A. The Glory of the Cross
The Cross, Satisfaction and Substitution
Here’s a helpful posting on the cross by Pastor DeYoung,
The Cross of Christ
Several years ago I started the habit of beginning my devotional time each morning by reading from a spiritual classic for 10-20 minutes. This has been a great way to read through longer, denser books. With this method, I’ve managed to learn from men like Athanasius, Gregory the Great, Calvin, Edwards, Bavinck, Lloyd-Jones, Sibbes, Owen, Baxter, Chesterton, and Machen.
And in learning from them I’ve been better prepared each morning for the word of God and prayer. Currently, I’m reading through a more recent book, John Stott’s The Cross of Christ. It is truly a modern day classic. How anyone could read this book and not be convinced, from the Scriptures, of the validity, centrality, and glory of penal substitution as the heart of the gospel is beyond me.
Here are two of the best paragraphs you’ll ever read on the atonement. Meditate on them. Pray through them. And don’t go to a church that doesn’t preach them.
We strongly reject, therefore, every explanation of the death of Christ that does not have at its center the principle of “satisfaction through substitution,” indeed divine self-satisfaction through divine self-substitution. The cross was not
- a commercial bargain with the devil, let alone one that tricked and trapped him: nor an exact equivalent,
- a quid pro quo to satisfy a code of honor or technical point of law; nor
- a compulsory submission by God to some moral authority above him from which he could not otherwise escape; nor
- a punishment of a meek Christ by a harsh and punitive Father; nor
- a procurement of salvation by a loving Christ from a mean and reluctant Father; nor
- an action of the Father which bypassed Christ as Mediator.
Instead, the righteous, loving Father humbled himself to become in and through his only Son flesh, sin and a curse for us, in order to redeem us without compromising his own character.
The theological words satisfaction and substitution need to be carefully defined and safeguarded, but they cannot in any circumstance be given up. The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.
The concept of substitution may be said, then,
to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation.
For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties that belong to man alone (158-59). (Original posting)
B. Ministry and the Cross
From my reading . . .
Probably the most important thing I’ve learned over the past few years is to need to make the cross central in my life and in ministry to others.
What Professor Carson wrote about “many evangelicals” was true about me:
For too long, many evangelicals have viewed the cross exclusively as the means by which God in Christ Jesus achieved our redemption.
from The Cross and Christian Ministry, D.A. Carson 2004
I’m learning that the cross is of first importance to those who lead God’s people. Currently I’m reading Carson’s The Cross and Christian Ministry, a short reworking of a series of messages given to Christian leaders on selected texts from 1 Corinthians. The book contains five chapters: The Cross and Preaching, The Cross and the Holy Spirit, The Cross and Factionalism, The Cross and Christian Leadership and The Cross and the World Christian.
There’s a lot to chew on in this short book. I’m finding I need to read it slowly and in small sections. Here’s a great quote from the Preface,
Of course, no Christian would want to minimize the centrality of the cross in God’s redemptive purposes. But if we view it as the means of our salvation and nothing more, we shall overlook many of its functions in the New Testament. In particular… we shall fail to see how the cross stands as the test and the standard of all vital Christian ministry.
- The cross not only establishes what we are to preach, but how we are to preach it.
- It prescribes what Christian leaders must be and how Christians must view Christian leaders.
- It tells us how to serve and draws us onward in discipleship until we understand what it means to be world Christians.
[as Christian leaders] it is utterly imperative that we self-consciously focus on what is central – on the gospel of Jesus Christ. That means we must resolve “to know nothing… except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2), in exactly the same way that Paul made that resolution. This will shape our vision of ministry as much as it will shape our grasp of the centrality of the gospel.
The Crucified life and Spiritual influence
Leadership is about influence, the experts tell us.
Where does spiritual influence come from? Listen to the wise words of the Scottish pastor Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843),
.
Men return again and again to the few who have mastered the spiritual secret, whose life has been hid with Christ in God. These are of the old time religion, hung to the nails of the cross.
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In other words, The depth of our relationship with Christ, and the extent to which the cross is operative in our lives determines the extent of our spiritual influence on others.
I first heard this quote from my Bible School president and teacher, L.E. Maxwell (1895-1984). He was a man of considerable influence in his time. I think McCheyne’s quote was his favorite saying. It has stayed in my memory over the past 35 years and come to mind often.
Maxell probably came across this quote in Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) devotional classic My Utmost for His Highest. This book is still in print (available in over 40 languages) and is read daily by Christians around the world. McCheyne’s quote impacted Chambers, is highlighted in the forward as the reason the book was compiled.
This one quote, written 170 years ago, influenced Chambers, who influenced Maxwell, who influenced me. And by God’s grace, it will pass from me to others. It has been influential because it is true. The cross in our lives makes a difference.
Cross-centered living
Here’s a practical article by Tim Chester with suggestions on how to encourage “cross-centered” living in the community of God’s people that you lead,
Someone recently asked me this question: ‘Do you have any suggestions for practical, tangible first-steps that churches or missional communities can take to implement a cross-centred practice’. Here are some thoughts …
1. Model cross-centred living and make it explicit what you’re modeling
Tell people you are doing something because it is the way of the cross. We were looking at Philippians 3 recently in church and it’s interesting how 3:17 in which Paul invites people to follow his example follows on from 3:10-16 in which Paul talks of wanting to know the power of the resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in Christ’s sufferings, becoming like him in his death. I.e. when Paul tells people to follow his example he also tells them what that the framework that shapes that pattern – resurrection power to follow the weakness of the cross – and striving for this as something not yet fully attained.
2. What’s the loving thing to do in this situation?
In all sorts of decision-making situations or pastoral occasions, ask people, ‘What would it mean for you to follow the way of the cross in this situation?’ ‘What’s the loving thing to do?’ ‘What would it mean for you to serve, sacrifice, deny yourself, submit or suffer in this situation?’
I’ve found the question, ‘What would be the loving thing for you to do?’ a great question to ask because it immediately gets beyond what is just, right and fair, what I deserve and what they deserve. So, for example, someone is wronged by someone. They come to you with their complaint. They want justice. They demand condemnation. Talking about what is right or ethical just circles people back to what they deserve. But ‘what is loving?’ what is gracious?’ ‘how has God treated you?’ breaks beyond this self-centeredness.
3.Extol Christ
Above all exhort people to treasure Christ. Extol Christ to them so that service, sacrifice, self-denial, submission and suffering seem worth it. Matthew 13:44 and Philippians 3:8 are so helpful.
Trusting the Gospel
Last summer a missionary working in the Balkans recommended the following article. I read it, was struck by its message, re-read it and then shared it with my wife. Then I copied it and filed it away.
Yesterday I ran across it and re-read it once more. Again it challenged me. I’m not sure why it resonated with me like this. Perhaps because here in the Balkans, where I live, spiritual transformation in people’s lives usually does not occur quickly. In the hope that the article will encourage and challenge you as it did me, I share it with you:
"You have to trust the Gospel to do what it promises to do… [There are] two mistakes to avoid:
- Making your own agenda the “To do” list for the Holy Spirit. That’s a big leap: from “I want it to happen” to “God wants it to happen.”
. - Turning to other motivations – like guilt, condemnation, guilt, manipulation, guilt … – to get the work done. Really. This is so important and so true.
If the Holy Spirit isn’t going to produce it by constant, earnest presentation of the Gospel to the people of God, then does it need to happen? And if the Holy Spirit isn’t the primary motivator, how can other motivations – like guilt and condemnation- actually do anything worthwhile?
I love Paul’s advice in Ephesians 6. Take up the whole armor of God…and having done all, just stand there. That’s so good. Put on God’s resources, God’s vision, God’s heart. Do all that the Gospel commands and demands. Then … stand.
We take this and do something like this: We use some of God’s resources, and things don’t go the way we want. So we start doing things our way, and finding what does work. Or we just get frustrated and start beating ourselves and other people up with guilt and condemnation for what’s not happening. They we are upset at people, ourselves and God because nothing’s working.
Scripture has a better way. Stay with the Gospel. Speak the truth in love. Design a path of radical loyalty to Christ, specific repentance and clear obedience. Does those things and do them God’s way.
Then stand.
I believe that part of the method of Paul in I Thessalonians was to do his ministry God’s way and to then look for the resulting work of the Holy Spirit and to ENCOURAGE GOD’S PEOPLE with what he saw the Spirit doing. Even when Paul is strongly correcting the church, he does so from the standpoint of the grace of God in the Gospel, never by resorting to guilt.
That’s very different from setting the agenda, living in frustration that things aren’t working, then resorting to beating up yourself and other Christians in hopes something will change.
Life is too short, folks. Grace is the good stuff. Stay with it. Don’t quit and take the road back to legalism as so many do. Preach yourself happy in God, then encourage, persuade and exhort God’s people in the grace of Jesus."
Here’s the original link.
C. Preaching and the Cross
This week I surveyed the New Testament verses where the three primary Greek words translated “preach” or “proclaim” occur. I looked for the object of the verbs, i.e. what was preached. It was a vivid reminder for me of the centrality of Christ and the gospel in the New Testament.
What I had just studied was further reinforced for me when I ran across these comments in my daily RSS reading later the same day (from Pastor DeYoung),
"After wrestling with the nature of preaching for 25 years, T. David Gordon (Why Johnny Can’t Preach) has concluded that the content of Christian preaching should be the person, character, and work of Christ.
Kind of makes sense. Of course, preaching will included moral exhortation, but it is never appropriate, says Gordon, “for one word of moral counsel ever to proceed from a Christian pulpit that is not clearly, in its context, redemptive. That is, even when the faithful exposition of particular texts require some explanation of aspects of our behavior, it is always to be done in a manner that the hearer perceives such commended behavior to be itself a matter of being rescued from the power of sin through the grace of Christ” (70-71).
So much for all our “relevant” messages helping us live more fulfilled lives. So much for emergent kingdom rhetoric that fails to mention the mercy of the King. So much for more than a few of my sermons over the years.
Gordon sees four alternatives to this type of gospel preaching:
* Moralism
* How-To
* Introspection
* Social Gospel / Culture War
That is, instead of preaching Christ crucified and the grace of God, we end up preaching “be better” or “here are three steps to being better” or “are you really a Christian?” or “we need to do more to fight the bad guys out there.”
It’s not that we can’t do any of this as preachers — Gordon says there is a place for three of the four (everything but the how-to) — but “the pulpit is almost never the place to do this” (91).
What must predominate in our preaching is the person, character, and work of Christ. And everything else should manifestly flow from these things.
Don’t leave the congregation wondering where grace come in to play. Don’t make them assume you are rooting this application in the person and work of Christ. Connect the glorious dots for them."
Here’s the original posting.
Preaching Christ . . .
Sinclair Fergson highlights an important truth for those who serve God:
“We do not preach “the atonement” as such, or “salvation,” “redemption,” or “justification” as such, but Jesus Christ and him crucified. These blessings were accomplished by Christ and are available only in Christ, never abstracted from him.
“We must learn to avoid the contemporary plague of preaching the benefits of the gospel without proclaiming Christ himself as the Benefactor in the gospel.
“We do not offer people abstract blessings (peace, forgiveness, new life) as commodities. Rather we preach and offer Christ crucified and risen, in whom the blessings become ours and not otherwise. We preach the person in the work, never the work and its blessings apart from the Saviour himself.”
– “Preaching the Atonement” in The Glory of the Atonement (Hill & James, eds), p. 437
The Preacher of the Cross
In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul described his determination to avoid the “lofty speech and wisdom” so popular in the Corinth of his day.
In the book The Cross and Christian Ministry, D.A. Carson comments,
Such oratory made Paul nervous. It affords far too many temptations to pride to be safe for anyone interesting in preaching the gospel of the crucified Messiah. So Paul made a choice. He “resolved” to adopt a more restrictive course, even though he was cutting across the stream of cultural expectations. When the pressure to ‘contextualize’ the gospel jeopardizes the message of the cross… the cultural pressures must be ignored (pg 34).
In this book, Carson, in a wonderful section on “The Preacher of the Cross” (2:1-5) draws four conclusions that are worth pondering:
1. Proclaim the testimony about God
“There is nothing wrong with sharing. But something important is lost if we never speak or think of preaching and proclamation… if we focus on the powerful proclamation of the gospel, we shall be less likely to be seduced by siren calls to soften the sheer non-negotiability inhered in preaching.”
2. Focus on Christ crucified
“What he means is that all he does and teaches is tied to the cross. He cannot long talk about Christian joy, or Christian ethics, or Christian fellowship, or the Christian doctrine of God, or anything else, without finally tying it to the cross. Paul is gospel-centered; he is cross centered.”
3. Do not fear weakness, illness, or a sense of being overwhelmed
“Such experiences are often the occasions when God most greatly displays his power. As long as people are impressed by your powerful personality and impressive gifts, there is very little room for you to impress them with a crucified Savior.”
4. Strenuously avoid manipulating people
“[Paul] avoids persuasion that is manipulative… It is the truth and power of the gospel that must change people’s lives… Deal straightforwardly with the gospel.”
5. Recognize that a cross-centered ministry is characterized by the Spirit’s power and is vindicated in transformed lives
“That is what we need: unction, the anointing of the Spirit, the demonstration of the Spirit’s power. Where that power is present, people cannot help but know it, and the faith of those who turn to Christ is safely anchored in God himself.”
D. Sanctification and the Cross
The Gospel and Christian living
I’m trying to better understand the relationship between the Gospel and Christian living. The following comments by Don Carson on 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 helpfully clarify the link between the two,
"[Notice] how Paul’s exhortation about giving and money is tied to the Gospel. In chapter 8 Paul invokes the example of Christ’s self-giving:
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (8:9). [Then] in chapter 9 Paul says that, if the Corinthians come through with their promised gift, people “will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity” (9:13, italics added).
In any case Paul never lets Christians forget that all our giving is but a pale reflection of God’s “indescribable gift” (9:15), which of course lies at the heart of the Gospel.
So much of basic Christian ethics is tied in one way or another to the Gospel. When husbands need instruction on how to treat their wives, Paul does not introduce special marriage therapy or appeal to a mystical experience. Rather, he grounds conduct in the Gospel: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25)…
We must avoid the view that, while the Gospel provides a sort of escape ticket from judgment and hell, all the real life-transforming power comes from something else—an esoteric doctrine, a mystical experience, a therapeutic technique, a discipleship course. That is too narrow a view of the Gospel. Worse, it ends up relativizing and marginalizing the Gospel, stripping it of its power while it directs the attention of people away from the Gospel and toward something less helpful (D. A. Carson, For the Love of God : A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word. Volume 2 (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1998). 25.) (post)
Sanctification and the cross
I read a challenging article on Sanctification (the term means the process by which God changes us to make us holy, or more like Christ).
The author described a problem we face as believers – the problem of “time.” At first, when we become followers of Christ, especially if our life has been ungodly, we have a pretty accurate view of ourselves and our sin. We don’t “look down on other people” because we’re so aware of our sin and how God, in grace, has rescued us. We find it natural to look up to Jesus and focus on him.
Then, the article went on to say, something happens – time. The memory of our sin fades, and with it the memory of the cross. We sing about it, but it loses its centrality in our daily lives. We become more “mature” believers and our “knowledge” of Christian things increases, but we stop looking up at Jesus and the cross, and start looking “down” at other people and their failures. When this happens, the article concluded,
Real sanctification ceases. This doesn’t mean that we stop being moral or that we quit gaining in theological knowledge. What it means is that we begin to equate our morality and our theological knowledge with sanctification.
Instead of becoming like Jesus, we become proud. I think the author hit the nail on the head. The article ended with a challenge to contemplate God’s holiness. It is there we see again our own sinfulness and wickedness. And that brings us back to the cross. Thankfully, the author concludes, when our awareness of the greatness of the chasm between us and God increases, “the cross becomes larger,” large enough to fill the chasm and provides us not only a place of justification, but also place of sanctification and glorification. “The key to our sanctification is the gospel. If we are going to become more like Jesus, we will do so at the foot of the cross as grace flows down.”
Thanks be to God for the cross.
The cross and our goals
Looking back over my journal from a year ago, I was challenged afresh my entry from January 2008:
“Looking back over the past year and reflecting on what God has taught us caused me to give thanks for God’s care and faithfulness. Then I looked ahead, trying to set goals and make new resolutions. Moses, the man of God, put it this way: “So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).
This past year has been a challenging one for me personally. The most important lesson I learned is the need to make Jesus the center of my life and ministry. Last month I memorized John 15. In that section, Jesus himself says, “Abide in me… for apart from me you can do nothing.”
My New Year’s resolution is to be more centered on the Cross of Christ – personally, and in my teaching and ministry. This week I listened to a helpful lecture giving practical suggestions on just how to do that:
- Memorize sections of Scripture that focus on the cross
- Reading and re-reading the Gospels
- In-depth exegesis of Biblical books like Romans
- Reading a new book on the Cross yearly
- Studying the holiness of God, the doctrine of sin, and the relationship between the Old Testament and the Cross
- Singing a hymn at the start of each day (during one’s personal Quiet Time with God) about the Cross
- Listen regularly to sermons that are Cross-centered and
- Regularly review the story of your own conversion and the grace you have received from Christ (Paul refers to his testimony in his last book – 2 Timothy, some 30 years after his conversion!)
My goal during 2008 is, by God’s grace, to practice more of these disciplines than I am doing now.
Although it’s now a year later, this goal still challenges me.
I found this to be a helpful article on legalism,
"No one leading God’s people wants to be accused of “legalism.” But what is it and what does it mean? I found the article that follows by Tony Reinke helpful in better understanding just what legalism is.
Rules and Scripture
Almost 900 passages in the Bible contain the phrase “do not” … There are a lot of rules in the Bible… If you apply the entire Bible to the Christian life, you can end up with a long list of helpful rules and reminders (i.e. the “one anothers”)… The fundamental danger of legalism is not living or not living by rules… Legalism points to a much deeper heart issue.
A false gospel
At its most dangerous level, legalism is a soteriological problem. That is, legalism is a false gospel and a false hope. Legalism is the lie that says God’s pleasure and joy in me is dependent upon my performance rather than the finished work of Christ.
It is legalism that causes the Pharisee to look proudly into the sky in the presence of a tax collector. It is legalism that causes a poor missionary in Africa to think God is more pleased with him than an American Christian businessman driving a Mercedes. It is legalism that causes the preacher behind the pulpit to think God is more pleased with him than the tatooed Christian teenager sitting in the back row.
Legalism causes the heart to forget that God sings over us because of the work He has done, not because of what we have done (Zeph. 3:15-17). Believers equally bring pleasure to God because the pleasure He receives in us is the purchased pleasure of the substitution of Jesus Christ. Any imagined superiority to other Christians (not rules or a lack of rules) is the sure sign of the legalist. (post)
Rules are not the problem
And whether our convictions are biblical or unbiblical is another issue altogether. Legalism is not so much objective (are my convictions biblical or not?) but subjective (what do my convictions get me?). And this is what makes legalism dangerous whether your convictions are biblically accurate or not. From what I hear, often what is labeled as legalistic too often focuses primarily upon rules or a lack thereof rather than the gospel.
As I’ve seen in my own heart, what sustains self-righteous legalism is a failure to boast only in the righteousness of the Cross of Christ. Once I take my eyes off the Cross I begin boasting in my list of rules or boasting in my lack of rules. Either way, I know I have fallen into legalism."
Good Friday and the cross
When we think about what Jesus did for us on the cross, the following exhortation from John Piper seems especially appropriate.
He challenges us to “never let the gospel get small.” We do this by seeking “to see and feel the gospel as bigger as years go by rather than smaller.
"Our temptation is to think that the gospel is for beginners and then we go on to greater things. But the real challenge is to see the gospel as the greatest thing—and getting greater all the time.”
The Gospel gets bigger when, in your heart,
- grace gets bigger;
- Christ gets greater;
- his death gets more wonderful;
- his resurrection gets more astonishing;
- the work of the Spirit gets mightier;
- the power of the gospel gets more pervasive;
- its global extent gets wider;
- your own sin gets uglier;
- the devil gets more evil;
- the gospel’s roots in eternity go deeper;
- its connections with everything in the Bible and in the world get stronger;
- and the magnitude of its celebration in eternity gets louder.
So keep this in mind: Never let the gospel get smaller in your heart.
Pray that it won’t. Read solid books on it. Sing about it. Tell someone about it who is ignorant or unsure about it." Here’s the original link.
Note to self…
Do you write notes to yourself about things that strike you and you want to remember?
Here’s one a Pastor (Joe Thorn) wrote to himself and then posted on his blog. Take a look – it’s short and right to the point.
Note to Self: Big Jesus
Take note – your view of Jesus
tends to shrink over time.
Then he goes on to explain,
It’s not that your theology itself drifts, but that sometimes you so focus on one aspect of Jesus that you tend to forget the rest. The result is a shrinking Jesus (in your faith).
And as your shrinking Jesus becomes small Jesus he is easily eclipsed by idols. This is why you sometimes lack passion and earnestness for the kingdom and the glory of God… A small Jesus does not inspire awe, command respect, lead to worship, nor compel us to talk of him (much less suffer for him). And small Jesus is too little to arrest the attention of the world.
So, please remember – Jesus is bigger than you tend to think. He is the perfect revelation of God, the radiance of his glory, the exact imprint of his nature; he is the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists. Everything belongs to him and exists for him. He is the author of your salvation, the perfecter of your faith, and the only one in whom you can find life. (Original link)
