Trinity XXII Sermon 2025

I thank my God…being confident of this very thing, that he who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." - Phil. 1,3 - 6
 
Today we come together to examine the way that forgiveness received becomes love and hope that shape and mold our Christian lives. In today’s Epistle, St. Paul writes to the Church at Philippi. The Epistle was written during Paul’s final days of house arrest at Rome. In today’s reading he speaks of being in bonds. He has received a gift from the Christian Church at Philippi through Epaphroditus, who brought news of the state of the church in that place; Paul’s letter is a thank you note for the gift and a response to the news. It is full of good will and recollections of fond memories of times spent together. All this he writes, despite the fact he is in bonds and awaiting execution.
        
Philippi was a city in eastern Macedonia, founded by Philip, father of Alexander the Great, in the 4th century – some three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Later it was a Roman colony and was the scene of a great battle, in which Octavian (later Augustus) and Mark Anthony defeated Brutus and Cassius – the murderers of Octavian’s uncle Julius Caesar. Philippi was an important city because it stood at a break in the mountains where travelers would pass from Asia Minor and into Europe. In the Sixteenth Chapter of Acts, Paul had a vision telling him to pass into Macedonia. He and Barnabas set out, and the end-product was the conversion of Europe.
        
So, as we said, Paul writes from his imprisonment in Rome, where later he will be executed. And yet, in the midst of his suffering, with the executioner’s axe dangling over his head, he is writing a letter of friendship and spiritual comfort. And yet we wonder how he could be writing in such a spirit when his time on earth was about to come to an end. How can he give consolation to others when his own situation is so dire? How can he thank God for for their fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now (Phil. i. 5) when violent death, no doubt, awaits him?
Paul persists in something greater. He prays that he who has begun a good work in them will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ? (Phil. i. 6) His attention is on his flock. His heart in on fire for their sanctification and salvation. It is meet for me to think this of you all. (Phil. i. 7) It is fitting that their sanctification and salvation are more significant than the suffering he was called to endure.
        
It seems so strange to us. It appears that Paul has embraced a far more meaningful reality, a deeper truth which moves his heart. Paul has experienced the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ from the same Lord who knocked him off his high horse years before when, as a devout Jewish Pharisee, he was on his way to Damascus to round up and persecute Christians. The Lord had need of Paul in the missionary conversion of the world. He had forgiven Paul much and was determined to use him for the conversion of the nations. And Paul, ever conscious of his own past, full of wicked malice, envy, and fraud, was now as determined as ever to serve his Lord until his life should end. The healing redemption that Christ had worked into his heart was the fuel and substance of his desire to save others from certain Hellfire and damnation.  The mercy and forgiveness of God was a gift he knew he never deserved, and with such great treasure he was intent upon sharing it with the world. Like his Lord, suffering and dying on the Cross and forgiving all his enemies, Paul would do the same. From the inward security of His soul, held captive by Jesus, he will die doing the Lord’s work. I have you in my heart, he says, inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel, ye are all partakers of my grace. (Phil. i. 7) Paul is made to receive and impart the unmerited Grace of God to others; this must quash any sense of narcissistic selfishness. Paul prays always, with the author of this morning’s Collect, that he may be freed from all adversities, and devoutly given to serve God in good works. (Collect Trinity xxii) Of utmost importance to Paul is the Grace that must take root in other men’s souls so that they too might go out to convert the nations.
        
We too are called to look back and ask ourselves if Jesus Christ has called us out of sin and into redemption. Of course, Christ always offers forgiveness to those who repent, turn, believe, and follow. And not everyone will experience St. Paul’s dramatic conversion. But we must ask ourselves if we have a real relationship with Christ that is redeeming us now for salvation later. Of course, this question is urgent since our eternal destiny depends upon it.
        
What we must focus on is the perfection of our souls by God’s Grace, in that part of our being that no man can threaten or kill. The Apostle Paul can love and hope, yearn and long for his flock’s salvation, in the face of his impending demise, precisely because he has opened his soul to the mercy of God, and given his life to the power of conversion. His soul is aware of a new kind of love that breaks all bounds and surmounts all barriers. Love’s power is perfect, its zeal unabated, and its expanse infinite. It is the Divine Love made flesh that speaks to the soul of St. Paul, forgiving his sins and reforming his life. Christ’s merciful presence, thankfully received, then becomes the love that longs for salvation – not only his own, but that of all others.

But just as his soul was moved and impelled to express Divine love, so too can ours be. For, as Christ offered himself to St. Paul in a habitual manner two-thousand years ago, he does the same for us individually and collectively in fellowship each Sunday. The problem is that so many Christians never get around to receiving him. And they have never received him because they have never meditated long and hard enough upon the need for God’s mercy, its infusion of forgiveness, for the subsequent transformation of human life. They have never been grateful because they have never sought out or received the forgiveness of sins. For erroneously they have thought that they have no sins needing forgiveness. But the man who admits to no sin, needs neither mercy, forgiveness, salvation, nor, evidently, Heaven. The man who admits to no sin will be rewarded for his stupidity. He will enter Hell, where he will know his sin, forever regret his failure to confess it, and be forgiven for salvation.

We come here to seek salvation. We repent of our sins and supplicate God’s forgiveness. In earthly terms we deserve none of it; but God insists upon it. God’s love is more powerful than our sins. The forgiveness of sins is, of course, chiefly found in the suffering and dying Lord Jesus. On His Cross, Christ was tempted most not to forgive. But He both loves and forgives. Unlike any other man who has ever lived, Christ, the innocent Son of God, loves and forgives precisely because this alone, made flesh, can save man.


Of course, if we are thankful and receive Christ’s love and forgiveness, it should be a principle that moves and defines our souls. In today’s Gospel Christ gives a parable of a man who was forgiven much by his earthly master. But no sooner was he forgiven than he refused to forgive another man of his debt to him. He was not thankful for the mercy and forgiveness of his lord. Forgetting it selfishly, no doubt with a sense of entitlement, its power died on the vine. But it must not be so with us. We must remain vigilant. We must confess our sins to receive Christ’s forgiveness. And we must remember that as oft as we confess our sins, Christ forgives us. If there were a limit to Christ’s forgiveness, there might be one for us also. But there isn’t. The point is that it is God’s nature to forgive to perfect His creature. Of course, there will be a time when the benefit of forgiveness ceases. Once we die, we can no longer repent to find the value of forgiveness for salvation.

In this morning’s Collect, we pray that [God’s] protection might free us from all adversities that we might be given to all good works. (Collect, Trinity XXII) The good works which must characterize our lives is found chiefly in forgiving all men their trespasses against us. (St. Matthew xviii. 35) For, with St. Paul, we must be consumed with awesome wonder over God’s eternal forgiveness of our sins. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. If God’s Grace in Jesus Christ forgives us as many times as we sin, the same love must move us to love and forgive all others. We must work on perfecting our gratitude. Next, we must take every opportunity to share the truth. If we receive healing redemption as a gift, we must see that it is too great a gift to be hoarded. Forgiveness is generous and magnanimous. Without its power for us and all others, we perish.  

Amen.
©wjsmartin