Home » the gospel

Tag: the gospel

The Gospel: There was the Cup. Hell was in It

There was a giant cup of God’s wrath with enough in it for all his people. And Christ drank it all. There’s not a drop left.

There was a gun with enough ammunition to take out all of us. He took every bullet. There’s not one left. The clip is empty.

There was a whip with enough throngs to touch us all. He took the whip until it wore out and broke. It disintegrated against his back.

There was the cup; hell was in it; the Savior drank it—not a sip, and then a pause; not a draught, and then a ceasing; but He drained it till there is not a dreg left for any of His people! The great ten-thronged whip of the law was worn out upon His back; there is no lash left with which to smite one for whom Jesus died! The great bombardment of God’s justice has exhausted all its ammunition; there is nothing left to be hurled against a child of God!

-from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon, It is Finished

 

A Rationale for Their Misery

Formerly, if men were miserable, they went to church so as to find a rationale for their misery; they did not expect to be happy — this idea is Greek, not Christian or Jewish.

– Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, p. 38

I heard this quote paraphrased by Carl Trueman in an interview recently. It resonated. Why? Because of my own testimony of how Christ called me to himself. It’s good to remind yourself of the mighty works of God in your life. So indulge me.

I wasn’t raised in a Christian home. My parents were divorced in my early teens. My dad and I were basically two bachelors trying to figure it out. I wasn’t ready for college life at 18. I failed big-time. And it was my own fault.

After a year of partying, skipping class, and getting put on academic probation, I came home with my tail tucked between the limbs I walk on. But, in God’s providence, I came home to find that my grandmother was ill. I came home in May. She died the following October. She asked me to come to her house and visit as often as I could that summer. She knew she wasn’t going to be around much longer.

I never heard my grandmother talk about Jesus. But I knew she went to church. I knew she read the Bible. She told me at some point that summer that she read the Bible through each year. She had a Bible reading plan. She was weak. Would I please read to her? So I did. Several times. It got my attention.

I didn’t know anything about the Bible. But now I wanted to read it for myself. So I started reading it on my own. What else could I do but begin at the beginning?

Again, I knew nothing about the Bible. But I remembered that when I was a child, my family took a trip to Natural Bridge, Virginia. While we were there, we went to their ‘creation’ show. They still do this. You can find it on YouTube. It involved a man and a woman playing the parts of Adam and Eve, with someone reading Genesis 1-3 over the public address system.

I remembered that, hearing those early chapters of Genesis, I asked my dad, “Why didn’t they know they were naked?” He didn’t know how to answer the question. He just shrugged and it was never spoken of again. [Note for parents: no how to explain sin to your child].

Fast-forward to something like twelve years later. I’m reading Genesis 3: “their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”

It was like sticking a paper clip into an outlet. Electricity. I understood it instantly. The Bible was talking about shame. For the first time, Adam and Eve experienced shame. And reading that, it was the first time I truly experienced shame. It gave a name to all that I had been feeling but couldn’t put into words or apply to my heart. It changed me on the spot. I was in church the next Sunday.

I had a lot of baggage from my parents’ divorce that I didn’t know how to deal with. I had a lot of pain from some things that happened in high school. And I was partying my way through those things. I was numbing myself. I was acting like an idiot. Only I didn’t know this. Reading that Adam and Eve realized that they were naked and hid themselves from God made me realize that I was naked and hiding myself too. I was looking for a covering for my shame.

Genesis 3 gave me a rationale for my misery. It cut open my chest and exposed the guilt and shame of my heart. Did joy come from this? Yes. Because it led me to Christ, who is my joy. But I needed my miserable condition explained to me. I needed to understand why I did the terrible things I did (and do). I needed to understand how sin, guilt, and shame were abiding in my soul and how to confront them. I needed to know that I was naked before Christ could clothe me with his righteousness.

People who downplay the necessity of talking about sin see it as something negative; something that will get people down and depress people. On that day in the summer of 2000, I saw it as the explanation for all that was going on in my miserable soul. It made sense of everything – my feelings, my actions, my confusion, my mistakes. It was a supreme act of God’s blessing that he showed me my guilt. It was a positive thing that God showed me my sin, guilt, and shame. It wasn’t a downer. It wasn’t depressing. It was the thing that made sense of my whole life.

I am a pastor now, but I still go to church each week seeking a rationale for my misery. I need God to remind me week by week that I am deeply sinful. And then I need him to show me what Christ has done as the ultimate remedy. Then I need him to show me how I am still continually rebelling against the lordship of the one who saved me. And I need to be reminded that indwelling sin is the cause of that rebellion. Then I need to be reminded of Christ’s cross once again.

And it’s only through this – the rationale of my misery – that I am driven back again and again to the rationale for my joy – the love of Jesus Christ. Skip the rationale for misery and you have no rationale for joy.

Infinite Inherent Merit

Charles Hodge describes the “orthodox [Protestant] view” of the atonement:

According to this doctrine the work of Christ is a real satisfaction, of infinite inherent merit, to the vindicatory justice of God; so that He saves his people by doing for them, and in their stead, what they were unable to do for themselves, satisfying the demands of the law in their behalf, and bearing its penalty in their stead; whereby they are reconciled to God, receive the Holy Ghost, and are made partakers of the life of Christ to their personal sanctification and eternal salvation.

–Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 563-564

I am trying to make a habit of posting some straightforward theology on Fridays. This is a great summary of the gospel.

Naked, Beardless, and Full of Shame

  • Now after this Nahash the king of the Ammonites died, and his son reigned in his place. 2 And David said, “I will deal kindly with Hanun the son of Nahash, for his father dealt kindly with me.” So David sent messengers to console him concerning his father. And David’s servants came to the land of the Ammonites to Hanun to console him. 3 But the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanun, “Do you think, because David has sent comforters to you, that he is honoring your father? Have not his servants come to you to search and to overthrow and to spy out the land?” 4 So Hanun took David’s servants and shaved them and cut off their garments in the middle, at their hips, and sent them away; 5 and they departed. When David was told concerning the men, he sent messengers to meet them, for the men were greatly ashamed. And the king said, “Remain at Jericho until your beards have grown and then return” (1 Chron. 19:1-5)

King Hanun of the Ammonites sent a humiliating shot at King David by disgracing his men. He cut their tunics in half and shaved their beards. They were sent home naked and beardless. The idea illustrated for us so vividly here is that of nakedness and shame.

What do you know of shame? What do you know of humiliation? What do you know of disgrace? What do you know of being exposed? How do you deal with such shame and humiliation and nakedness? These men waited it out in Jericho. Maybe you wait it out in your house.

We deal with our shame in all sorts of ways. We try to remove it by catharsis. My psychology of abnormal behavior textbook says that the majority of men who become child molesters and domestic abusers were once abused themselves. They remove their shame by inflicting shame on others. If they can shame others, then theirs doesn’t seem quite as profound. If everyone has shame, then no one has shame. That’s the idea.

Different folks, who aren’t quite so heinous, go watch a nice romping horror movie. The blood flows, the bodies hit the floor, and they walk out of the movie theater without a scratch. Catharsis accomplished.

Others pile shame on shame so that the first shame doesn’t look so big. Call it the Miley complex. If you can take control of shameful acts and call them publicity, then what is there really to be ashamed of. Just make it a point that your next move will be your worst. People will forget about the past and just wonder what’s coming next.

Others just put lipstick on the pig that is their life. If you can make a nice living, live in a nice home, wear nice clothes, send your kids to nice schools. If you can perhaps do a few things right, then those bad things won’t seem so bad in comparison. But it actually just makes them stand out all the more. We all end up naked at the end of the day. Even if we hide in the dark.

That old saint Job said we’re born naked and we leave the world naked. Speaking of being born naked…

Hundreds of years after the incident of David’s messengers and the King of the Ammonites, a child was born in Bethlehem. God Almighty decided to reveal himself that day – as a naked baby. He was born, like all babies, naked and beardless. But he grew, and so did his beard. Until one day someone decided to pluck it out:

  • I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting (Isaiah 50:6).

He had no shame. He was sinless. He had nothing to hide. But shame was heaped up on him from the outside, and he chose not to hide from it. He exposed himself to the scoffing, to the spitting, to the beard-plucking.

  • Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood.

When Jesus Christ went to the cross, two soldiers played a card game to decide who would get his garment. They weren’t going to cut in half like the Ammonites of old. They were going to take the whole thing. And so, he hung on that cross naked.

  • Sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior.

What do you do with shame? Take it down that road from Bethlehem to Calvary. And ultimately to the empty tomb. Only there will you ever find real catharsis – by atonement. He died that shameful death that our shame might be dealt with.

Shame is real. I feel it. You feel it. God felt it on Calvary. He took, he takes, our shame so seriously that the cross happened. And you think he doesn’t care? Take it to him, lay it on him, it’s already been laid on him. He takes shamed and exposed men and women and he covers them up in his righteousness and love.Find in him one who bears it for you, that you might find forgiveness, relief, and release.

Thomas Watson: The Harlot in Your Bosom (With Gospel Applications)

This is a prototypical example of why I love the Puritans in general, and Thomas Watson in particular. He takes the phrase, ‘I kept myself from my iniquity,’ and probes the depth of the human heart with us, calling us out for our idolatry and besetting sin. Be aware that Thomas Watson was no legalist, he was a preacher of the gospel, yet he was not afraid to press the application of a passage to the very core issues concerning sin. Besetting sin is a lust-affair. Here are some excerpts:

There is usually one sin that is the favorite—the sin
which the heart is most fond of. A godly man will not
indulge his darling sin: “I kept myself from my iniquity.”
(Psalm 18:23). “I will not indulge the sin to which the
bias of my heart more naturally inclines…

Question: How shall we know what our beloved sin is?

Answer 1: The sin which a man does not love to have
reproved—is the darling sin..Men can be content to have other sins
reproved—but if the minister puts his finger on the
sore, and touches this sin—their hearts begin to burn
in malice against him!

Answer 2: The sin on which the thoughts run most, is
the darling sin…Examine what sin
runs most in your mind, what sin is first in your
thoughts and greets you in the morning—that is
your predominant sin.

Answer 3: The sin which has most power over us, and
most easily leads us captive—is the one beloved by the
soul. There are some sins which a man can better resist.
If they come for entertainment, he can more easily put
them off. But the bosom sin comes as a suitor, and he
cannot deny it—but is overcome by it…

Answer 4: The sin which men most defend, is the
beloved sin…The sin we advocate and
dispute for, is the besetting sin. The sin which we
plead for, and perhaps wrest Scripture to justify it
—that is the sin which lies nearest the heart.

Answer 5: The sin which a man finds most difficulty in
giving up, is the endeared sin.

The besetting sin is, of all others, most dangerous.
As Samson’s strength lay in his hair—so the strength
of sin, lies in this beloved sin. This is like a poison
striking the heart, which brings death. A godly man
will lay the axe of repentance to this sin and hew it
down! He will sacrifice this Isaac; he will pluck out
this right eye—so that he may see better to go to
heaven.

Now here’s my summary and gospel applications for each point:

Summary: Your pet sin, the nicotine for the smoking soul, is the one:
1. You don’t want to be called out on
2. You think about the most
3. That has the most power over you, that you find hardest to resist
4. That you will do anything to justify
5. That you won’t give up

What do you do?
1. Hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, repent, and believe:

  • Romans 8:1 ¶ There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
  • 1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance (Martin Luther, 95 Theses).

2. Turn your thoughts upon him and his gospel constantly:

  • Romans 8:6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

3. Consider how much more Jesus suffered for your sin than you will for turning away from it:

  • Hebrews 12:3 ¶ Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. 4 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

4. Consider that in justifying your sin, you are neglecting the One who truly justifies the sinner:

  • Luke 16:15 And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

5. Consider how your laying aside of sin pales in comparison to the resolve of Christ, who laid aside his glory:

  • Philippians 2:5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Sin and Salvation: God and Man Change Places

This is perhaps one of the best summaries of the gospel I have ever read:

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.

-John Stott, The Cross of Christ