313. Partakers of Christ
Hebrews 3:14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end.
God promises us that we are made partakers of Christ. The key to the promise is that becoming a partaker is something that God did: “we are made” by the initiative, action and keeping of God; it is not something that we do; partaking of Christ is not something that we do; we do not make it happen; we do not decide to accept Jesus or believe in Him by an effort of our own will; we do not try to be Christ-like or imitate Christ with our own fleshly power; we cannot just ask, “What would Jesus do?” and then go and do it.
Being made partakers of Christ means salvation; we are saved from Sin, Death, and the Devil, and we are saved from the world and the sentence of death placed upon it; and we are saved for God, His eternal kingdom, for life, and for the good works in which we walk. Grace and mercy make it happen: grace means God did it; mercy means we didn’t earn the blessings of God’s life within. We receive salvation by faith, the faith that the Holy Spirit created in us through the Gospel. By faith we identify with Christ. Partaking of Christ means that we livewith Christ, we were crucified, died and buried with Christ, we were raised with Christ from death, we ascended with Christ; we sit with Him and reign with Him in the heavenly places, and we will come with Christ to judge at the end of time. All of this we have done; everything Jesus did we share in by faith. When we confess our faith in the Creed we partake in Christ and His work of salvation; we confess that He did it for me and we believe and confess that I am doing it all with Him.
What Christ did is awesome; that He did it for me is unbelievable; but that He makes be do it all with Him is even more incredible. God, through the Gospel, makes me a partaker. It is God who makes me partake of Christ when I partake of Him in Holy Communion. It is God who makes me partake of Christ when I die to self and rise to fresh life in remembering my Baptism. It is God who makes me partake of Christ when I hear the Gospel. He loves us so much that He lets us partake in the good works that He is doing in us and through us. He get the credit for it and we get the blessing of every good work. And, finally, it is God who will hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. And that is another promise. God wills it and God keeps His promise. And we pray it: “Thy will be done.”