that we experience the freedom he has gained for us, freedom from every habit and attitude and wrong way of thinking and speaking and acting that keeps us in bondage. And this is the offering that is proper to give to God, especially in these last days before the Holy Week and the Feast of the Resurrection.
Let us consider how we think and speak and act, asking God for greater grace to experience and practice the victory over sin. Let us reflect on what we have said and done so that we might repent and cut off from ourselves every wrong word and deed and the selfish choices that have separated us from God and caused harm to others. In our weakness, let us turn to Christ who is our strength so that we might live in the grace of the new life, the divine life, that Christ has poured out upon us through the victory of sin and death and Satan which is his.
To him be the glory, now and ever. Amen.
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