The week will end with the idea that Christ is the "greatest person" and the "only sinner." Tuomo Mannerma sees this as another foundational piece to understanding justification.
...Christ is a kind of "collective person," or, as the Reformer formulates it himself, the "greatest person," in whom the persons of all human beings are really united. Christ is every sinner.
Luther writes:
This is the most joyous of all doctrines and the one that contains the most comfort. It teaches that we have the indescribable and inestimable mercy and love of God. When the merciful Father saw that we were being oppressed through the Law, that we were being held under a curse, and that we could not be liberated from it by anythings. He sent His Son into the world, heaped all the sins of all (people) upon Him, and said to Him: "Be Peter the denier; Paul the persecutor, blasphemer, and assaulter; David the adulterer; the sinner who at the apple in paradise; the thief on the cross." In short, be the person of all men, the one who has committed the sins of all men.
No one is out of the reach of this God who loves all people through Christ. To make that certain, the Son becomes us - every sinner. What this comes to mean in regard to Christ is that there "is no sin at all anywhere else but in his person." Of course there is a list of people noted above that are all associated with some great sin that we hear in the pages of Scripture, but their sins are no longer their burden. Our God is a God of liberation and God liberate thoroughly. A part of the thoroughness of that liberation is that it is for all in all time. Christ becomes this "collective person" and therefore through his life, death and resurrection, we are all free from the sin that can be our master and control us and leave us branded forever. Instead, Christ conquers every bit of sin that controls us...reaching back and, I suppose, reaching forward...nothing is left and we are now set within a new life.
Connection: What would we be today if we were free from this power of sin that seems to be able to bully us into never trusting how God is eternally for us? I wonder how it would manifest itself in us just in regard to how we view and live with others.
Liberating Lord, you make this day an opportunity for life that is made rich by your love that brings you into all of our lives to take on and defeat the brokenness that is able to twist us and control us. Remind us this day of this gift and the life that comes as we are set free to live in you alone. Amen.
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