God’s Word for You
Lamentations 5:21-22 The three crosses
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, April 20, 2025
21 Restore us to yourself, O LORD, so that we may be restored!
Renew our days as long ago—
22 unless you have utterly rejected us
and you remain angry with us beyond measure.
Lamentations ends with this prayer for the Lord to restore his people. Since our prophet has kept the problem of the sin of the people before our eyes throughout the book, and throughout each of the five laments, we see that the restoration of the people must be the removal of sin. Without it, there can be no renewal. Therefore the people of the first cross, the cross of the Babylonian exile, were looking ahead to the Savior to remove their sin and guilt. This is also what Adam and Eve were looking forward to, as well as Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and David, and the prophets.
Without a Savior from sin, then God will and already has rejected all his creatures with an anger that is beyond measure. This is the punishment of hell, reserved for the rebellious angels and unbelieving men and women.
There is no difference between the sins of the godly and the sins of unbelievers. The difference is in the heart that receives Christ in faith. For as Luther says, “Even the saints have weaknesses, uncleanness and sin yet to be purged out [by “saints” Luther means living Christians], but it is not imputed to them. [Why not?] Because they are in Christ and occupied in purging out the ‘old yeast.’” Paul says: “Sweep out the old yeast, so that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed: Christ” (1 Corinthians 5:7). But this sweeping out of the old yeast cannot happen apart from Christ. Christ’s work comes first.
The work of Christ that made satisfaction for mankind was of two parts: His active obedience and his passive obedience. The active obedience was to fill up what we have left undone, which is to obey the will of God without sin. We have done none of this at all, and therefore the accountant’s page of our obedience is absolutely blank. But Christ came and did the will of God the Father perfectly, without a single blot of sin in his deeds, his words, or even his thoughts. With regard to this obedience, “Christ is the end of the law” (Romans 10:4). All who put their faith in him have therefore been given his obedient righteousness for their (our) very own. He did not keep the law for himself, even though he satisfied all of the demands of God’s holiness. He did this all for us, who were under the law, to redeem us (Galatians 4:5).
His passive obedience has been the subject of each verse of Lamentations as we have gazed upon his cross, the great Second Cross of his suffering and death. It was in the suffering of Christ that God “publicly displayed the atonement” (Romans 3:25) to demonstrate his justice in carrying out the threat of eternal punishment for sin. For Christ was “both just and the one who justifies the person who has faith in him” (Romans 3:26).
And so, Christ restored us, just as the prophet asks in these final verses. He has renewed our days as long ago. What does that mean? The days of man when he was created were eternal; for man was not created with death as his end. But sin brought death (James 1:15; Romans 6:23), and so the days of mankind were cut short. But now, renewed as we are through the blood of Christ, we will rise from the dead just as Christ is risen, and we will be brought home to live with him in heaven, sinless, deathless, and eternal.
The Lord’s anger with mankind’s sin was indeed “beyond measure,” but all of that anger was vented and poured out upon his Son, Jesus, on the cross. Instead of on us.
And so we end our study of Lamentations with a final word about the third cross, the cross of the believer. Each Christian has his or her own cross, specially fitted to our own condition and need. Our crosses are not marks of God’s wrath, but they are truly tokens of his love. For under them, “we are being disciplined by the Lord so that we may not be condemned by the world” (1 Corinthians 11:32). And “God disciplines us for our good, so that we may have a share in his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). This is what Luther (and Paul) mean by purging sin; the crosses we bear help us to pay attention to what is truly needful and necessary, and to let go of earthly desires.
Our crosses humble us. When Paul prayed about his thorn in the flesh, the Lord replied to him: “My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). And Paul affirmed: “Therefore I will be glad to boast all the more in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may shelter me.”
Second, our crosses help us to suppress the Old Adam and to deny worldly lusts. Peter says: “Because Christ suffered in flesh, arm yourselves with the same mindset, because the one who has suffered in flesh is done with sin. Do this so that you no longer live the rest of your time in the flesh for human desires but for God’s will” (1 Peter 4:1-2).
Third, our crosses test our faith. Again, it is Peter who says: “Now for a little while, you have been grieved by various kinds of trials so that the proven character of your faith—which is more valuable than gold, which passes away even though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:6-7).
Fourth, our crosses drive us to seek help from God in prayer, as Isaiah says: “O LORD, they appealed to you in distress. They whispered a prayer as you disciplined them” (Isaiah 26:16).
And fifth, our crosses turn our attention away from worldly and temporal things to spiritual and eternal things. “Yes, our momentary, light trouble produces for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond any comparison. We are not focusing on what is seen, but on what is not seen. For the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
Praise the Lord our God, who has shown through the first cross of the Babylonian captivity the glory and the power of the second cross, the cross of Jesus our Savior who made peace through the blood of his cross. Today we put our faith in Christ and willingly heft our daily crosses, these third crosses of the Christian life, to show our love and thankfulness, to praise him, and to give thanks to our Savior Jesus Christ, in whose name we live and pray. Amen.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.