In our Lutheran Confessions, the line between “hypocrite” and “faithful Christian” is clear. But that is in a book of theology. Theology books have the benefit—indeed, the task—of providing straightforward answers. Theology in books is clean and neat. But in our outward gathering around Word and Sacrament that is called “church,”—and indeed in the secret, inner lives of our hearts and minds—the line between “hypocrite” and “faithful” is not nearly so clear nor so plain.

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For the benefit and salvation of all, the Son goes forth from the Father, and the Spirit goes forth from the Son. Each moves in a sort of arc: going forth and returning. For as the Holy Spirit goes forth, He calls people everywhere through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is how God’s missionary movement comes to its completion: by Him moving forward, moving outward, to call us, to gather us, to return us to Himself.

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But now . . . now Peter is the first to rise. Peter is the first to speak. He lifts up his voice and declares with boldness that what is happening before all the world is God’s doing . . . that it is God’s prophesied plan . . . and that God’s plan has come to fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Timid, frightened, denying Peter is now Peter with a fire in his belly . . . he is not Peter who speaks without fear . . . he is now Peter who publicly aligns himself with Jesus Christ and declares that all should join him in this faith. What has made the difference? That’s not the right question. The right question is “WHO has made the difference?”

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As He is the Living Lord of His Church, His word to us and His leadership over us is final and authoritative. In these verses, Jesus both points us towards our ultimate goal and gives us the task that moves the Church towards that goal. And as we look for what both of those are, we will also find some additional truths that help cement the reality of our hope and our task in our hearts and minds.

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And that is the point: underneath the seemingly ordinary life and worship of the Church is the Lord Jesus Himself guiding and growing His Church. The risen Lord Jesus moves and works in and through His Church. The Church is not a collection of people who gather together to remember the words of some long-dead prophet, it is the Body of Christ made alive through His Word, His Sacraments . . . you know, His life. Paul plants the seed, but the living Lord gives the growth.

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Perhaps we can summarize it this way: with the Lord Jesus’ command to Peter, “Arise, kill and eat,” He directs Peter to live out the new life in Christ. The life that is no longer determined by the Law. The life that is not a matter of how much righteousness one achieve on one’s own, but the life that is the life of Jesus Christ . . . the Lord who was crucified, died, and was buried . . . and with whom our own efforts at making ourselves pleasing to God, with whom the notion that God’s love and grace was intended only for a few, select people, with whom our own sin, was crucified, died, and was buried as well. With all that dead and buried with Christ in the grave, what was left when Christ arose from the dead but to grant the new life that is governed by none of that instead?

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This—all this—Paul knows. He knows it by faith. He knows it by Jesus. Paul has been called by Jesus, He has been made new by Jesus, and He has been shown just how much he must suffer for the name of Jesus . . . and in so many different aspects of his life and ministry, Paul has come to reflect Jesus . . . because Jesus has made His home in Paul. Paul has been crucified with Christ, and now Paul no longer lives, but the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ now lives in and through him.

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The resurrected Lord Jesus Christ meets Paul face to face, and in that one moment Saul recognizes the depth of his spiritual blindness, his entire theological worldview comes crumbling down, and he is on the ground before the Lord God of the Universe . . . whom he has been actively persecuting by persecuting those who are called by His name.

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