What is Your Only Comfort in Life and in Death?

How would you answer that question?  Check out this video at: http://youtu.be/BJ2-Bw0Rd54

The Battle Against Sin

Christianity is not a list of pre-packaged rules.  D.A. Carson explains that sometimes, Christian pastors get this wrong.  Perhaps we try to discern signs of decay in the culture, and if we are not careful we will begin to say, “Don’t do that.  Do this instead!”  This type of thinking gives the impression that we can fix things by imposing a fresh set of rules—so you can show how righteous, good, and disciplined you are if you adopt all of these rules in your life.

The fundamental Christian motivation is not adherence to more rules.  Rather, Ephesians 4:32 says, “forgive each other as God in Christ has forgiven you.”  God’s Spirit transforms us by bringing us back to the cross so that all of our morality is first and foremost a function of gratitude to God for what Christ has already done.  If you begin to see just how much you were forgiven by what Christ did on the cross, how on earth can you possibly nurture bitterness toward others?  Because we have received so much love from God through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus, how can we not also go forth and freely and impartially love others (Ephesians 5:1-2)?  The gospel justifies us and the gospel sanctifies us. 

And yet we are painfully aware of our continual battle with sin, for we are simultaneously justified yet sinful.  John Newton talked about this reality.  Newton, who lived from 1725 to 1807, was once a slave trader who estimated he transported twenty-thousand slaves across the Atlantic.  He said that in his nightmares he could still hear them scream.  At some point in his life he became a Christian and then a pastor.  Near the end of his earthly pilgrimage, Newton said:

“I am not what I ought to be—ah, how imperfect and deficient!  I am not what I wish to be—I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good!  I am not what I hope to be—soon, soon, shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection.  Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

If you are interested in talking more about “the battle against sin,” you are invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tonight (Wednesday, August 24) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. 

The God Who Declares the Guilty Just

D.A. Carson writes: At a certain level, the title above almost seems perverse.  The following is how we would prefer that things work:

Members of the jury, I am not asking for mercy or pardon.  I want justice.  I am demanding full acquittal.  Yes, I committed the murder of which I am accused.  But I am not guilty.  Members of the jury, you must consider all my good deeds—not merely as mitigating circumstances but as reason for exonerating me.  The goodness of my other deeds outweighs the crime I committed.  My good deeds require a “not guilty” verdict.  If justice is to be done, you must find me innocent.

We grin as we read the paragraph above because the argument is so ridiculous.  Yet suddenly we see that an approach to God that depends finally on our balancing of good deeds and bad deeds must be no less ridiculous.  For this is the lamest of all forms of self-justification—yet this is the case we want to make before God.  This argument is not a plea for leniency; rather, it is a bold assertion of innocence.  It assumes that guilt is cancelled by good deeds.  God must acquit us and declare us “not guilty” because we have done enough compensating good things.  This is self-justification.  And it is no more believable before the bar of God’s justice than it would be in a contemporary court.

So how should we think that God looks at things, this God who is himself spectacularly holy and who does not see our good deeds as things that are weighed in a balance against bad deeds but sees even this futile effort at self-justification as one more example of our moral defiance against him?  What is the Bible’s solution?  God does not pretend that good deeds make up for bad deeds.  Rather, he has found a way to declare the guilty just—and retain his integrity while doing it.  Instead of self-justification, he finds a way to justify us.

Do you want to know where God’s justice is most powerfully demonstrated?  On the cross.  Do you want to know where God’s love is most powerfully demonstrated?  On the cross.  There Jesus, the God-man, bore hell itself, and God did this both to be just and to be the one who declares just those who have faith in him.  God views the Christian through the lens of Jesus, who absorbed the white-hot wrath of God that we deserve.  Your sin is now viewed as his, and he has paid for it.  And his righteousness, which he earned by perfectly obeying God's law, is now viewed as yours (2 Corinthians 5:21).  God looks at you and declares you to be just, not because you are just (you are guilty, as Romans 1:18-3:20 says) but because he has set forth his Son to be the propitiation (wrath-appeasing sacrifice) for your sins (Romans 3:21-31).

If you are interested in talking more about “the cross of Jesus,” you are invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tomorrow night (Wednesday, August 10) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. 

What is the significance of Jesus’ resurrection?

D.A. Carson writes: “In the Bible, a handful of people were brought back from the dead before Jesus.  One of the most notable was Lazarus, brought back from the dead by Jesus himself (John 11).  Yet Paul insists that Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection of Christ’s people at the end of the age (1 Corinthians 15:20).  What makes his resurrection so special, especially if he is not, sequentially, the first?  Apart from the question of who this Jesus is who has been resurrected—none less than the incarnate Son of God, who by his death atoned for the sins of all his people—the New Testament texts insist that his resurrection is unique.

True, Lazarus was brought back to life in bodily form after spending even more time in the grave than Jesus did.  But his body remained an ordinary body; presumably Lazarus died again.  By contrast, after his resurrection Jesus is said to possess a “spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44).  Jesus’ post-death body has some sort of continuity with his pre-death body (the marks of the wounds are still there); it is certainly a genuine body in the sense that Jesus could be touched and handled, and he could eat with his disciples.  Yet it was more than a body as you and I know it.  Jesus continues to be a human being forever, a resurrected spirit-body human being—and our resurrection bodies at the end will resemble his.” 

The destiny of the Christian is not the immaterial existence of a disembodied ghost; rather, our ultimate destiny is resurrection existence with glorified bodies (2 Corinthians 5:1-10) in the new heaven and the new earth.  Only Jesus has undergone this transformation to resurrection existence.  He is the firstfruits of it, the one who has secured it for us.

If you are interested in talking more about “the resurrection,” you are invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tomorrow night (Wednesday, July 27) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. 

What is forgiveness?

Kim Riddlebarger writes: “Think of the worst sin you have committed—the one sin you don’t want anyone else to know about.  Then think of that habitual sin that holds you in a death grip, that sin you cannot stop committing and have confessed a thousand times and still struggle with.  Then think of the sum total of all the sins you have committed.  What possible chance do you have of making it to heaven if the death of Christ doesn’t satisfy God’s justice toward all your sins?”

How can we be saved when we can all think of terrible, besetting, and constant sins we have committed?  Because Christ paid for the guilt of your sins in full once and for all when he suffered and died on the cross.  Christ satisfied God’s justice toward you by dying in your place and receiving the punishment you deserve.  Christ redeemed you and purchased you with his blood, and he reconciled you to God and God to you.  He turned aside God’s wrath toward you.  2 Corinthians 5:21 says: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Because of the person and work of Christ, God’s wrath can no more touch you as a Christian than a hurricane that happened a hundred years ago can harm you.  God’s wrath has been satisfied in history for you who believe.  All the satisfaction you ever need has been made, and as a result you can lift up your hearts and rejoice and worship your Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You don’t need to wonder what happens on judgment day anymore because it has been declared to you now.  Romans 8:1 says “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  Through his perfect life of obedience to God’s law, his death on the cross, his resurrection, and his ascension, Christ has earned righteousness for you.  His perfect righteousness is imputed to you as the ground of your justification.  God is no longer angry with you because you are now clothed in the perfect righteousness of his Son.

So, what is forgiveness?  Forgiveness is seen in the cross of Christ, where Christ bore the weight of God’s wrath against your sins and was cursed in your place (Galatians 3:13; 1 Peter 3:18).  All of your sins—past, present, and future—were paid for by Christ on the cross.  Your guilt, defilement, shame, and punishment has been taken away.  As a result of what has happened on the cross, God is for you today, Christian, and not against you (Romans 8:31).  Why?  Because his justice has been satisfied and his love has been poured out through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.

If you are interested in talking more about “forgiveness,” you are warmly invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tonight (Monday, July 11) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie. 

What is “the love of God”?

When you ask people to define who God is, often the first thing they will say is “God is love.”  D.A. Carson says that “occasionally you will hear somebody saying something like this: ‘It’s Christians I don’t like.  I mean, God is love, and if everybody were just like Jesus, it would be wonderful.  Jesus said, ‘Judge not that you be not judged.’  You know, if we could all just be nonjudgmental and loving the way Jesus was loving, then the world would be a better place.’ 

There is an assumption there about the nature of love, isn’t there?  People wrongly assume that love is nonjudgmental.  It does not condemn anyone.  It lets everybody do whatever they want.  Now, it is true that Jesus does condemn the kind of judgment that is self-righteous or hypocritical.  But God’s love is no some sort of spongy sentimentalism that just winks at sin.

It is true that God is love, but it is also true that God is holy, just, righteous, and glorious. 

We will never understand God’s love and mercy without first understanding the seriousness of our sin and the justice of God’s wrath against us.  Jesus had a purpose in going to the cross; namely, to save people from condemnation that is already hanging over them (John 3:18, 36). 

One author writes: “if God were not just then there would be no demand for his Son to suffer and die; if he were not loving there would be no willingness for his Son to suffer and die.”  In his love, God meets the demands of his justice in the sacrificial work of His Son on the cross (John 3:16-18).  1 John 4:10 says “this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation (wrath-absorbing sacrifice) for our sins.”

If you are interested in talking more about “the love of God,” you are warmly invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tomorrow night (Thursday, June 23) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie.  Our study will focus on John 3:16-21. 

What do you need?

As you think about that question, perhaps a number of things come to your mind—from the urgent to the mundane and everything in between.  You may think of your need for things like food, shelter, clothing, sleep, and relationships.  You may need your brakes fixed on your car or your air conditioner to be repaired.  You may need to visit the doctor because your child has an ear infection and is unable to sleep through the night.  The list goes on and on.

Physical needs such as food and shelter are of course very important.  While not neglecting those things, the Bible takes us further and talks about our greatest needs.  In my previous post, I mentioned that the Bible teaches that the God who is there has come to earth as the God-man, who is Jesus Christ.  How, precisely, does his coming help us?  D.A. Carson says that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection addresses our three greatest needs:

1. We are sinners and we need to be reconciled to a holy and just God.
2. We need to be morally transformed.
3. We need all the effects of sin to be reversed and overcome.  This includes not only our relationships with one another but also death itself.

Jesus directly confronts all of these things.  Carson says “biblical Christianity is much more than simply making a decision for Jesus so that we can live happy lives.  We must be genuinely reconciled to the holy God who is there.  We ourselves must be transformed—in measure right now, and for the rest of our lives, and ultimately with the kind of thorough transformation that leaves no hint of self-centeredness.”  We need our greatest enemy to be destroyed, which is death itself.  And when this happens, we will be “swamped in sheer delight at the glory and centrality of God.”

How does Jesus address our three greatest needs?  At least in part, he does so by granting us new birth (John 3:1-21; 1 Peter 1:23-25).

If you are interested in talking more about “the new birth,” you are warmly invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tomorrow night (Wednesday, June 8) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie.  Our study will focus on John 3:1-15.