Easter Sunday

1 Peter 3:17-22 - Easter Sunrise - March 31, 2013 

Crushing the Devil’s Head 

Jesus purchased and won us from sin, death, and the power of the devil.  He did so not with perishable things like gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.  He did this in order that we might be His own and live under Him in His kingdom of grace here on earth.  This life consists of the forgiveness of all our sins, and the daily cleansing of a bad conscience.  We have been redeemed to serve God in holiness.  We live by faith — because, although we are given the Holy Spirit who works new desires in our hearts to will and perform what pleases God, we still must contend with our flesh and blood.  We sin.  The holiness we possess as redeemed children of God is a holiness that we possess by faith in the Son of God.  We see this holiness in Christ, not in ourselves.   He is the life of all the living. 

But in good time, when in God’s wisdom we leave this world – whether by death or by our Lord’s imminent return, we will live forever in God’s kingdom of glory.  What we now know and see dimly will be made clear and bright.  We will no longer struggle against sin or doubt or depression or chronic pain or whatever else makes life such a bear.  Our bodies will be glorified and spiritual even as Christ’s body has been glorified.  Our minds will be enlightened and wise and sharp because they will be completely conformed to the mind of Christ.  Our holiness will no longer be an article of faith, because the mystery of our union with Christ will be unhidden.  We will know our Lord even as we are known.  We will spend eternity in the presence of Him who once was slain to redeem us.  His blood will clothe us forever in the righteousness that will never leave us ashamed. 

Jesus purchased and won us.  He bought us.  I think just about everyone at at least some early point in his life kind of assumes that this ransom was paid to the devil.  It makes sense.  He is the one who tempts us.  He is the one who lays claim on us.  He is the one who holds us in bondage to the natural desires of our fallen flesh.  But His claim is bogus.  Jesus did not pay Him anything.  Just like God did not bribe Pharaoh to let His people go – no, He judged him.  And then He spared His people from the same judgment through the blood of the Passover Lamb.  So in the same way, Jesus did not bribe the devil.  He paid the price for our salvation to God by shedding His own blood.  He did so as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world by suffering and dying for the sin of the world. 

Jesus purchased us from God’s judgment by paying to God the debt we owed.  The reason God demanded this payment is because God loves us.  He wanted us to be His.  He gave His Son into death in order that He might destroy the power of death at its source – by freeing us from our sin.  Even when He went to the cross, His glorious resurrection was on God’s mind.  Consider these words from that wonderful Lenten hymn by Paul Gerhardt, A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth: 

O wondrous Love, what hast Thou done!
The Father offers up His Son!
The Son, content, descendeth!
O Love, how strong Thou art to save!
Thou beddest Him within the grave
Whose word the boulders rendeth. 

Whose word the boulders rendeth.  The word of Christ rends the boulders.  This is great foreshadowing!  It means that the proclamation of Christ’s victory over all our enemies tears the rock in half.  That’s the power of His resurrection.  The Father sent the Son to die our death in order that He might rise, and bring us with Him. The stone that sealed His grave could not hold Him.  The earth that holds our bodies when to dust we return must obey His command as well. 

And that’s why it’s so important to be united to Christ in a death like His through Holy Baptism – so that we might be united to Him in a resurrection like His as well. 

The death that we are united to is a humble and lowly death.  Christ humbled Himself so much that He could declare Himself a worm and not a man.  He placed Himself under everything – under the law, under judgment, under lawlessness, under sin, under death.  But when He paid our redemption price in full, all these things were placed under His feet – so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow –of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  Christ is risen!  Alleluia!  The strife is o’er, the battle done.  Now … whose knee will bow first? 

Consider.  It does little good to win a battle if your enemy doesn’t know he lost.  The shout of victory in a military camp does very little good if it is not also announced on the other side as well.   In fact, lest there be unneeded casualties of war, the victory must always first be announced to the enemy and then only afterwards be announced to those whose battle has been won. 

This is how God did it in the Garden of Eden.  From Adam to Eve to the devil, God got to the source of the mischief.  And even before He announced His curse against Adam’s sin, what did He say?  He cursed the devil.  He proclaimed His defeat and cursed him even more than the earth itself:

“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”

God cursed the devil by proclaiming that the promised Seed would take the curse of man upon Himself.  He would give His life.  But in giving His life, He would strip the devil of his power.  His heel would be bruised.  But He would live again.  The serpent’s head would be bruised; and under the weight of Christ’s wounded heel, he would be silenced forever. 

Think of this.  It is often called the protoevangelium – the first gospel.  The first gospel promise was not spoken to Adam and Eve.  It was spoken to the devil within their earshot.  Our enemy heard the proclamation of his defeat and our victory even before we did – even before it was accomplished. 

But, then, it was accomplished.  Jesus took our sin away.   He died for the sins that the devil leads us into.  He endured the condemnation that God once threatened against disobedience.  He suffered for us – the Just for the unjust – in order that He might bring us to God.  He was put to death in the flesh.  But He was made alive again by the Spirit.  This means that the God who forsook Him on the cross when Jesus gave up His Spirit and died returned to give Him life again. 

Jesus rose bodily from the dead.  It wasn’t just some spiritual resurrection.  His human flesh was raised from death.  But His flesh is spiritual.  It is glorified.  It’s not bound to one location like ours.  That’s how He is able to give His body and blood in the Lord's Supper for the forgiveness of our sins.  It is also how He was able to descend into hell and proclaim His victory.  Even before Jesus appeared to His disciples or even before He appeared to the women who so devoutly came looking for His body, Jesus descended in His resurrected glory to pronounce victory to the spirits in hell.  His enemies needed to hear the news first. 

The world mocks the Gospel.  The children of disobedience – ironically – want to trust in their own obedience, their own virtues, their own pretty-goodness in order to stand and live before God.  But they will not.  They will die and go to hell forever because they have despised the preaching of repentance and have rejected the promise of Jesus.  They obey the devil.  They believe lies.  Jesus descended to hell to proclaim the truth and to mock the devil’s lies.  I did it, He said.  What Noah preached was true.  His hope saved him.  I saved him.  And all who place their trust in Me cannot be harmed by the lies that you believed. 

Jesus still proclaims the truth.  He proclaims it here to us.  He saves us from lies.  He gives us victory over our sin and death and the fear of destruction by joining us to Himself in the waters of Holy Baptism.  This victory is not potential.  It is complete.  In our day of regret and sorrow over sins committed against God, in our hours of fear and shame, we can speak this victory to our guilty conscience, knowing that the devil and all the hordes of hell have been notified as well: Christ lives! He is risen! And because He lives, I am free from my sin. 

We don’t need to persuade the devil.  And we dare not try to persuade our sinful flesh or our bad conscience either.  That’s like trying to persuade the grave to give up its dead.  No, there’s nothing to convince them of.  There’s only victory to declare.  Cold hard victory with no strings attached that leaves the devil’s head crushed in the dust of death.   Victory that drowns the old Adam in us by daily repentance.  Victory that cleanses our conscience from evil by forgiving us our sins.  Victory that gives us new life by faith, and the sure hope of the resurrection. 

We don’t answer to the devil.  We answer to God.   And our faith does not rely on negotiations.  Our faith relies on His word.  That is why we return to our baptism that saves us from hell as surely as Noah was saved from the flood.  We return to the word God spoke when we were buried and raised with Christ through water and His word so that we might give our answer to God with a good conscience. 

With Christ, we also proclaim – to all our enemies – that the battle is over.  The victory is won.  And through Holy Baptism it is ours.  Though the devil still roams around us like a roaring lion, trying to claim our affections and seize our conscience, nonetheless, in the work of Christ for us, who descended to the pit of hell, we see our God shut his mouth and keep us safe.  And so we sing:

Satan hear this proclamation:
I am baptized into Christ!
Drop your ugly accusation,
I am not so soon enticed.  
Now that to the font I’ve traveled,
All your might has come unraveled,
And, against your tyranny,
God my Lord unites with me! 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.