“We can’t help but thank God for you, dear brothers and sisters loved by the Lord. We are always thankful that God chose you to be among the first to experience salvation—a salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy and through your belief in the truth.” (2 Thessalonians 2:13)

When I was in fifth grade, I was swinging in the park near my house when a girl bet me that she could jump farther out of the swing than I could. In my hubris, I couldn’t resist the challenge. I allowed her to jump first and saw her landing mark. Well, I just knew I could jump a lot farther.

So, I started my swing higher and higher. And on that final backswing, I pulled extra hard in those chains, ready to claim victory before I jumped. And that’s when my fingers slid off those chains, and I flipped out of the back of that swing to utter defeat. A defeat that also included my breaking of my forearm.

Having never broken a bone before, I looked down in horror at the peculiar angle my forearm was hanging. I began screaming in horror. My friend raced to go get my mom, and when she arrived, I began sobbing. “Mom, I ruined my arm. I’ve ruined my arm.” She calmly told me, “Christopher, we will get you to the hospital and the doctor will fix it.”

I looked at her in disbelief, “The doctor can fix this?” Sure enough, eight weeks later the cast came off, and my arm had been set straight. In the third article of the Creed, we confess about someone who is much more powerful than a doctor and time in a cast. The brokenness he fixes is more than bones. It’s more than physical. It’s complete body, heart, soul, and mind.

In this third article of the Creed, we confess “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Martin Luther explains what this means. If you are asked, “What do you mean by the words I believe in the Holy Spirit?” you can answer, “I believe that the Holy Spirit makes me holy, as his name implies.”

How does he do this? By what means? Answer: through the Christian church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. 2 Thessalonians 2:13 states, “We can’t help but thank God for you, dear brothers and sisters loved by the Lord. We are always thankful that God chose you to be among the first to experience salvation—a salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy and through your belief in the truth.”

Nothing breaks and distorts life more than sin. But praise be to Jesus for His saving grace and His gift of His Holy Spirit to make us holy.

Prayer
Lord God, during this season of Lent, we are asking that You would continue to work on those parts inside of us that are broken. That You would continue to heal, and cast, and mend, and bring a sense of newness to those parts in us that are broken, that are deformed, that are causing problems.

But most importantly, we thank You that our life of sin, as distorted as it is, is something that receives the forgiveness of all of our sins through the working of Your Holy Spirit. We thank You and praise You for Jesus, for whom this gift has been given to us. Amen.