Be delivered from judgment
Almighty God,
grant that we,
who for our evil deeds justly deserve your judgment,
may mercifully be delivered by your grace,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
One of the riches of the Book of Common Prayer, is that through its collects and liturgies, we are pointed back to Christ and his cross and forward to our Lord’s coming again. The Apostles’ Creed reminds us that we believe in Jesus Christ who was crucified, died, and was buried; and the same Jesus Christ who will come to judge the living and the dead. The collect for the fourth Sunday in Lent develops both these biblical themes.
Firstly, we acknowledge that we have evil deeds. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that there is no distinction, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). No one is better than anyone else — we are all sinners! The general confession is also helpful, for it reminds us that not only are we sinners, but we are miserable sinners. If we ever forget this truth and start to believe we are without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8). Therefore this collect draws us back to our fallen nature before God and acknowledges that we all have engaged in evil deeds.
Confessing that we have evil deeds leads us to acknowledge that we are deserving of God’s judgment. There are two appointments that every human being has and neither of them can be put into a diary as the date is not known. The first appointment is the day of our natural death and the second appointment is the Day of Judgement. Acts chapter 17 tells us that God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed (Acts 17:31). This collect rightly reminds us that our evil deeds justly deserve God’s judgment.
However, we are not left there. The collect concludes with confidence that God alone is the One who delivers us. We discover we are delivered by his grace through Jesus Christ our Lord. Writing to the Ephesians, Paul says we were dead in our trespasses and sin and now we are alive, with Christ (Ephesians 2:1-10). However pessimistic you may be about yourself, or other human beings and the world around you, be optimistic about God. We have been mercifully delivered by His grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So pray this with me:
Almighty God,
grant that we,
who for our evil deeds justly deserve your judgement,
may mercifully be delivered by your grace,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.