The Superiority of Special Revelation Over Natural Revelation

Thursday Theology (3):

The Superiority of Special Revelation Over Natural Revelation.

Obedience and Revival

Undivided connection between obedience and revival:

If we pray for revival and plead with God to bless, and yet in our lives refuse to submit to His will, we are hypocrites. Before revival comes, perhaps God will either have to remove some of us or break us. Both the outward and the inward look reveal that the will of God is not being done. Because it is not being done in the Christian, there is no blessing in the church. And because there is no blessing in the church, the world is unreached, untouched, going to hell, lost for time and eternity. May He have mercy upon us and help us to see this awful sin in the church of Christ today! We say we care about lost souls; we say we are burdened for the need of men who have never heard the gospel; we say we long to see our cities reached for Christ. Yet all the time in our hearts there is a big capital “I” which has never been broken and is standing in the way.

Alan Redpath, Victorious Praying: Studies in the Lord’s Prayer (Grand Rapids: Revell, 1993), 3.

Thursday Theology (2)

Thursday Theology (2).

Thursday Theology (1)

Thursday Theology (1).

Praise God for Both Justifying Faith and the Justification of Faith

The community of God’s redeemed people need to ponder and praise him for both justifying faith and the justification of faith. According to the Belgic Confession (1561):

Therefore we justly say with Paul, that we are justified by faith alone, or by faith apart from works. However, to speak more clearly, we do not mean that faith itself justifies us, for it is only an instrument with which we embrace Christ our righteousness. But Jesus Christ, imputing to us all His merits, and so many holy works which He has done for us and in our stead, is our righteousness. And faith is an instrument that keeps us in communion with Him in all His benefits, which, when they become ours, are more than sufficient to acquit us of our sins (Article 22b).

Therefore, for any to assert that Christ is not sufficient, but that something more is required besides Him, would be too gross a blasphemy; for hence it would follow that Christ was but half a Savior (Article 22a).

 

Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow by Carl Trueman (Book Review)

 

 

Click here for my review.

Jesus, Our Only Substitute

What is so unique about Jesus’ death?

Is it that he died for someone? If so, I have news for you. The idea that one would die for another is not unique. We all have heard of a soldier or policeman taking a bullet for one of their own.

Is it that he died sacrificially? That can’t be either because we all have heard of parents that have sacrificed their own lives to save their children. So the notion that one would die for another is not unique. I’m afraid that if this is the only way that we would present the gospel, then we missed the crux of Christianity.

When speaking of the gospel, we must point out the uniqueness of Christ’s death, namely the quality of the substitute. We’ve all heard one story of another that tried to relate to the substitutionary death, as illustrated above. But the mistake is that all fall short of the glory of God.

When anyone dies, it is just. It is rightfully deserving (here I’m making the most general biblical and theological statement) – for the wages of sin is death. Besides having some sentimental notions, there is no propitiation (satisfying God’s judicial penalty) when a sinful sinner dies for another sinful sinner. Both would die, still in their sin. Without the perfect sacrifice (without any blemish) that can meet all of God’s holy demands, there is no propitiation, no redemption, and no reconciliation with God. Hence, the biggest question then is, who meets the perfect standard to be our propitiation, for our atonement? Who is qualified to meet all of God’s holy demands by dying as our substitute? And this is where Jesus comes into the scene.

He basically lived thirty-three years or so, to fulfill every law and to display his righteousness, so that after his death, his righteousness then can be imputed to his elect. Moreover, he lived the perfect, righteous, and life without any sin, to testify to all that he was the only one who was qualified to die the death of substitution. And this is the message of an important aspect of the gospel, namely the quality of the substitute.

Hence, without pointing out God’s rightful condemnation on all sinners, the uniqueness of Christ’s death and the quality of the substitute, the death of Christ will create a mere sentimental emotion at best. And we do injustice by reducing the power of the gospel to a mere moral lesson.

For some, the notion of substitutionary death is morally wrong. To explain many misconceptions, in his book The Cross, Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes:

To them, the idea that one man should be punished for other people’s sin is immoral. The whole notion is quite unthinkable. A man bears his own punishment. This idea that somebody else comes along who is absolutely innocent, and that you put your guilt on him and that he then bears the punishment – the thing is quite immoral. They say they cannot believe in a God who does a thing like that, a God who can punish his own Son, cause his death, in order to forgive others. It is not justice. They say that it violates their sense of justice and of morality. Have you not heard that? Perhaps you have thought it? If you have, the cross is an offence, because the essence of this doctrine is subsitution. It teaches that Chrst is the Lamb of God ‘that taketh away the sins of the world’; that our sins are transferred to him, are imputed to him, and put upon him; and that it is ‘by his stripes we are healed’. It teaches that God has smitten him. God has ‘laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (Is 53:6). And to the modern man, the natural human thinker, this is an offence, immoral, unjust, and unrighteous. So he hates it and he rejects it ([Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1986], 48).

I would like to echo the following prayer of a Puritan:

O MY SAVIOR,

I thank thee from the depths of my being, for thy wondrous grace and love, in bearing my sin in thine own body on the tree.

May thy cross be to me as the tree that sweetens my bitter Marahs, as the rod that blossoms with life and beauty, as the brazen serpent that calls forth the look of faith.

By thy cross crucify my every sin;

Use it to increase my intimacy with thyself;

Make it the ground of all my comfort, the liveliness of all my duties, the sum of all thy gospel promises, the comfort of all my afflictions, the vigour of my love, thankfulness, graces, the very essence of my religion;

And by it give me that rest without rest, the rest of ceaseless praise.

(From “The Grace of the Cross” in The Valley of Vision [Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 1994], 171).

Amen.