Adapted for the people of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Adell from a message included in the Concordia Publishing House Lenten Series For Us

Done For Us

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

          Tonight, we’ll continue looking at the ancient hymn “O Love, How Deep” and how to rightly understand the many things that God has done for His people.

The essence of God’s character is self-giving. God does nothing for Himself. His nature is not to serve His own end or some purpose that’s hidden in Him alone. Rather, God’s character is self-giving. Or, if you prefer to put it another way, God is love. As I stressed on Sunday, God Loves the World. God Loves You. And He does that because it’s who He is.

That’s why stanza 3 includes the phrase “for us,” which is repeated throughout the hymn. The phrase is pro nobis in Latin. We know it best perhaps from the Nicene Creed: “Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.” But here, we start to see that everything God does, He does for us.

In stanza 3, we hear about four things God does for us. Let’s look at each one briefly in turn.

“For us baptized.”

Why was Jesus baptized? In Mark’s Gospel, we don’t get the answer. We only hear that Jesus came down from Nazareth and was baptized. But in Matthew’s Gospel, we hear that Jesus was baptized “to fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness is a big word that in this context simply means Jesus has completed all of the demands of the Law. He has done all that God’s Law requires: It’s summarized in the words we know so well from Deuteronomy. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”; “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Because Jesus is baptized and fulfills or completes all the Law’s demands, when you are baptized into His death, you have fulfilled all righteousness. You are innocent and holy. You are perfect in God’s sight because of Jesus. Jesus did not need to be baptized. Rather, He was baptized for us so that we would receive everlasting life in His name.

“For us He bore his holy fast and hungered sore.”

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is not merely led into the wilderness. No, the Spirit drives Him into the wilderness. You get this sense in stanza 3. Jesus is on the move. He bears this hunger for us. He undergoes this trial for us. He doesn’t do it out of weakness or inability; He does it because He has chosen to take this burden from you and me and put it on Himself. Or perhaps even better, the Lord, our heavenly Father, has laid it upon Him.

“For us temptation sharp He knew.”

Knowing temptation is a hard thing for us to really understand. Jesus knows temptation, but He doesn’t give in to temptation. The author of Hebrews puts it this way: “Therefore He had to be made like His brothers in every respect, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.”

This all comes down to Jesus taking on our human flesh and blood. Being tempted like we are without sin means that He can sympathize with us in our weaknesses. But it also means that He suffers in temptation just like we do.

What does that mean? It means that Jesus knows the pain, the sorrow, the anguish, and everything that surrounds temptation to sin. He knows it as well as you do. This isn’t mere intellectual knowledge either. He knows it, body and soul, because He has lived it. And that leads us to the next line in the hymn.

“For us the tempter overthrew.”

Temptation is not an abstract thing. It isn’t an idea that we think about. Temptation comes from the tempter, Satan. We’ll talk more about him in a couple of weeks, but the key thing for us to remember here is that Jesus overcomes temptation not by being God but by listening to the will of the Father. He knows the Law of God and meditates on it day and night.

Another way to think of it is that Jesus lives and acts as Adam was meant to live and act from the beginning. He listens to the Father and does the Father’s will. We see this in the hymn we’ve been singing, “O Love, How Deep, but also in the hymn we’ll be singing at the end of the evening tonight. “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth” also paints a beautiful picture of this concept. Listen to the lyrics of stanza 3 from this marvelous hymn:

“Yes, Father, yes, most willingly

I’ll bear what You command Me.

My will conforms to Your decree,

I’ll do what You have asked Me.”

O wondrous Love, what have You done!

The Father offers up His Son,

Desiring our salvation.

O Love, how strong You are to save!

You lay the One into the grave

Who built the earth’s foundation. (LSB 438:3)

God is self-giving, which is the essence of His character and nature. In other words, God is love—pure, unadulterated love. His love for us knows no bounds. His love extends into the grave itself. He will raise us out of death and the grave to life everlasting. That is what “for us” really means. Amen.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.