Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 11, Number 3, DeMotte, Jasper County, 5 December 1940 — THE PASTOR'S COLUMN [ARTICLE]

THE PASTOR'S COLUMN

by Rev. Geo. Gotsch,

Pastor of

the St. John’s Lutheran Church of Union Township

Jesus is our Advent Lord. Our faith rests in Him who came to us in Bethlehem and who will come again to receive us into glory. He is the very center of our faith. This our faith in the child of Bethlehem shows itself, and must show itself, in our life. Not only our faith, but also our life must be Christ-centered. This C hirst-centered life we call sanctification. Sanctification involves separation from those things which are opposed to a faith in Christ and a life in Christ. “Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord” (2 Cor. 6:17). God’s people are set apart from the world as His peculiar treasure. We belong to Him. Therefore the Apostle Peter speaks of Christians as “a holy nation, a peculiar people, called out of darkness into His marvelous light”. This light of the Kingdom of God, this light of the Holy Christian Church, as we have it in God’s Word, specifically in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is the barrier which separates us from the children of this world, from the unbelievers who lack that Christ-centered faith and, therefore, also that Christ•ntered sanctification. In these’ latter days when wickedness is increasing and corruption is spreading as never before, we have all the more reason to maintain separation from the world, that we might not perish with the world, but be ever ready when our Advent Lord Jesus shall come again to judge the world in ighteouaness. May we be found a sanctifi« people, waiting for His appearancl— Our text for Sunday, 2 Peter R 3-11, exhorts us to sanctification; how sanctification proves itself tn our lives; which are the blessed consequences of our sanctification.