Thursday after the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on October 29, 2020 by under
Scripture: St. Matthew 16:13-20 (NKJV)
16:13 When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”
14 So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
20 Then He commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ.
Devotion
To believe in Jesus means to believe that He is God, the Son of God, and to trust in His merit for the forgiveness of sins. We confess in the Athanasian Creed that “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man,” and that this “is necessary to everlasting salvation.” This is the confession of St. Peter and the confession on which the Christ will build His Church. But many of the Jews did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. They believed that He was a man, certainly, maybe even a prophet. But, unless they believed also that He is God, the Son of God, in whose name is forgiveness of sins, they cannot be saved.
There are those today who say that to confess Jesus as a man is enough. Such people observe that Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and even atheists recognize there was a man named Jesus, who taught men to love their neighbor and to honor God. They then ridicule the Christian Church for condemning these other religions which, so they think, confess Jesus with us. But it is not enough to believe that Jesus was merely a man; one must believe in Jesus as the Lord. The confession that saves and on which the Church is built is that the Lord Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Prayer: Grant, we beseech Thee, merciful Lord, to Thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins and serve Thee with a quiet mind; 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.
