Grace Notes 2024-11-06

As we come to the end of the Church Year, we encounter Sunday Readings that reflect the end of this age, and the coming of Christ the King. Our Lord’s return has to do with the judgment of the world. Indeed, justice will prevail in the end. And His return will also bring in the fullness or consummation of God’s Kingdom, which was inaugurated at Christ’s first Advent. For repentant sinners putting their faith in Christ, this will be a reunion with all the saints, and the incredible basking in Christ’s glory in a blessed state beyond imagining.

The late Church Year emphasis can have a sobering effect. There are eternal consequences connected with how we live our lives in this temporal age. Despite our inherited prideful rebellion against our Maker, our Heavenly Father has, from the outset, put in motion the plan for our redemption. It involves an atoning sacrifice for our sin. Then it includes our being made alive when we are dead in our trespasses. And then it involves bringing the benefits of Christ’s atoning death to each person. This is done in such things as preaching, in baptizing, and in the offering of Holy Communion. Finally, it involves the gift of faith enabled by the Holy Spirit, so that each individual can beneficially receive the gift of salvation.

When Christ, the Judge, comes at the end of the age, He will separate the righteous from the wicked. As all of us have sinned, the difference between the two is that the righteous live by faith, and the wicked maintain their pride and spurn God’s gift of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. As the former actually begin living in obedience to the Lord, the latter continue disobeying God’s commandments.

At the end of the age, the righteous will be welcomed into the Kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. The wicked, declared cursed, will be ordered to depart into the eternal fire prepared for the devil.

Since You Asked…

What is the significance of All Saints’ Day?

The significance is expressed in the hymn The Church’s One Foundation, the fifth stanza: “And mystic sweet communion / With those whose rest is won.” We certainly mourn in death the physical separation with our loved ones, but the Church affirms that the dead in Christ are very much alive and are present with our Lord. We further believe in the Resurrection of the dead on the last day, and our joyful reunion with the saints of all the ages in the eternal kingdom of our Lord. Therefore we can speak of our dearly departed as being a part of the Church Triumphant while we remain the Church Militant. On the festival of All Saints we direct our attention to the richness of Christian history, and the manifold workings of God’s grace through the lives of believers who have gone before us. It is also an appropriate time to honor the memory of those members of our congregation who have died.