Friday after the First Sunday after Epiphany
Posted on January 13, 2023 by under
Scripture: St. John 10:31-38 (NKJV)
10:31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. 32 Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me?”
33 The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.”
34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”’? 35 If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), 36 do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; 38 but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”
Devotion
The Lord Jesus quotes Psalm 82, from which we read, “I said, ‘You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High. But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes’” (vs. 6–7). The Jews had received a profound gift; they received the Word of God through Moses and the prophets. By this Word, God adopted the family of Israel as His children. He names them “gods” for two reasons: 1) because they are children of the true God by grace and 2) because they received the wisdom of God over all the other nations. But the nation of Israel has squandered those heavenly gifts by rejecting God’s only begotten Son. For this reason, they will die like ordinary men.
The Christian Church, on the other hand, is not a human organization. She is the communion of all true believers. She is established by God Himself, therefore she will never fail. The saints—her individual members—are the children of God and brothers and sisters of the Christ. They are “gods”, not in the sense of being superhuman, but because they are God’s family, having been adopted through Baptism. As the Son is in the Father and we are baptized into the Son, so we have peace with God.
Prayer: O Lord, we beseech Thee mercifully to receive the prayers of Thy people who call upon Thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
