Created for life.

A Sermon for the Sunday after Easter

April 27, 2025 at Holy Communion

Acts 2:41-47, 1 John 5:4-12

“God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5:11). In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ☩ Amen.

There may be a serious mistranslation in one of the most celebrated passages of the New Testament. In the traditional rendering of the opening to the Gospel of John, we read that “All things were made through the Word, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:3–4). It’s the Gospel for Christmas Day, and it has become so familiar that we scarcely notice how odd that phrasing is: “without him was not any thing made that was made.” Why the repetition? There’s a reason why this phrasing sounds odd: it’s incorrect.

The repeated words belong to the next sentence—and, in fact, modern editions of the Greek New Testament recognize this. It should sound like this: “All things were made through the Word, and without him was not any thing made. What was made in him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Nothing was created without the Word of God—that’s the first thought. The second thought is that what was created was created in the Word and created as life. “What was made in him was life.”

This mistranslation was first pointed out to me by a favourite theological writer, George MacDonald, in his sermon “Creation in Christ.” The idea behind that sermon is one we are very familiar with from our discussions on Good Friday and Easter Sunday: God was creating the world when he entered it, embraced its alienation from God, and bore it with him back into the light of the Father. Our personal re-creation, we said, happens when we become participants in Christ’s death and resurrection by faith and sacramentally by baptism.

Our readings today develop this thought. Left where we were on Easter morning, you’d be right to ask, “So, we’re in created in Christ, but what does that mean? What are we created for? If we are new creations, how are we different now from how we were created in the first place?” And our readings today answer: as new creations in Christ, we are created for life. “What was made in the Word was life.”

Our Epistle reading is winding and difficult, but it arrives at this point, saying that “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:11–12). But that alone hardly adds anything to what we have just said; we need to know what John means by “life.”

And for that, the opening ideas of the Epistle are helpful. St John says “everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world” (v 4). Remember that being “born of God” is baptismal language—we are still on the baptismal theme which we began at the Easter Vigil. At our baptisms last week, the candidates renounced the devil and the flesh, and also the “vain pomp and glory of the world.” I explained that to the candidates this way: “the world” refers to the ways that we live superficially, on the surface. Reputation, ambition, and acquisition are “the world.” “What will people think of me?” and “Am I presenting the image people want to see?” and “Do I say the things people want to hear?” are “the world.” Conformity and peer pressure are “the world.” All of this, St John says, is what we “overcome” if we have faith in Christ (v 5).

So we can make a first stab at what it means to be created in Jesus for life. “The world” is just vanity: just emptiness, just so much chasing the wind. To live in Jesus is to live with substance, to live richly, to live for something more enduring than all the world’s pomp and show.

It’s our Lesson from Acts that puts real meat on those bones. the scene opens, once again, with baptisms: St Peter baptizes 3000 people on the first Pentecost. Those who were baptized, we read, “devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. … And all who believed were together and had all things in common. … And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people” (Acts 2:42, 44, 4–47).

For the first Christians, post-baptismal life looked like this— They devoted themselves to studying the mystery of Christ. They were committed to fellowship with their teachers and fellow-believers, discovering that it was a brotherhood, a family. They shared everything they had, discovering that they were content to live with little so long as they were rich in spirit. They worshipped, attending the temple together. They sat at table with one another regularly, “with glad and generous hearts.”

Learning, worship, hospitality, fellowship. They didn’t need “the world” with its pomp and show, because by comparison to the rich simplicity of life in Christ, the world just seemed empty. In the church, God had created something new, and that new thing was life.

To this, our Gospel reading adds just one thing: forgiveness. The risen Christ, appearing among his disciples, blesses them with peace (John 20:21), but then he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them” (v 22–23). What is created in Christ is life, and forgiveness is part of real life as much as faith, worship, and hospitality.

If you have been made in Christ, you have been made for real, substantial, joy-giving life. The church, the very Son of God on earth, has a life to which no pomp or vanity can hold a candle. This is the place where we learn the mysteries of the human spirit; this is the place we gather to celebrate the simple gifts with gladness and generosity. Enjoy it; make use of it; participate in it; give to it and it will give to you.