Consider God! “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.”[1] God created the heavens and earth and all that is in them out of nothing by the Word of His power. God’s eternal glory is declared by the rising of the sun He created, the ebb and flow of the oceans He controls, and by the grandeur of the highest mountains that speak of the majesty of his name. “Since the perfection of blessedness consists in the knowledge of God, he has been pleased, in order that none might be excluded from the means of obtaining felicity, not only to deposit in our minds that seed of religion of which we have already spoken, but so to manifest his perfections in the whole structure of the universe, and daily place himself in our view, that we cannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold him.”[2]
God needs nothing nor does He draw anything from that which He created. God is self-existent.[3] He is without beginning or end. “From everlasting to everlasting you are God.” God is necessary. “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” [4] And God is non-contingent. God is not limited in any way by man, the devil, or any other created thing. “For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’”[5] The God of Christian faith “is not an abstraction, but a Person – with a right arm and a voice.”[6] God the Father - He is there and He is not silent![7]
Consider God! In times past God spoke by prophets and phenomena; by miracle and manifestation. But in these last days God has spoken completely, comprehensively, and finally by His Son; who is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. The Son of God speaks by his virgin birth, sinless life, vicarious death, bodily resurrection, glorious ascension, and everlasting mediation of the covenant of grace. He tells us that all which was lost in the 1st Adam is redeemed in the 2nd Adam. Through Him we learn of the utter sinfulness of our sin and the absolute sufficiency of our Savior. God the Son – He came down and His gospel saves!
Consider God! Proceeding from the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit who brings every decree of God to its appointed end. Most importantly, the Holy Spirit fully persuades and assures us of the infallible truth and divine authority of the Word of God. He convinces us of our sin and misery, enlightens our minds to the knowledge of Christ, and renews our wills enabling us to believe, trust, and embrace the gift of God as offered to us in the gospel.[8] God the Holy Spirit – He is here and He will not fail!
Consider God! “He is the source of all things in that they have proceeded from him; he is the Creator. He is the agent through whom all things subsist and are directed to their proper end. And he is the last end to whose glory all things redound.”[9]
“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.”
[1] Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q&A #4
[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols. (1845; reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1964), 1:51.
[3] Psalm 90:2
[4] Revelation 4:11
[5] Daniel 4:34-35
[6] Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, (Servant Publications, Ann Arbor, MI 1963) p. 111
[7] Francis Schaeffer
[8] Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q&A #30,31
[9] John Murray, quoted by John D. Hannah, How Do We Glorify God?, P&R Publishing (Phillipsburg, New Jersey 2000) p.42
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Our Only Means
The most important doctrinal question of the Reformation was “How does God save sinners?” To say it another way, “How are sinners justified in the sight of God?” The answer to these questions is only found in a salvation that comes in Christ by grace through faith alone. The doctrine of justification by faith alone was and remains the defining tenet of Protestant evangelical Christianity. At the heart of this doctrine was the issue of whether righteousness of God was infused in us or imputed to us. R. C. Sproul said it this way, “The crucial issue of infusion or imputation of righteousness remains irreconcilable. We are either justified by a righteousness that is in us or a righteousness that is apart from us. There is no third way.”
The Westminster Shorter Catechism defines justification as, “An act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.” Christ is our mediator and all sufficient merit. His birth, life, death and resurrection fully propitiated the judgment of God and expiated our sins. Grace is the unmerited favor of God who pardons our sins and accepts us as righteous for Christ’s sake. Faith is the persuading power of the Holy Spirit that convinces us of the incarnation of Christ, what Christ did as our substitute on the cross, what Christ is doing as mediator of the new covenant, leading us to offer to God our “Amen” for all the promises that are ours in Jesus.
Salvation by grace through faith in Christ plus something is not the gospel. Only the work of the Son of God, freely given by the grace of God, appropriated through the faith of God alone, in any way can be called “good news.”
“We shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” John Calvin
The Westminster Shorter Catechism defines justification as, “An act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.” Christ is our mediator and all sufficient merit. His birth, life, death and resurrection fully propitiated the judgment of God and expiated our sins. Grace is the unmerited favor of God who pardons our sins and accepts us as righteous for Christ’s sake. Faith is the persuading power of the Holy Spirit that convinces us of the incarnation of Christ, what Christ did as our substitute on the cross, what Christ is doing as mediator of the new covenant, leading us to offer to God our “Amen” for all the promises that are ours in Jesus.
Salvation by grace through faith in Christ plus something is not the gospel. Only the work of the Son of God, freely given by the grace of God, appropriated through the faith of God alone, in any way can be called “good news.”
“We shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” John Calvin
Our Only Method
Thoughts on grace -
“Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night; Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off my heart was free; I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.” Charles Wesley
"Like a spiritual corpse, a sinner is unable to make a single move toward God, think a single thought about God, or even correctly respond to God—unless God is first present to bring the spiritually dead person to life, which is what Paul says he does do." James M. Boice
“Now let us cast ourselves down before the majesty of our good God with acknowledgment of our faults, praying him to make us so to feel them that it makes us not only confess three or four of them, but also go back even to our birth and acknowledge that there is nothing but sin in us, and that there is no way for us to be reconciled to our God, but by the blood, death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.” John Calvin
“There are two great truths which from this platform I have proclaimed for many years. The first is that salvation is free to every man who will have it; the second is that God gives salvation to a people whom He has chosen; and these truths are not in conflict with each other in the least degree.” Charles Spurgeon
“Do not stand still disputing about your election, but set to repenting and believing. Cry out to God for converting grace. . . . Whatever God’s purposes may be, I am sure His promises are true. Whatever the decrees of heaven may be, I am sure if I repent and believe I shall be saved.” Joseph Alleine
“Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night; Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off my heart was free; I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.” Charles Wesley
"Like a spiritual corpse, a sinner is unable to make a single move toward God, think a single thought about God, or even correctly respond to God—unless God is first present to bring the spiritually dead person to life, which is what Paul says he does do." James M. Boice
“Now let us cast ourselves down before the majesty of our good God with acknowledgment of our faults, praying him to make us so to feel them that it makes us not only confess three or four of them, but also go back even to our birth and acknowledge that there is nothing but sin in us, and that there is no way for us to be reconciled to our God, but by the blood, death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.” John Calvin
“There are two great truths which from this platform I have proclaimed for many years. The first is that salvation is free to every man who will have it; the second is that God gives salvation to a people whom He has chosen; and these truths are not in conflict with each other in the least degree.” Charles Spurgeon
“Do not stand still disputing about your election, but set to repenting and believing. Cry out to God for converting grace. . . . Whatever God’s purposes may be, I am sure His promises are true. Whatever the decrees of heaven may be, I am sure if I repent and believe I shall be saved.” Joseph Alleine
Our Only Salvation
The central theme of Scripture is God’s redemptive purposes through Jesus Christ. From Gen. 3:15 through the end of Revelation the theme is Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament the promise of Jesus Christ was made. In the New Testament the promise of Jesus Christ was kept. In this sense all of the scriptures are Christian in that they speak of the centrality of Christ.
The primary purpose of Christ was not to give us purpose, self-esteem, or success in life. His primary purpose was to save us from our sins and reconcile us to God. This He did by a taking upon himself flesh, by living a sinless life we could not live, by dying a vicarious death in our place, by rising from the dead for our justification, by ascending to the Father to plead our case in the court of heaven, and with the Father, by sending the Holy Spirit to bring us to salvation by grace, through faith, in Christ, alone!
John Calvin once said, “We must be careful not to look for Him anywhere else, for apart from Christ whatever offers itself to us in the name of God will turn out to be an idol.”
The primary purpose of Christ was not to give us purpose, self-esteem, or success in life. His primary purpose was to save us from our sins and reconcile us to God. This He did by a taking upon himself flesh, by living a sinless life we could not live, by dying a vicarious death in our place, by rising from the dead for our justification, by ascending to the Father to plead our case in the court of heaven, and with the Father, by sending the Holy Spirit to bring us to salvation by grace, through faith, in Christ, alone!
John Calvin once said, “We must be careful not to look for Him anywhere else, for apart from Christ whatever offers itself to us in the name of God will turn out to be an idol.”
Our Only Foundation
Sola Scriptura has been called the “formal principle” of the Reformation. At the heart of the Reformation was the issue of authority; or, to be more specific the issue of final authority. While both Church and creed carry with them a measure of secondary authority, for the Reformers the Word of God alone was the “only rule of faith and practice” for the Christian.
After being convinced by Holy Scripture that popes, councils, and creeds do error, Luther posited the radical conviction that only the Word of God alone was without error and was the final authority on all matters on which it speaks. Charged with heresy and threatened with death, Luther stood before the ultimate “powers that be” of his day to defend his conviction that the Bible had led him to doctrinal positions contrary to the Church at Rome. When commanded to recant his convictions and doctrines Luther said,
“Unless I am convinced of error by the testimony of Scripture or by manifest reasoning I stand convicted by the Scriptures to which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God’s word. I cannot or will not recant anything. For to act against conscience is neither safe for us, nor open to us.”
So strong was the Protestant conviction of the necessity of the Bible that many died in defense of the doctrine of sola Scriptura. We forget the human cost that gives us the privilege of holding in our hands an English Bible that we might hear the voice of God as we read, pray and preach the Word of God.
One of those martyrs was William Tyndale whose passion to translate the scriptures into English led him into direct opposition with Rome. In response to a challenge to the supremacy of God’s Word over both pope and church, Tyndale said, “I defy the Pope, and all his laws, and if God spares my life, I will cause the boy that drives the plow in England to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope himself!" Charged with heresy in 1536 and sentenced to die it was recorded that as Tyndale faced death "at the stake with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice", he said "Lord! Open the King of England's eyes." He "was strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was burned". Tyndale was martyred for the Word of God. Where is our zeal, our commitment to the Word of God in our generation?
After being convinced by Holy Scripture that popes, councils, and creeds do error, Luther posited the radical conviction that only the Word of God alone was without error and was the final authority on all matters on which it speaks. Charged with heresy and threatened with death, Luther stood before the ultimate “powers that be” of his day to defend his conviction that the Bible had led him to doctrinal positions contrary to the Church at Rome. When commanded to recant his convictions and doctrines Luther said,
“Unless I am convinced of error by the testimony of Scripture or by manifest reasoning I stand convicted by the Scriptures to which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God’s word. I cannot or will not recant anything. For to act against conscience is neither safe for us, nor open to us.”
So strong was the Protestant conviction of the necessity of the Bible that many died in defense of the doctrine of sola Scriptura. We forget the human cost that gives us the privilege of holding in our hands an English Bible that we might hear the voice of God as we read, pray and preach the Word of God.
One of those martyrs was William Tyndale whose passion to translate the scriptures into English led him into direct opposition with Rome. In response to a challenge to the supremacy of God’s Word over both pope and church, Tyndale said, “I defy the Pope, and all his laws, and if God spares my life, I will cause the boy that drives the plow in England to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope himself!" Charged with heresy in 1536 and sentenced to die it was recorded that as Tyndale faced death "at the stake with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice", he said "Lord! Open the King of England's eyes." He "was strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was burned". Tyndale was martyred for the Word of God. Where is our zeal, our commitment to the Word of God in our generation?
Comfort My People
God is a covenant making, covenant keeping God. Sadly, God’s covenant receiving people are not always covenant keeping people. Therefore, the prophets of the Lord often served as covenant prosecutors of the terms of God’s covenant. In that role Isaiah, one of the greatest prophets, is summoned before the great throne of God in Isaiah 6. He is called there to become a messenger sent from the Lord’s heavenly court to Jerusalem’s earthly court. To his dismay God’s message to Israel was not initially to speak about salvation but to harden their impenitent hearts. Isaiah presented the Lord’s complaint against God’s people. Israel had lost the vision of God’s holiness.
Faithful to God’s Word, Isaiah pronounced the judgment of God that would come upon Israel by their enemies the Assyrians and Babylonians. He names names and foretells events that would take place long after he died. For thirty-nine chapters Isaiah declares that Israel will receive “from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” But even in His judgment God was merciful in limiting their captivity. Jeremiah the prophet set the time limit at 70 years for this Babylonian captivity of God’s people. Then in chapter 40 comes the consolation of Israel. One theologian writes, “when one turns from the thirty-ninth to the fortieth chapter it is as though he steps out of the darkness of judgment and into the light of salvation.” In chapter 40, in a manner similar to chapter 6, Isaiah is called again to the Lord’s heavenly court. There Isaiah overhears God sending messengers announcing that judgment is coming to an end and that Israel’s sins have been paid for.
With most prophesy there is a near and far fulfillment. The near fulfillment of Isaiah's prophesy was accomplished in history through the exile, deliverance, and a return to earthly Jerusalem of God’s people. The far fulfillment would come 700 years later in Christ, who would save His people out of the captivity of sin, restore them to himself, and forever call them His own. But God’s Word to Isaiah reaches farther than the first coming of Christ. The Reformation Bible says: “Isaiah’s vision of God’s kingdom is great, because it includes the history of redemption from his day until the fullness of redemption. It embraces the exile, the return of the Jews from exile, the mission, ministry, and kingdom of Jesus Christ, the mission and hope of the church, Jesus’ present rule over this world, and the restoration of all things in holiness and righteousness.”
This is best described by Jeremiah as the New Covenant. “Behold the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah – not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD; I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. . . . for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jer. 31:31-34).
“When spiritual comfort is sent to you by God, take it humbly and give thanks meekly for it. But know for certain that it is the great goodness of God that sends it to you, and not because you deserve it.” Thomas a’ Kempis
Consider yourselves in bondage, held captive by a power greater than Babylon. This is the power of sin that results in death, hell and the grave. You have no hope of deliverance and no way of escape. And then God speaks “Comfort, comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned . . ..” This is good news!
Faithful to God’s Word, Isaiah pronounced the judgment of God that would come upon Israel by their enemies the Assyrians and Babylonians. He names names and foretells events that would take place long after he died. For thirty-nine chapters Isaiah declares that Israel will receive “from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” But even in His judgment God was merciful in limiting their captivity. Jeremiah the prophet set the time limit at 70 years for this Babylonian captivity of God’s people. Then in chapter 40 comes the consolation of Israel. One theologian writes, “when one turns from the thirty-ninth to the fortieth chapter it is as though he steps out of the darkness of judgment and into the light of salvation.” In chapter 40, in a manner similar to chapter 6, Isaiah is called again to the Lord’s heavenly court. There Isaiah overhears God sending messengers announcing that judgment is coming to an end and that Israel’s sins have been paid for.
With most prophesy there is a near and far fulfillment. The near fulfillment of Isaiah's prophesy was accomplished in history through the exile, deliverance, and a return to earthly Jerusalem of God’s people. The far fulfillment would come 700 years later in Christ, who would save His people out of the captivity of sin, restore them to himself, and forever call them His own. But God’s Word to Isaiah reaches farther than the first coming of Christ. The Reformation Bible says: “Isaiah’s vision of God’s kingdom is great, because it includes the history of redemption from his day until the fullness of redemption. It embraces the exile, the return of the Jews from exile, the mission, ministry, and kingdom of Jesus Christ, the mission and hope of the church, Jesus’ present rule over this world, and the restoration of all things in holiness and righteousness.”
This is best described by Jeremiah as the New Covenant. “Behold the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah – not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD; I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. . . . for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jer. 31:31-34).
“When spiritual comfort is sent to you by God, take it humbly and give thanks meekly for it. But know for certain that it is the great goodness of God that sends it to you, and not because you deserve it.” Thomas a’ Kempis
Consider yourselves in bondage, held captive by a power greater than Babylon. This is the power of sin that results in death, hell and the grave. You have no hope of deliverance and no way of escape. And then God speaks “Comfort, comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned . . ..” This is good news!
Why God Became Man?
In his book, On The Incarnation, Athanasius wrote of The Divine Dilemma. How does God who promised death for the transgression of Adam keep His word, yet, save those created in His image and likeness? For God to not punish the transgression would make God a liar and therefore not God at all. But on the other hand, how could God, finding Adam and Eve in their nakedness and shame allow those created in His image, those who once reflected the very Word of God, disappear and the work of God be undone? “The creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do?” (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, p.12). What then was a good and holy God to do?
Before God’s very eyes degeneration and death was evident in Adam and Eve; they were in fact perishing and all of God’s creation with them. Only God could solve The Divine Dilemma. Only the Word of God himself, who in the beginning made all things out of nothing, could again bring regeneration and a new birth to all creatures of our God and King. “For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father. For this purpose, then, the in-cor-poreal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. . . . He entered the world a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us” (Ibid, p.13).
Over 700 years later Saint Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote another book important to our understanding of the Incarnation entitled “Why God Became Man?” While the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement would wait another 500 years, Anselm rightly understood that for humankind to be saved from the results of the Fall of Man God would have to be satisfied. Anselm argued, “Satisfaction cannot be made unless there be some One able to pay God for man's sin something greater than all that is beside God. . . . Now nothing is greater than all that is beside God except God Himself. None therefore can make this satisfaction except God. And none ought to make it except man. . . . If, then, it be necessary that the kingdom of heaven be completed by man's admission, and if man cannot be admitted unless the aforesaid satisfaction for sin be first made, and if God only can, and man only ought to make this satisfaction, then necessarily One must make it who is both God and man" (Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, Book II, ch. 6). If only God can make satisfaction and only man is responsible for satisfaction, then only One who is both God and man can satisfy the debt we owe.
In other words, we owe a debt we cannot pay. Only God can pay the debt He does not owe. Therefore, only a God-man, Jesus Christ, can both bear the guilt of human sin and pay the debt incurred by it.
Before God’s very eyes degeneration and death was evident in Adam and Eve; they were in fact perishing and all of God’s creation with them. Only God could solve The Divine Dilemma. Only the Word of God himself, who in the beginning made all things out of nothing, could again bring regeneration and a new birth to all creatures of our God and King. “For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father. For this purpose, then, the in-cor-poreal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. . . . He entered the world a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us” (Ibid, p.13).
Over 700 years later Saint Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote another book important to our understanding of the Incarnation entitled “Why God Became Man?” While the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement would wait another 500 years, Anselm rightly understood that for humankind to be saved from the results of the Fall of Man God would have to be satisfied. Anselm argued, “Satisfaction cannot be made unless there be some One able to pay God for man's sin something greater than all that is beside God. . . . Now nothing is greater than all that is beside God except God Himself. None therefore can make this satisfaction except God. And none ought to make it except man. . . . If, then, it be necessary that the kingdom of heaven be completed by man's admission, and if man cannot be admitted unless the aforesaid satisfaction for sin be first made, and if God only can, and man only ought to make this satisfaction, then necessarily One must make it who is both God and man" (Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, Book II, ch. 6). If only God can make satisfaction and only man is responsible for satisfaction, then only One who is both God and man can satisfy the debt we owe.
In other words, we owe a debt we cannot pay. Only God can pay the debt He does not owe. Therefore, only a God-man, Jesus Christ, can both bear the guilt of human sin and pay the debt incurred by it.
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