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!
Thursday, December 25, 2008
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.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
The Coming Glory
Paul knew suffering – he knew what it meant to be stoned, flogged, left for dead, shipwrecked, snake bit and eventually martyred. Speaking of suffering the Apostle said, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down; but not destroyed . . . .” Whether we suffer directly for the sake of the gospel or simply suffer the consequences of a fallen world we will “suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” This is the testimony of all of Scripture.
True faith wrestles with the problem and burden of suffering. Nevertheless, the trusting Christian does not require an immediate and complete justification of God when things get hard. The people of God trust His providence and sovereignty even when they do not understand His ways. Often the faithful Christian waits patiently in the darkness of this world without an answer groaning for the consummation of all things. As David Livingstone once said, “Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this be only for a moment. All these things are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in, and for, us.” In other words, no matter how strong the pain, how long the suffering, how difficult the hardship, God’s people hope and wait in faith knowing that adversity in this life will redound for their good and God’s glory.
What about God’s glory? How do we describe the weight, worth, brightness, splendor and even beauty of God? We are prohibited by Scripture from even trying to imagine the majesty of God’s presence. Paul said it is beyond compare - the glory of God is incomparable. Moses asked to see God’s glory only to be told, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’. . . But, ‘he said, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.’” Graciously God hid and protected Moses in the cleft of the rock and gave him a glimpse of the glory of God passing by. Job looked by faith for God’s glory. In the midst of great suffering he said, “For I know that my Redeemer lives . . . yet in my flesh I shall see God.” We read of the hope of God’s glory in the Psalms - “I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” Isaiah saw the Lord “high and lifted up” and heard that antiphonal choir of heavenly beings saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” In the Book of the Revelation John heard “a loud voice like a trumpet” and then He saw, “one like the Son of man . . . The hairs of his head were like wool . . . His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze . . . his voice was like the roar of many waters . . . and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.” Even Paul himself spoke of being “caught up to the third heaven . . . caught up into paradise” where he heard things “that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” God’s people do not have the words to describe the glory of God.
What about God’s glory? How do we describe the weight, worth, brightness, splendor and even beauty of God? We are prohibited by Scripture from even trying to imagine the majesty of God’s presence. Paul said it is beyond compare - the glory of God is incomparable. Moses asked to see God’s glory only to be told, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’. . . But, ‘he said, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.’” Graciously God hid and protected Moses in the cleft of the rock and gave him a glimpse of the glory of God passing by. Job looked by faith for God’s glory. In the midst of great suffering he said, “For I know that my Redeemer lives . . . yet in my flesh I shall see God.” We read of the hope of God’s glory in the Psalms - “I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” Isaiah saw the Lord “high and lifted up” and heard that antiphonal choir of heavenly beings saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” In the Book of the Revelation John heard “a loud voice like a trumpet” and then He saw, “one like the Son of man . . . The hairs of his head were like wool . . . His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze . . . his voice was like the roar of many waters . . . and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.” Even Paul himself spoke of being “caught up to the third heaven . . . caught up into paradise” where he heard things “that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” God’s people do not have the words to describe the glory of God.
In the meantime we have those brief and shining moments where we experience, what the hymn writer called, “a foretaste of glory divine.” This we see most clearly in the public worship of God on the Lord’s Day. Every seven days God does break in on us to show us a glimpse of heaven. But at best in this life we see through “a glass darkly.” We await the consummation of God’s’ redemptive purposes towards us and His creation. Someday we shall see Him as He is in all His glory and we shall be like Him.
Read Romans 8:18-25
Saturday, July 19, 2008
The Persevering Christian
If God saves by grace, through faith, because of Christ alone, thereby securing our eternal salvation for us, can we fall away from the faith and be lost? No. Were it not for the preserving grace of God would we fall away from the faith? Yes. This begs the question, “If God is doing the saving and preserving, why then do we as Christians need to struggle against sin and persevere in the faith?”
Like many other mysteries in the Scriptures the preservation of God and the perseverance of the saints are held in tension. We are perfectly righteous through the imputed righteousness of Christ yet still unrighteous in many of our ways. We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus yet still part of the Church Militant on this earth. We are eternally secure in Christ yet we are warned to make our calling and election sure. We have a salvation finished in Christ and a salvation being worked out in us. How then are we to understand this tension?
The “called, chosen and faithful” are between the cross and heaven, between the “already” and the “not yet”, secure in our positional standing in Christ yet struggling with the practical holiness God expects from His chosen people. The Latin phrase for all of this is simul iustus et peccator; “At the same time righteous and a sinner” or saints and sinners at the same time.
If this makes you a bit spiritually schizophrenic you’re not alone. John Stott in his commentary of Romans identified in Chapter 7:21-25 two egos, two laws, two cries, and two slaveries working in Paul at the same time. He says of the two egos, When I want to do right, evil lies close at hand (v.21). Of the two laws Paul says, For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law . . . the law of sin (vs. 21, 23). Paul cries out, What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Paul’s final words of struggle are I myself (autos ego, the authentic regenerate Paul) serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh (sarx, the false and fallen Paul) I serve the law of sin.
Regeneration happens in an instant and justification in a moment - sanctification takes a lifetime. In the time it takes blink an eye one supernatural touch from the Holy Spirit awakens us from the dead that we might hear and believe the gospel. It takes the means of grace ministered to us every seven days our whole lives for us to grow up into Christ by dying to sin that we might live unto God.
On this trip from earth to heaven from Sinai to Calvary to Zion “The only haven of safety is in the mercy of God, as manifested in Christ, in whom every part of our salvation is complete.” John Calvin
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Law and Gospel
American Christianity is dying. Biblical faith and practice of ages past is now being rejected wholesale as not relevant to this generation. This impending death of the evangelical nation is evidenced in many ways. The clearest proof, however, of the decline of Christian faith in America can be found in how God is worshiped and what is being preached in our churches?
These two things actually go together since the way people worship says more about what they really believe about God than any creed they might confess or profession of faith they might have made. But what people believe and how they worship comes from the content of what they hear preached as “gospel.” For many they hear law or gospel. For most it’s the law as gospel. When in fact, what should be preached is law and gospel.
Preaching law or gospel produces legalists or libertines. The “works righteousness” legalists in the long sad line of Pelagius, Erasmus and Arminius are convinced that what God commands them to do they can do. Just give them the Ten Commandments or any other list of things to do to please God and they are set; they know what the goal is and they are confident that with a little help from the grace of God they can get it done. On the contrary, libertines simply use grace as an excuse to sin thereby giving evidence of being unconverted.
When the law is preached as gospel you will find people seeking a better life “in Adam” not necessarily a new life “in Christ.” The law as gospel is marked by good works and obedience to spiritual laws or principles designed to "Change Your Life!" Faith and action based upon these laws releases the power and favor of God into the human condition. This is heralded as “good news” when in fact it’s not the “gospel” at all. When human initiative is the contingency to get God to do what He really wants to do, that He can’t do unless we exercise some spiritual law that lets God be God, its spiritual fraud. There is no gospel in "What would Jesus do?
What the Bible teaches is law and gospel. The loud thunder of the law is seldom preached anymore. The law is “bad news” for the sinner. There is a holy God and by His holy law we are judged sinners, condemned to die, and suffer His judgment. We are “dead in our trespasses and sin” and we can’t do a thing about it. This is really “bad news.” The law either drives us to despair or to Christ who did for us what we could not do and would not do for ourselves. The gospel isn’t a “new and improved” us. The gospel is Christ dying for our sins and being raised again for our justification.
These two things actually go together since the way people worship says more about what they really believe about God than any creed they might confess or profession of faith they might have made. But what people believe and how they worship comes from the content of what they hear preached as “gospel.” For many they hear law or gospel. For most it’s the law as gospel. When in fact, what should be preached is law and gospel.
Preaching law or gospel produces legalists or libertines. The “works righteousness” legalists in the long sad line of Pelagius, Erasmus and Arminius are convinced that what God commands them to do they can do. Just give them the Ten Commandments or any other list of things to do to please God and they are set; they know what the goal is and they are confident that with a little help from the grace of God they can get it done. On the contrary, libertines simply use grace as an excuse to sin thereby giving evidence of being unconverted.
When the law is preached as gospel you will find people seeking a better life “in Adam” not necessarily a new life “in Christ.” The law as gospel is marked by good works and obedience to spiritual laws or principles designed to "Change Your Life!" Faith and action based upon these laws releases the power and favor of God into the human condition. This is heralded as “good news” when in fact it’s not the “gospel” at all. When human initiative is the contingency to get God to do what He really wants to do, that He can’t do unless we exercise some spiritual law that lets God be God, its spiritual fraud. There is no gospel in "What would Jesus do?
What the Bible teaches is law and gospel. The loud thunder of the law is seldom preached anymore. The law is “bad news” for the sinner. There is a holy God and by His holy law we are judged sinners, condemned to die, and suffer His judgment. We are “dead in our trespasses and sin” and we can’t do a thing about it. This is really “bad news.” The law either drives us to despair or to Christ who did for us what we could not do and would not do for ourselves. The gospel isn’t a “new and improved” us. The gospel is Christ dying for our sins and being raised again for our justification.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
