LESSON: MATTHEW 26:57-58

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5:17

We have no hesitation at all in declaring that anyone who contemplates God’s sufferings for a day, an hour, a quarter of an hour, does better than fasting for a whole year, praying a psalm every day, and hearing a hundred masses. For such contemplation changes a man quite basically and is very close to the new birth of baptism. Here the sufferings of Christ perform their true and noble work. They choke the Old Adam and dispel all pleasure, joy, and confidence in creatures, even as Christ was forsaken by all and even by God.

Because this work is not under our control, it happens that at times we must pray for it. The result does not follow immediately. Nevertheless, we must not lose heart and desist from our efforts. Sometimes, it happens that we do not pray in accordance with God’s will. God acts in freedom and will not become our captive. And so, a man may become saddened in his conscience and very dissatisfied with his life without realizing that it is Christ’s sufferings, of which he thinks very little, that are influencing him in this way, just as others can ponder Christ’s sufferings almost continuously without ever coming to self-knowledge. With the former, the sufferings of Christ are a hidden but genuine factor; with the latter, they are merely apparent and deceptive. In this way, God often brings the unexpected to pass.

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PRAYER: Keep us ever mindful, heavenly Father, of the grim reality of the suffering and death of our Lord and grant us your grace fully to accept all that our Lord gave and suffered for us in our stead. Amen.

LESSON: MATTHEW 26:47-56

Rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 1 Peter 4:13

Anyone who remains so completely unmoved and hard-boiled that the sufferings of Christ do not horrify him and bring him to his senses has cause to be afraid. For it cannot be otherwise. You must become conformed to the image and suffering of Christ, either in this life or in hell. At the very least, you must be terrified in the face of death, tremble and quake, and feel everything that Christ suffered on the cross.

It is a gruesome experience to witness agony on a deathbed. Therefore, you should pray God to soften your heart and permit you to ponder the suffering of Christ fruitfully. It is impossible for us of ourselves to ponder the sufferings of Christ thoroughly unless God Himself implants the resolution in our hearts. Pray God that this contemplation of Christ’s sufferings may not result in any doctrine or teaching which you hurry to accomplish of yourself before you have earnestly sought God’s grace so that you accomplish it by His grace and not of yourself.

Here we see why so many have gone astray in regard to the sufferings of Christ. They do not pray to God for His grace to profit from Christ’s passion, but they try to attain their end in their own strength and by their own methods. They operate in a thoroughly human and unfruitful manner.

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PRAYER: Soften our hearts, O God, by your grace that we may fruitfully ponder the sufferings of Christ and see in them the stripes whereby we are healed, for the sake of Jesus our Savior. Amen.

LESSON: MATTHEW 26:36-46

He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities. Isaiah 53:5

Christ’s passion should help us to a knowledge of self, to be horrified at ourselves, and to bring us to contrition. If this is not the result of Christ’s passion as far as we are concerned, it has not yet achieved its purpose in us. In His passion, Christ placed Himself on an equal footing with us, so that, as He suffered in body and soul in a wretched manner because of our sins, we must also suffer with Him in the knowledge of our sins. This is no matter for many words, but for deep thinking and a proper estimate of our sins.

Consider this illustration! If a criminal was convicted of murdering the child of a prince or a king, and you were quite unconcerned, sang and played as though you were quite innocent until a terrible attack was launched upon you, and it was proved that you had prevailed upon the criminal to commit his crime. The world would become too narrow for you, especially if your conscience left you in the lurch.

You should become much more anxious when you ponder the sufferings of Christ. For although the Jews, the criminals, have come under God’s judgement and have been cast off, they were merely the ministers of your sin. You are really the one who, through your sin, throttled and crucified God’s Son.

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PRAYER: My sin and guilt, Lord Jesus, were no small part of your passion, suffering, and death. Thank you, Lord, for the riches of your grace and mercy and, above all, for your wonderful love to me and all other sinners. Amen.

LESSON: PSALM 32:1-7

If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. Psalm 130:3,4

David says in the psalm, “I acknowledged my sin to thee, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord;’ then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin” (Psalm 32:5). No one can stand before God without bringing this confession of sins with him. That is why the psalmist also declares; “If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (Psalm 130:3,4).

Anyone who really wants to stand before God must be quite sure that this confession of sins really comes from his heart and firmly believe that, unless the Lord is merciful to him, all is lost, no matter how pious he is in himself. Even all the saints must acknowledge the need of God’s continual grace and mercy and in all humility confess their sins before Him.

There is no difference here, for all have sinned. If anyone has received special grace, thank God for it and do not boast. If anyone has fallen into sin, it simply demonstrates that he is flesh and blood. But no one has fallen so deeply that one who stands may not fall ever deeper. As far as we are concerned, there is no difference between us and others; it is God’s grace alone that divides us from others.

This confession of sin is so necessary that we dare not overlook it for a moment. It must be our concern during our whole life as a Christian. Without ceasing we must evermore praise God’s grace and recognize that all boasting on our part is vain before God.

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PRAYER: Because of your wonderful grace, Lord God, loving heavenly Father, we poor sinners can stand before you, confessing our sins. When we do this, give us the assurance of the forgiveness of sins, in and through our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

LESSON: MATTHEW 26:26-35

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Matthew 16:24

This life is nothing else but a life of faith, love, and the holy cross. But these three never reach a stage of perfection in us as long as we live here on earth, and no one ever reached perfection in this respect except Christ. He is the Sun and has been given to us and set up for us as an example whom we must imitate.

There are always some to be found in our midst who are weak, others strong, and still others who are stronger. Some can suffer only a little and others much. But we must all continue in the likeness of Christ. For this life follows a course in which we proceed continually from faith to faith, from love to love, from patience to patience, from cross to cross.

It is not a matter of being righteous but of being justified. We have not yet reached our goal; we are all on the path and on the way, but some are further along than others. God is satisfied when He finds us at work with a definite purpose. If He so wills it, He comes quickly and strengthens our faith and love, and He can translate us in a moment from this life into heaven. But as long as we are on this earth, we must bear with each other as Christ bore with us, always remembering also that none of us is ever quite perfect.

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PRAYER: You know all our weaknesses, shortcomings, failures, and sins, heavenly Father. Help us in your means of grace to the improvement and progress which is a characteristic of your children, through Christ Jesus the Savior. Amen.

LESSON: MATTHEW 26:14-25

Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! 2 Corinthians 9:15

If we are considering the passion of Christ in the correct way, its immediate effect on us should be a feeling of deep shock and an uneasy conscience. We should be deeply shocked when we see the harsh wrath of God and His unrelenting seriousness in dealing with sin and sinners. He is not prepared to release sinners to His only and dearly beloved Son unless this Son assumes a very heavy penalty on their behalf. He Himself tells us through the prophet that this Son was “stricken for the transgression of my people” (Isaiah 53:8).

What can ever befall the sinner after the most beloved Son has been smitten in this way? There must have been unspeakable and unrelenting seriousness here if it required such an immeasurably great Person to render satisfaction and to suffer and die in this connection.

If you ponder the matter deeply enough and remember that it is God’s own Son, the eternal wisdom of the Father, who is suffering here, you will be shocked, and the deeper you ponder it, the more deeply you will be shocked.

Fix it firmly in your heart and mind and have no doubt at all that it was you who brought all this suffering upon Christ. Your sins were responsible for the sufferings of Christ.

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PRAYER: Dear heavenly Father, we can only stutter in response to the unspeakable grace and mercy which you have bestowed upon us in the suffering and death of your dearly beloved Son. Accept this stuttering in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

LESSON: MATTHEW 26:1-13

The next day, he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29

In many people, the passion of Christ arouses little more than sympathy. They lament and bemoan the fact that He suffered innocently. A great multitude of women followed Jesus near the end of His public ministry “who bewailed and lamented him.” Jesus tried to set them right when He said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:28).

Along these lines, many make rather wide excursions during the passion season. They make a lot of the sad farewell of Jesus from His friends at Bethany, with rather liberal portions of the pains and sorrows of the Virgin, but they hardly get any further than this. In this way, Christ’s passion is inordinately delayed so that God only knows whether it was thought up to put men to sleep rather than to keep them awake. In this same group we must place those who teach that much benefit is derived during the passion season from various holy exercises, fasts, and special devotions.

If we are not reminded of Christ’s sufferings on our behalf in all this, it becomes nothing but an unfruitful work, no matter how good and worthy it may be in itself. What does it help you for God to be God if He is not God for you? What use is there in the healthiness and goodness of eating and drinking if it is not healthy for you? This is exactly the situation in regard to special Lenten exercises when men do not seek the correct benefit from them.

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PRAYER: Dear Lord, instruct our faith so that we always view your passion as a suffering for us and on our behalf, a work of love which you assumed as our Savior and Redeemer. Amen.

LESSON: EPHESIANS 3:7-13

To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. Luke 8:10

What does He mean when He says: “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God”? What is a “secret” here? If one cannot know it, why does one preach it?

“Secret” means a hidden, concealed matter which one does not know, and “the secrets of the kingdom of God” are the matters in God’s kingdom which are hidden. Christ, with all the grace He has manifested to us as Paul describes Him, is one of these “secrets.” He who knows Christ aright knows what God’s kingdom is and what it contains.

This is called a “secret” because it is spiritual and concealed and remains so unless the Spirit reveals it. For there are many who see it and hear about it but who do not accept it.

There are many today who preach Christ and hear how He was given for us, but this is often only a matter of the tongue, not of the heart. They do not believe it themselves and have no real experience of it, for as Paul declares, “This unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

So, Christ says here, “To you it has been given,” that is, the Holy Spirit has enabled you not to hear and to see, but to recognize and to believe with your hearts, and, therefore, it is no longer a “secret” for you.

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PRAYER: Thanks and praise be to you, O heavenly Father, for the revelation of the mystery of your grace in Christ Jesus our Lord which you have made known to us in the Gospel. Establish us in the grace that we may witness to it before our fellowmen, for Christ’s sake. Amen.