Psalm 119:97-120; 2 Samuel 9:1-13; Acts 19:1-10; Mark 8:34-9:1
David was a man of his word. He and Jonathan had made an everlasting covenant that they would do good to one another and to one another’s descendants and David kept covenant with Jonathan all the days of his life. Here we see David’s lovingkindness extended to Jonathan’s crippled son, Mephibosheth, because of this covenant and his love for Jonathan. It would have been a bit strange for the king to have extended himself this way to a cripple, a man who normally would have been thought to have been cursed by God for either his own wickedness or the wickedness of his ancestors. It would have been easy for David and the people to have surmised that Mephibosheth’s infirmity was a result of his grandfather’s failures and a sign of God’s rejection of Saul’s house, but David overlooked this and treated him as a member of his own family. Sounds like the Gospel doesn’t it?
What indeed can we give for our own soul? In the old covenant a man gave a sacrifice to redeem his first born son, one life substituted for another. The purpose of this was to recognize the goodness of God in providing a son and it also said something about the preciousness of human life that the life of an animal was given in thanksgiving for another image bearer. Jesus was preparing to provide the sacrifice not for this human life but for our souls. His sacrifice was the opposite of the old sacrificial system, His life was of greater worth than our own and yet this was the only sacrifice acceptable to achieve the end, eternal life. He alone is eternal and if we would redeem our souls, the sacrifice must be eternal as well. God’s lovingkindness to those with whom He has entered covenant is beyond measure, even to those who fail to match His faithfulness to the covenant.
John’s baptism was a preparation for the greater baptism of the Holy Spirit. Within Anglicanism we recognize that reality with a two-part initiation into the community. The first step is baptism and this baptism is for the forgiveness of sins, we re-appropriate that baptism, the promise that if we repent of our sins He is faithful to forgive them, each time we sin, confess and repent of our sins. The second step in initiation into the kingdom is what we call confirmation, where we confirm that someone has taken the step of belief in Jesus as Lord and Savior, that His sacrifice of Himself on the cross for our sins was acceptable to God. In confirmation we lay hands on a person and pray that they receive the Holy Spirit, the baptism of fire, which includes both deep conviction of sin and a desire and empowerment to live as we are intended. We are reborn as new creations in the power of the Holy Spirit, God within us, we have been given a new heart, a new spirit, the transaction is complete. Until we receive the Holy Spirit we remain in the old covenant and under law, when we receive the Holy Spirit we enter fully into not just the covenant community but into the eternal community of the redeemed.
Should I with scoffers join
Her altars to abuse?
No! Better far my tongue were dumb,
My hand its skill should lose.
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