GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 1:72-75
Zechariah’s song is almost entirely comprised of praise to God and a blessing on Zechariah’s son, and so its name, the Benedictus (to praise, bless, or speak well of) is quite fitting.
72 in order to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
73 the oath which he swore to our father Abraham,
74 to deliver us from the hand of our enemies,
so that we can serve him without fear,
75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
This part of the song divides into two parts. The dividing point is between the two halves of verse 72. Verses 73-75 expand on the thoughts of verse 72b, “to remember his holy covenant.” God made more than one covenant with Abraham, but they are generally grouped together as one single covenant. In Genesis 15, God promised to expand Abraham’s family. This was repeated several times (Gen. 17:1; 17:10), and God commanded that Abraham’s family be circumcised as well (Gen. 17:13-14). After Isaac was born, God included the promise: “Through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed” (Genesis 22:18). This is the covenant to which Zechariah refers. This covenant is described as “the oath he swore to Abraham,” and it is divided into two purposes. The first is to deliver us from our enemies (sin, death and the devil), and the second is so that we can serve him without fear. We will look at these two truths more closely, the results of Christ’s work for us.
“To deliver us” is the entire doctrine of justification. The verb in this clause is a preliminary aorist participle. This means that grammatically it presents an act that happened prior to what follows. This is consistent with everything the Bible tells us about the relationship between justification (how we were saved) and sanctification (our response to being saved). Our salvation is not contingent on anything within any of us. We are not forgiven because any of us is clever enough, or pretty enough, or repentant enough, or sincere enough. We are forgiven because of something that took place outside our bodies and outside our lives: We are saved because God had mercy on us. “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). So through Christ, all of our debt of sin is erased, and each and every command from God regarding our obedience is fulfilled. There is on the one hand “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1), and on the other hand “we are no longer under the supervision of the law” (Galatians 3:21) because Christ fulfilled the law, keeping it in our place. We are declared to be holy and forgiven because of Christ. This is our justification.
“So that we can serve him” is the entire doctrine of sanctification. This is our life of faith that follows our justification. What we offer to God are never physical sacrifices to atone for sins, but “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). Sanctification is the unfailing result of justification. Although the word is sometimes used in a wider sense, embracing all the work of Christ in a general way (“God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth,” 2 Thess. 2:13), we use the word doctrinally in its more frequent narrower sense. In this sense, sanctification means to be set apart for a holy purpose; the new life of the heart and of the person’s conduct, which is effected in us in regeneration when we come to faith, most often through holy baptism. This is the only way we could truly “serve God without fear.” Otherwise we would always be terrified that our sins would stain and pervert everything we offered to God in thanks. However, Christ’s atoning sacrifice has covered over the guilt of all our sins, and what we do now out of faith is seen in the light of Christ, and not at all reflecting our sinfulness.
This is why it is essential that we remember Zechariah’s true and correct teaching here, that Christ “delivered us from the hand of our enemies so that we can serve him without fear.” Our service does not deliver us. Our service follows along as a result of being delivered. Jesus describes the relationship this way: “I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Apart from Jesus—apart from everything Jesus has said and done—we can do nothing. But through faith in him, we are his branches, and we bear fruit with it: the fruit of faith.
Being under this forgiveness of Christ and bearing fruit to thank him is what Zechariah means when he says we are “in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” Sanctification is a healing, medicinal act of God, performed in the hearts of men. It produces an inherent, habitual righteousness, like the tax collectors Matthew and Zacchaeus coming to faith and immediately wanting to show their love and gratitude (Luke 5:27-29; 19:1-5).
The nature of these doctrines, however, is that human reason (apart from faith in Christ) can’t see the connection between the two. Christians are slandered by unbelievers and even by some misguided Christians that if forgiveness is free, and cannot be earned, then we should say, “Let us do evil that good may result” (Romans 3:8). They accuse of us “easy believe-ism” and other shameful things. But if sanctification were to precede justification (that is, our response to Christ preceding the forgiveness of Christ), then our faith would be hypocrisy and self-deception, and it would lead us to despair. We would still be under the control of the devil (Eph. 2:2), and we would be driven back into paganism, where every sacrifice in any name is offered to demons, not God (1 Cor. 10:20).
But we are freed from these things because we understand that our human reason is only a servant and not our master. Reason is a tool, given by God to us to use, but not to rule over us. To paraphrase Jesus, Reason was made for man, not man for reason (Mark 2:27). We subject our human reason to the authority of Scripture. Where reason flinches or fails to understand, or says “I believe this is impossible,” then Scripture stands in authority and consoles us: “Nothing is impossible for God” (the angel Gabriel, Luke 1:37).
In a seemingly impossible act, God entered into the world in a body—a body he still possesses in heaven. He came to fulfill the promises he made to Eve, Abraham, and all of the Old Testament believers. He came to set us free from sin and even from death—in short, from the power of the devil—by giving his life on the cross, entering death himself, and rising from the dead. He gave us faith in him as a free gift, so that we benefit from this salvation and so that we are able to serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness all our days. Be fearless in your service. Trust in your Savior. Take joy from knowing that in Christ you already possess eternal life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota