Heed These Words

Listening to a stunning sermon by C.J. Mahaney in preparation for our Grace Series at X1 Watford and this is a quote he finishes with that is so very powerful. Hear this:

“There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. . . This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ doesn’t cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His ‘blood and righteousness’ alone that we can rest.”

- B. B. Warfield

Nothing I add, grace, grace, grace!

Simon

Isaiah 53: 10

In Isaiah 53: 10 we are confronted with these somewhat alarming words

"

But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief..."

The reference is obviously to Jesus Christ and His atoning death on the cross (although all the 'clever' people seek to disagree in our age of superior intelligence). Today in my reading I saw a wonderful 5 point summary of why God the Father was 'pleased' in this work of 'agreement/consensus/willful participation' in the crucifixion of Christ:

1) That He might execute His pleasant decrees
2) That He might fulfill His pleasant promises
3) That He might redeem the chosen objects of His love
4) That He might promote His Son to the highest honours
5) That He might exalt His own glory to the uttermost.

Hmmm, breathe that in.

Simon

Inspiration for Easter Series

Hey if you've got about an hour do your very self a huge favour and watch this sermon from C.J Mahaney. It is the inspiration behind our Easter Series 'The Great Exchange' out of Isaiah 53.

The Cross: A Meditation on Jesus' Atoning Death from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

Hope you're blessed as I was.

Simon

Lloyd Jones on not being 'theological' about the cross

Far too often we can dismiss theology and doctrine for the intellectual heavyweights of our faith while we focus only on emotion or feeling toward/from it. Lloyd Jones speaks heartily into this notion in this quote:

"Now I know that many people are not really concerned to know [what is meaning, the explanation of Christ's death] that. They say, 'No, I am not theological or doctrinal; all I know is that the cross is marvelous and wonderful and that the Lord died there.' And there are many who think that is the right attitude. They think that this is too sacred for anybody to examine, that you must never come to the cross with your mind but only with your heart, that the doctrine of the cross is something to be felt, not understood. But nothing is more terribly dangerous than that. If I understand the New testament aright, there is no place where we should be more careful to go with our minds fully operating as to the cross on Calvary's hill. And I will tell you why: it is because this is the central thing; there is not truth concerning which the adversary and the enemy of our souls is so anxious to muddle and confuse us as this particular truth."

How glorious. Love Him heart, soul & mind.

Simon

The Vital Link

The Cross without the Resurrection is an incomplete gospel, the two are vitally linked:

"The cross and the resurrection of Jesus belong together. They should never have been divorced into separate and all but hermetically-sealed components of dogmatic theology. It is not the cross which saves. It is Jesus, crucified and risen. 'Jesus was put to death for our offences and raised for our justification' (Rom 4: 25). And because this link has been so often lost sight of, our grasp on both cross and resurrection has been weakened. How could the death of a self-styled messianic figure avail for anyone - if God had not raised Him from the dead. And what is the resurrection but god's vindication of that suffering figure who dies in ignominy on the public gallows... they belong together."

- Michael Green

Simon

Love & Justice

As I had mentioned in an earlier Blog, this is the pivotal weekend in the history of the Christian faith, and this week I am preaching on the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Here is another quote from some materials I am reading to prepare. (Please note I would not have as high a view of the free will of man as this author)

"Love does not override either the Holiness of God or the freewill of men. people sometimes ask how a loving God can send even Adolf Hitler to hell. The love of God does not send anyone to hell. The love of God, with arms extended a cross, bars the way to hell. But if that love is ignored, rejected and finally refused, there comes a time when love can only weep while man pushes past into the self-chosen alienation which Christ went to the cross to avert. God sends nobody to hell. But it takes two to make a friendship. If man firmly and repeatedly refuses the proffered hand of God, God will honour and ratify that man's decision to live to himself and die by himself. God respects our free will even in the hell of our own choosing."

Love & Justice, one does not overwhelm the other in some giant wrestling bout so there is a 'you win' tap out. They must, and always will, work in unison in the workings of our Holy King.

SImon

Meaningless without Personal Response

Any idea of what was achieved at the cross, how it was done or why it was done is meaningless without a personal response. This is a point made by Michael Green in his book The Empty Cross of Jesus.

Here was William Barclay's response

"One thing I know-- that because of Jesus Christ and because of what He is and did and does, my whole relationship with God is changed. Because of Jesus Christ I know that God is my father and friend. Daily and hourly I experience the fact that I can enter into His presence with confidence and with boldness. He is no longer my enemy; He is no longer even my judge. There is no longer an unbridgeable gulf between Him and me. I am more at home with Him than with any human being in the world. And all this is because of Jesus Christ, and it could not possibly have happened without Him."

(Crucified and Crowned).

What's your response?

Simon

New testament Unity on the Cross

This week in the Christian Calendar celebrates the central event of our faith. Basically, if you do not get the Cross you do not get Christianity. With that in mind, our church is doing a series called '72' The Three Days that Changed the World. We will focus on the crucifixion of Christ this week. O the glorious death of the Lamb of God for the sins of the world.

Here are some thoughts from an author I am reading both for help in preparation but also for my own soul (Thanks to Lorraine, you know who you are, for buying this one for me). It is called The Empty Cross of Jesus by Michael Green. These insights are regarding the unified testimony of the New testament Authors on the cross of Jesus.

"[It is plain from a] survey of what the New testament writers have to say about the significance of Calvary, that it is a many-splendoured thing. There is a remarkable harmony in the central thesis, and remarkable diversity in the ways that the different writers look at the cross. Here we see supremely the love of God for sinful men and women who are lost, alienated from Him by sin, and are in a plight from which they could never extricate themselves. Salvation depends on what God has done for us in the Christ who is both human and divine. He silenced sin's accusing voice. He removed sin's guilt. He broke sin's power. He made satisfaction where we could not. He reversed Adam's fall. He defeated Satan. He rose as conqueror over the Last Enemy. He makes us partners of His life. He calls us to a share in this cross as well as in His triumph. And He teaches us that all eternity will be too short to understand the profundity of the salvation wrought by the incarnation, death and resurrection of the Saviour of the world."

Take that in, ruminate upon it and gaze in wonder at the mysterious truth of God dying for man!

Simon

Atonement Thoughts III

My ongoing reading through Paul Wells' Cross Words continues to enthuse and encourage me about the marvelous work of Christ on behalf of all creation but of course most particularly for those bought by His blood shed at calvary.

Today I share thoughts from a man called Peter Lewis from a book entitled The Glory of Christ. They relate to the role of Christ as a King in his work of mediation

"The kingship of Christ is of a kind that could never be rightly claimed or really exercised except by one who was both God and man, divine and human. It stretches through the entire cosmos and it reaches into the hearts and minds of men. Where God alone rules there Christ the Lord is king. In perfect knowledge of the thoughts and hearts, the feelings and fears of millions of souls, Christ presides over his church, knowing every one of his subjects as only God could do, but knowing them too as only a fellow human could do; that is, knowing them not only from within the divine omniscience [all knowing], but also from within the human condition."

May these words be an encouragement to you.
SLJ

Atonement Thoughts II

The orthodox, reformed view of the Atonement (Vicarious Penal Substitutionary Atonement) has faced much criticism in recent years (in fact for far longer than that). One accusation is that it puts across a God who is shockingly angry with His own Son which seems impossible as it pits God the Father against God the Son... this is Anti-trinitarian. Well Paul Wells puts sword to such an accusation with these words I read today.

"The mediator removes liability to penal judgment and guilt in the sense of condemnation leading to death. That Christ 'bore our sins' means He took on Himself their fatal consequences and died the death we ought to have died...

Surely God could never be angry with His own Son? That is wholly the case. God was never for an instant angry against the beloved Son. God was not at odds with Christ, He was at odds with sin. His anger was not pointed at the person of Christ like the anger of one person can be directed at another or at an object. In the particular function of mediator He accepted for others, Christ acted together with and for God and too the anger of God on Himself. Forgiveness is not wrung from a violent and a grudging God. Christ is the subject and the object of His own acts. By taking the anger of God against sin to Himself, and dying for it, He obtained forgiveness."

Such love Divine, O Saviour Mine

Simon

What 'Owns' You

"You don't have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by a few great things. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on for centuries and into eternity..."

These are the words with which John Piper challenged 20000 college students in the summer of 2000 (see here). Piper's earnest plea was that this groups of 20-somethings not waste their life on the cheap temporal pleasures lavished upon them by a society fixated only with the now. Piper wanted their lives to count for so much more.

What owns you? What dominates your affection, what grasps your attention more than any other thing? Maybe it is a multitude of things all wrapped up in this wicked rat race of keeping up with the mind-blowing levels of consumption by our peers in order to maintain 'the image.'

Piper's whole message is borne out of his focus on the words of Paul in Galatians 6:14. Here Paul claims that he will boast only in one thing: THE CROSS OF JESUS CHRIST. For Paul, and so it should be for us, the cross of Jesus Christ was the central element of all reality. For him reality is because the cross was. As Christians we must ask ourselves if we could make the same claim.

We must ascertain whether everything we seek to do, our thoughts, our affections stem from our absolute love for the person and work of Jesus Christ crucified. It will bring about transformation if that is the case.

Simon