The Gospel Archives - Page 5 of 8

Bedrock Discipleship VI: Identity in Christ

Joe Harby on April 20, 2014

Introduction

Today is Resurrection Sunday, our annual commemoration of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead. We mark this annually, but it is important for us to remember that we also mark it weekly—every Lord’s Day is a celebration of the resurrection. But what exactly are we celebrating when we do this?

The Text

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:3–11).

Summary of the Text

When we were baptized, we were baptized into the death of Jesus (v. 3). Note that—our baptism, His death. When we were baptized, this was not just into His crucifixion, but also into His burial (v. 4). The reason God identified us with His death and burial was so that He could also identify us with His resurrection, enabling us to walk in newness of life (v. 4). For if we are identified with (symphytos, the word rendered as planted) His death, we must also be identified with His resurrection (v. 5). Our old man was crucified with Him (v. 6), and death liberates us from the death of sin (v. 7). And death with Christ goes together with life in Christ (v. 8). Christ rose from the dead forever, and it is that everlasting life that we have been identified with (v. 9). Death is once for all, but life is forever (v. 10). Therefore, reckon yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God through Christ Jesus our Lord (v. 11). What does this newness of life taste like? It tastes like the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, and all the rest.This is the true liberation of Easter.

The Structure of the Exhortation

This is a typically Pauline manner of argumentation. He says that xyz is true of you, therefore you must consider or reckon xyz to be true of you. He says that this is what your baptism means and declares, and so therefore this is what you must mean and declare in your manner of living. This is what your baptism says . . . now you say it too.

Two Kinds of Substitutes

We are accustomed to think of Christ’s death as a substitutionary death, and so we should. He did die as our substitute, and this whole argument in Romans 6 depends on that assumption. But we have to be careful, because there are two kinds of substitution, and the death of Jesus was not like one of them.

When a substitute goes in during a basketball game, another player goes out. The substitute replaces the other player. This is not what Jesus did for us. The second kind of substitute is a representative substitute. When we elect someone to go to Congress, he goes there as our representative substitute. When he votes, I vote. When he stands true, I stand true. When he takes bribes, I take them. When he fails, I fail. Part of the reason things back in D.C. are as much of a mess as they are is that the American people have lost this sort of covenantal understanding. But the federal government comes from the Latin word foedus, which means covenant. It can also mean stinky or loathsome, but that is another topic for another time.

Adam was the representative kind of federal substitute, and Jesus, as the last Adam, was also this kind of substitute. When Adam disobeyed at a tree, so did I. When Jesus obeyed on a tree, so did I. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). This is the offer of the gospel —Christ for you.

So then, Jesus did not die so that I might live. He died so that I might die, and He lives so that I might live.

An Identified History

In Scripture, union with Christ is not understood as a mystical connection to a cosmic force. Rather, Christ was our covenantal representative and substitute, and whatever He went through, we went through also. When we are baptized, that baptism declares that we have been joined with Christ in His biography—we are joined to Him in the events of His life. This did not kick in five minutes before the crucifixion started. He was our substitute when He was being flogged (Is. 53:5; 1 Pet. 2:24). He was our substitute when He was being insulted (Ps. 69:9; Matt. 11:18). He was our substitute when He was baptized, identifying as the true Israel right before His 40 days (years) in the wilderness. This is why He received a baptism of repentance (Mark 1:8). Theologians call this the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, but that is simply a technical phrase that expresses a glorious truth—which is that you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s (1 Cor. 3:23).

Conclusion

Death is an event. Life is a process. When it is the death of Jesus, it is a once-for-all event. When it is the life of Jesus, it is everlasting life, eternal life, ultimate cascading life.

This is your identity in Christ. The obedience of Christ is all yours. God offers it freely, and it is received by faith alone. The obedience of Christ is as much yours as the sinful disobedience of Adam was also yours, on the same principles. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that the federal unrighteousness is yours as a birthright, but that the imputed righteousness of Jesus is somehow a “legal fiction.” It is nothing of the kind. It defines who you now are.

Gospel Presence VI: Gospel, Church, World

Joe Harby on May 5, 2013

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Introduction

Our goal in this life, and our goal as a congregation, ought to be three-fold—we should want to get the gospel straight, we should want to get the church right, and we should want to get the world restored. Let’s walk through it in that order.

The Text

“But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:22-29).

Summary of the Text

As believers, we have not come to an earthly mountain, but rather to a heavenly one (v. 22). We have not only come to God, but also to all the saints, to all our fellow believers (v. 23). We have come to Jesus, and to the blood of sprinkling (v. 24). This is blood that speaks from Heaven, and we must not turn a deaf ear (v. 25). The voice we must not refuse is a voice that shakes Heaven, as well as earth (v. 26). God shakes everything down in order that the permanent things may remain (v. 27). This kingdom that we are receiving is one of those permanent things, and this is why our worship of God must be reverent and true (v. 28), for God is a consuming fire (v. 29).

Gospel: Blood That Speaks

The gospel, the good news, is objective and outside us. Our response to the gospel (repenting, believing, etc.) is not the gospel. It is the response to the gospel. The gospel was true and established before anyone here was born. The gospel is this message—Jesus Christ suffered, bled and died on the cross for the sins of His people. He was buried in the tomb, and on the third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, where He is seated in power and glory. From that high place, He intercedes with the Father for you. Jesus prays for you, and He pleads His case with the blood that speaks. That is gospel.

The gospel has two sides. The first is the person of Jesus, who He was. The second is the work of Jesus, what He did. He is the incarnate Deity, the second Person of the Trinity, one who became a man for our sake. He was fully God, and fully man, and He then went to the cross to die, be buried, and to rise. This is the gospel, this is the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Church: With Reverence and Fear

This gospel message is proclaimed in various ways. It is proclaimed (obviously) when an evangelist goes out and preaches this message to those who have not heard it, or who have not yet accepted it. He preaches it, and this is one of the central ways this message is declared. But there are others—and worshiping communities is another central one. We practice weekly communion in our worship, and what does the apostle say? He says that every time we eat the bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death. We do this until He comes again.

Now there is a point that must be emphasized particularly in our day. In our text it says that we must serve God (worship, latreuo) with reverence and godly fear. God teaches us what our demeanor in our church worship services must be like. It must not be breezy, casual, informal, or begun with an introit on the kazoo. That’s not a call to worship the Ancient of Days.

World: That Cannot be Moved

Human history is the result of God’s great process of shaking both Heaven and earth. He shakes us down in order to test and prove us. He wants the world to stand—He wants the kingdom He is giving us to remain. But the way He does this is by removing all the dross through fire (our God is a consuming fire, is He not?) and by establishing the silver He purifies so that it might remain.

The world is a great construction site, and there are scraps all over, and scaffolding that will be hauled away. At the center of it is a great city, a great kingdom. That kingdom is not synonymous with the world now, but at the end of the process the two will be synonyms. The kingdom will be the world, and the world will be the kingdom.

Do not lament for that which perishes. Nothing that God wants to have remain will ever falter. Nothing that God wants to have removed will be found worthy at the last. God’s methods of world transformation are not . . . tender. But they are good.

Conclusion

And so here is our conclusion. Hear the gospel, believe it, eat it, drink it, and proclaim it. Jesus is crucified and risen. Having received this gospel by faith, worship the God of Heaven in terms of it. Worship Him with reverence and godly fear. Worship Him as the Almighty Maker of Heaven and earth, and not as your skybuddy. And last, do this with the understanding that true gospel worship is a cosmos shaker, a battering ram, an earth-mover.

Gospel Presence V: Taste and See

Joe Harby on April 28, 2013

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Introduction

We worship God the Father through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. But in order for this to work, He cannot be a distant Christ. Remember that in Christ God came near, God became our neighbor. We worship God through a close Christ, a near Christ, an indwelling Christ. The point of the message today—taste and see— requires that we serve God through an experienced Christ.

The Text

“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O taste and see that the Lord is good: Blessed is the man that trusteth in him” (Ps. 34:7-8).

Summary of the Text

A wonderful theme of this psalm is that God is the great Deliverer. God is the one who saves those who have faith in Him, and whose lives are living indications of that faith. That theme is very much present in the two verses that constitute our text. The angel of the Lord places the one who fears God in the midst of the camp, and entirely surrounds him. He delivers him (v. 7). This is a glorious promise, and anybody is invited to come in order to participate in it. The invitation is to taste and see (v. 8). What do we taste? The goodness of the Lord. We taste the blessedness of trusting in Him.

Notice also the parallel between fearing Him and tasting His goodness. And notice too that being delivered is the blessing that results from trusting Him. Tasting is fearing and blessedness is being delivered.

An Experienced Christ

We identify ourselves as evangelicals, but by this we mean historic evangelicals, or confessional evangelicals. This is to be distinguished from that pop evangelicalism that has commodified the whole thing in order to be able to print it on a T-shirt, available at a Jesus junk store near you. Jesus Himself said that the experience (which is absolutely necessary) is not an experience that we can successfully manipulate. We cannot bottle the wind of the Spirit. We cannot manufacture this because we are talking about the sovereign motions of the sovereign God.

At the same time, we insist that a man must be born again if he is to see the kingdom of God. As I have taught before, you don’t have to know what instant the sun rose in order to know that it is up. And neither may be conclude from the fact that we know that it is up that we have the authority to command it to rise.

God is Good

We serve the God who invites. We serve the God who summons, and who goes out of His way to summon. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, And he that hath no money; Come ye, buy, and eat; Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labour for that which satisfieth not?” (Is. 55:1-2).

Apart from Christ, we feed on little bits of refuse. We bake bread made out of sawdust. We mix our drinks with used dishwater, and we sneer at those pitiful believers who do not know what it means to live the good life. We turn everything into gruel. We clutch at driveway pebbles, calling them diamonds. We collect wisps of straw to make an arrangement for the middle of the table. When God pronounces a woe on those who call evil good and good evil (Is. 5:20), more is involved than simply a mistake in ethics. It all comes down to what you have to eat, what you have to chew, and what you must swallow. And if you consume the meager pickings of self, you are in dietary training for the outer darkness.

Consistency and Variation

God is not locked into the same kind of tight strictures that we are. A vineyard in France, and one in California, and another in Louisiana, can all produce a bottle of Cabernet, and this is completely different than the effect you get when it is a diet soda bottling plant in all those same locations. But no one remarks on the terroir of the Diet Dr. Pepper. No one stands at the drink dispenser, swirling the plastic cup under his nose.

It is the same with the fruit of the Spirit—fantastic variation and remarkable consistency. Legalists want the experienced Christ to taste like it all came from one bottling plant. Antinomians want to pretend that there is no difference between a fine wine and stump water. Never forget that the triune God, who is growing us all up, is holy. And never forget that the triune God, who is growing us all up into a splendid array—of different kinds of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control—is not a ball-bearing manufacturer.

A White Stone

A commonplace in Christian circles is the phrase “a personal relationship” with Jesus. However clichéd it may have become, there is an important reality there that we must preserve. We preserve it because it is precious.

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (Rev. 2:17).

God the Father, through the Lord Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, has a relationship with you that only He and you know. This is for the one who overcomes, and what is it that overcomes? Is it not our faith? The one who tastes, the one who sees—which can only be done by faith—is the one who knows the goodness of God as it has been evidenced in their relationship. Just the two.

Now this does not eliminate the need for the body of Christ. Every cell, every member, being alive is the prerequisite for living participation in the living body. You want to be a living finger, not a dead fingernail. Don’t be covenantal keratin.

Gospel Presence II: Gospel Center, Gospel Edges

Joe Harby on April 7, 2013

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Introduction

The gospel message provides a hard center for our lives, but we must make sure that we do not understand this as an isolated hard center. We want the gospel to be a taproot to the entire tree, and not an isolated boulder in a field of scattered boulders. The litmus test is whether you can find yourself moving from a conversation about anything to the gospel without changing the subject.

The Text

“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:1-8).

Summary of the Text

The gospel is something which can be declared, preached, and (clearly) summarized (v. 1). It is also something which can be received, and the person who receives it can take a stand in it (v. 1). This message is capable of saving those who remember it, not counting those who believed it in vanity (v. 2). Paul delivered to them what he himself had received, which is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures (v. 3). He was buried and raised to life, also in accordance with the Scripture (v. 4). This resurrection was witnessed—first by Peter, and then the twelve (v. 5). After that were 500 people, most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote this (v. 6), then James and all the apostles (v. 7). Finally He was seen by Paul (v. 8).

The Taproot

The Scriptures use the word gospel to describe this center. But it is a center that is connected to absolutely everything else. We can see this in other, broader uses of the word gospel. For example the four gospels are called gospels (e.g. The Gospel According to Matthew), and while they contain the facts that Paul points to in our text, they also contain much more. For example, the fact that Jesus went to Capernaum is part of the gospel (Matt. 8:5). Or take the fact that God preached the gospel to Abraham by telling him that through him all the nations would be blessed (Gal. 3:8). Or again, then author of Hebrews says that the law of Moses, given to the Israelites, was gospel (Heb. 4:2). Jesus arrived in Israel, preaching the gospel, but He clearly was not presenting the gospel the same way that we would (Matt. 4:23).

No False Choice

So in Scripture, the word gospel is as narrow as the cross, and is as wide as the world. We must be faithful to both uses. Liberals abandon the center—Christ crucified for sinners—and want to put some kind of happy face over the whole world. Sectarian conservatives guard the center fiercely, making sure that it remains disconnected from everything else. Seeing it as connected might bring the gospel into contact with sinful stuff, and we wouldn’t want to get our gospel dirty. But we have forgotten the power of the cross. When Jesus touched lepers, the healing went out . . . the leprosy did not contaminate Him.

A Fatal Error

One of the first steps in disconnecting the gospel from the world is the step of disconnecting “gospel” verses in the Bible from other kinds of verses (as we imagine them). For example, it is a very easy mistake to try to divide the Bible up into law verses and gospel verses, as though God had divided the Bible up, with happy faces next to some verses and frowny faces next to the remainder.

No. To the unregenerate, the whole thing is law. To the regenerate, the whole thing is gospel. What is more “law” than the Ten Commandments, but what does the preamble declare? God is the one who brought them out of the house of bondage (Ex. 20:2). And what is more “gospel” than the message of the cross—and it is the stench of death to those who are perishing (2 Cor. 2:16). The divide runs, not through the Bible, or through the world, but through every human heart.

Reconciling All Things

God’s purposes in the gospel are cosmic. Christ shed His blood on the cross, and why? So that He might reconcile all things to Himself, whether those things are in Heaven or on earth (Col. 1:20). Now that means that everything is related to Him.

But we do not “connect the dots” by reading big, fat books of theology. They are not tied together with abstraction string—they are all coherent because of the blood of Jesus. So we begin this glorious process by being reconciled ourselves, by receiving forgiveness for our wicked works (v. 21). And as we saw just a few verses before this, Christ is the one in whom all things are integrated (Col. 1:18). He is arche—the foundational beginning, the cornerstone, the axle.

He is therefore the center toward whom all the edges run. He is the sovereign Lord over all. He is the bedrock underneath all things. He is the root. He is the Head over all things. We noted a moment ago that everything is related to Him, and related in Him. But take a moment to reflect—what does that include? That includes carpentry, novel writing, weather reporting, roly poly bugs, lawn mowing, cake baking, leaf raking, software writing, star gazing, doctrine parsing, child teaching, and everything else that men might do. And since He is the one in whom all these things tie together, why can we not detect His presence in these things—a gospel presence—and live in the awareness of that presence as we deal with those who do not believe.

Spiritual Disciplines I: Breathe

Joe Harby on March 3, 2013

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Introduction

We are going to be spending this week and the next two on the subject of the spiritual disciplines. I am putting them together as three imperatives—breathe, eat, work. When God put Adam into this world, He gave him the breath of life, He gave him food to eat, and He gave him work to do. This is the pattern we should receive from Him as we seek to order our lives rightly.

The Text

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7).

Summary of the Text

Although we were created and fashioned in the image of God, it remains a fact that we are utterly dependent creatures. The Lord God shaped and fashioned man out of the dust of the ground. When He was done “sculpting,” He had a very fine statue, but still lifeless. God then breathed the breath of life into His work. At that moment Adam became a living soul. And ever since that first breath, if God ever takes His breath away, all creatures, man and animal alike, return necessarily to the dust of the ground (Ps. 104:29-30).

The Meaning of Death

Our physical life is a spiritual reality, but we all recognize that there is more to our spiritual lives than just physical breathing. But we know that non-Christians have souls, for example. What do we have that they do not?

In the Bible, death refers to separation more than it refers to simple cessation. In the Garden, God told Adam that the day they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would die (Gen. 2:17). But what happened when they did? They were exiled from the garden, separated from the communion with God that they had enjoyed before (Gen. 3:24). And when Adam died physically, 70 years shy of a millennium later, what happened was that his soul and his body were then separated (Gen. 5:5). The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), which means that because we are sinners, we are separated from God, estranged from Him (Col. 1:21).

This is why is says in Ephesians that when we were non-Christians we were dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1), in which trespasses we used to walk (Eph. 2:2). That is the biblical picture—dead but walking around. So the death cannot refer to a condition of being like stone, or like nothing. It refers to separation.

And when we are quickened in regeneration, we are made alive spiritually. Now the soul and spirit can be very hard to distinguish (Heb. 4:12), but there is a difference. Someone who is truly regenerate is quickened in the inner man (2 Cor. 4:16). “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses” (Col. 2:13).

The Word for Spirit

The word for spirit in Greek is pneuma. Interestingly, that is also the word for wind, and it is also the word for breath.

“The wind [pneuma] bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit [pneuma]” (John 3:8).

The Lord’s whole point here is designed to make us aware of how utterly sovereign the Holy Spirit is. We cannot whistle Him up. On a windy day, you cannot capture some in a paper bag to take home and show everybody. We cannot manufacture aerosol cans that will spray someone with the breath of life. This is outside of our control.

Gotta Be Alive

The spiritual disciplines all work within an assumed context of life.

But an entire religious industry has sprung up trying to make food attractive to corpses, and trying to get dead bodies to contribute more than they do.

One of the most remarkable things about life is that it incorporates, naturally and readily, the things around it that are conducive to its well-being.

But think for a moment about this. “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Pet. 2:2). Healthy babies are born hungry—you don’t have to teach them to be hungry. Their hunger is a sign of life. They have been given the breath of life. “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42, ESV). There it is again—born hungry.

Impressive Activity, But . . .

People who are separated from God, who are not in fellowship with Him, can do an impressive number of things that have a religious nature. They can give their bodies to be burned, and they can help the poor (1 Cor. 13:3). They can speak with the tongues of men and angels (1 Cor. 13:1). But, despite all of this activity, the whole enterprise amounts to a bunch of nothing.

In fact, climbing the highest mountain and swimming the deepest sea is what the unregenerate (but religious) man wants to do. It is an impulse that makes good sense to him, and doing anything else doesn’t make sense to him. When Naaman came to Elisha to be healed, the simplicity of the assigned task infuriated him. But his servants wisely observed that if he had been told to do some great thing, he would have done it (2 Kings 5:13). And why? Because great deeds flatter us. Receiving grace as beggar supplicants does not flatter us.

Where It Begins

There are no spiritual disciplines for creating life. Only the gospel creates life. Once given, life incorporates nutrients. Life seeks out nutrients. Life bends its entire nature toward that end.

So the first spiritual discipline is checking for a pulse. The first spiritual discipline is making sure you are alive. Breathe.

And to be alive, the God of Heaven must breathe His Holy Spirit into you.