Hear the words of the Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Easter:

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; grant unto Thy people, that they may love the thing which Thou commandest, and desire that which Thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found.

May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be alway acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. We pray in the name of The Father, and of The Son, and of The Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Collect for today raises the central challenge that we all face in attempting to live the Christian life, “the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.” It is here that all people rise or fall in their walk with Christ. Our walk with Him does not depend on belief, for whether we believe in God or not, we all walk with Him. The question of our lives is do we submit our will to His Will or not?

God’s absolute Truth is given to us through the teaching of the Church revealed in the Bible and this is where our ‘wills’ come into play. If we view the Bible as God’s revelation to man, will we will ourselves to believe it? Do we will our rebellious minds to behave as this revelation tells us we should behave?

The challenge before us is complicated by the fact that we already know that what the Bible says about God, of living a good life, and what is right and wrong are all true. Or to put it another way, we already know absolute Truth to be real as well as true. We know this because every time we do something wrong there is that still small voice in our minds telling us it is wrong.

This is the purpose for which the Comforter, The Holy Ghost, was given to us. We hear this in the Gospel for today when Jesus says in John 16:8:

And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.

That still small voice is God, The Holy Ghost, speaking to our minds and reminding us that we have willfully sinned against God. This is a good thing, for it gives us the opportunity to be sorry for this sin, confess it to God, to be forgiven, and to make whatever restitution and amendment in our lives that is necessary. This small judgement is to save us from the much larger judgement on the Last Day.

However, one thing we must be aware of is the fact that the enemy, Satan, knows how to talk to us too. He will also use this method to remind us of our sins and cause us to beat ourselves up after God has forgiven us of that sin. This is just another method that the evil one uses to cause us unnecessary misery. This is why confession of sins coupled with the assurance that God has forgiven us for those sins taken together is so important. This coupling takes another weapon of the enemy away from him. We must not let the evil one use a good thing and turn it into a bad thing, for that is the essence of what sin is.

If we look at every single sin that we could possibly commit, we see that each is a perversion of something that God created good. Sin is not a thing unto itself. It must take something good and pervert it. This is done by the act of our will. Food is good, but eating too much becomes gluttony. Sex is good, but distortion turns it into lust or narcissism. Even Satan himself was created good, but by an act of his own will, he became the opposite of what he had been created to be.

The truth is that everything that we have done in the past, every rebellion against God, every good, bad, or indifferent thing we have done, we can do nothing about. What ever has happened to us, or through us, is gone. The beauty of God’s Love is that all we have to do is confess them to the best of our ability and we will be forgiven. We can then face today and the future with a clean slate.

That is the second part of the function of The Holy Ghost, to impart the righteousness of God back to us. It is through the action of The Holy Ghost that we participate in the sacrifice for sin that Christ made on The Cross. We have become dead to all our sins and they cannot harm us any more, Colossians 2:13 tells us:

And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His Cross.

This is what is offered to us and what God wants and waits to give to us, if we will allow Him to do so. Again it is our will that stands between God and us. Or in the words of the Collect, does our will “desire that which Thou dost promise.”

It is the Epistle for today that offers us this gift of God’s Love and Grace that we seem all too willing to refuse. James 1:17 tells us:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

Since every good thing comes from God, why do we refuse to accept what He is all too willing to give us? Notice also that there is no doubt or condition on God’s side of this offer. He is unwavering in His willingness to love us. He cannot be dissuaded from loving us, even when we think we are unlovable. He will do what He says He can do.

The last point I want to make, and that ties all this together, is the connection between The Holy Ghost, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and God The Father. This connection is made in the Gospel for today. Jesus tells us in John 16:13 to 15:

Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for He shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that The Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that He shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

Jesus says that all The Father has is His, and that The Holy Ghost will give these things to those who will accept them. The promise of The Son is the promise of The Father delivered via The Holy Ghost. Jesus could not say it if The Father had not already said it.

This is the promise that we can all count on. This is the truth that we can all count on. The only real question is will we indeed count on it and then change our lives to match it? It is my prayer that we will all will this to be so.

Amen,

The Very Rev. Canon John Jacobs